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Communications and Engagement to increase service uptake
North Central London ICB (NCL) was formed from the merging of the North Central London Clinical Commissioning Group in April 2020, bringing together five north London boroughs – Barnet, Camden, Enfield, Haringey and Islington. As the organisations merged, there was an acute need to manage the communications internally and externally around the restructuring process as well as provide support to the existing Communications team to roll out their diversity and inclusion and external relations projects. Additionally, as the Covid 19 pandemic hit in 2020, NCL’s existing Communications teams focussed their attention on providing communication and engagement around the pandemic crisis. NCL therefore identified the need for an Interim Head of Communications and Engagement.
Having a long-standing relationship with Practicus, NCL engaged us to source a candidate that had experience in large, complex Public Sector organisations as well as relevant experience in communications and engagement to manage the following:
- Communication management regarding the restructure of the organisation, working closely with HR to deliver communications internally and externally.
- Support NCL’s internal project to improve its equality and diversity strategy by working with NCL’s stakeholders to develop internal communications in the form of newsletters, slides and lunchtime workshops.
- Provide support for responding to external enquiries from MP’s, Councilors and health committees, working with senior NCL stakeholders to ensure a cohesive response strategy and document library.
NCL’s needs were niche and sector specific which required a tailored and thorough search approach. We worked closely with NCL to gain a detailed brief of the requirements and what an ideal candidate would look like. We then deployed our dedicated Healthcare Consultants to approach the market through our extensive network of experienced candidates and advertised the role via social media and healthcare job boards and publications for maximum reach. The contract was measured by the speed with which we were able to source viable candidates for placement, and the quality and experience of those candidates against the assignment brief.
The assignment presented us with the challenge of finding the right quality of candidate with recent communications and engagement experience within a complex organisation, all within the competitive London market.
As a result, Practicus was successful in placing a Head of Communications and Engagement candidate within a very short timeframe of one week from receipt of the request. This is testimony to the quality of candidates within our network, and our ability to work with NCL to truly understand their requirement and find an exact match.
Benefits:
- Due to the work undertaken by our interim, NCL saw a 90% increase in uptake of Covid 19 vaccinations within its geographical remit. In an area that had traditionally low vaccination uptake rates, particularly within ethnic minority groups, it saw a positive impact as a result of the communications and engagement work carried out on the equality and diversity strategy.
- NCL was recognised as the ‘most improved’ of the London NHS organisations for childhood vaccinations.
- It gained a significant and tangible improvement in managing new ways of working from the newly merged organisational structure. The success of the communications and engagement strategy saw our interim’s contract extended several times to allow them to provide additional guidance and support across the wider communications team.
- External communications were improved to ensure consistency across all interactions.
- NCL could access a scalable resource that was quickly deployable and could be ramped up or down as and when needed.
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