by Kirk Millis-Ward
Central Government decided that the NHS COVID-19 App would be first rolled out on the Isle of Wight. Here’s how the teams involved handled the complexities of its launch under heavy scrutiny from the media.
You’ll learn:
• How to close skills gaps in a crisis
• The value of genuine two-way engagement with your community to affect behaviour change
• That a hyper-local approach and allowing people to get involved can reap dividends when sharing
campaign messaging
Being the epicentre of a major national and international technology story in the midst of a global pandemic was never on the planner for our Isle of Wight communications and engagement teams.
Islanders are self-aware enough to know that big data isn’t necessarily synonymous with our beautiful beaches, clear waters and verdant countryside. But we’re nothing if not up for a challenge.
The scale of that challenge became abundantly clear after we got the nod from central Government that the NHS COVID-19 App would be rolled out first on the Isle of Wight.
Whatever the controversies of the original contact tracing App and its giving way to a decentralised replacement built to Apple and Google specs, there are some valuable lessons for all communicators in our experiences.
Stick with me to find out how our small island coped under intense scrutiny and engaged people from all walks of life to give something new a go, to play their part and help protect our community.
Time to tool up
From the outset of the pandemic the Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Isle of Wight Council Communications and Engagement Teams were working at full tilt. Our plans for growth and better integration were just starting to get moving but time was not on our side.
Bringing colleagues together, we thrashed out what the impact of the App’s arrival might be on our business as usual and COVID-19 response comms, then got to work.
Accepting any and all offers of help, we seconded in team members from other departments with a particular focus on our social media offer. We made good use of the additional pairs of hands from Government, and brought in expertise in local stakeholder engagement.
The effect was island-wide communications and engagement on steroids. We were able to fully mobilise existing and emerging local authority and NHS networks to deliver key campaign messages in double-time.
Lesson:
Take some time to understand your team’s strengths and weaknesses and then do something about the gaps. Use your relationships to get the help you need.
‘We’ve had enough of experts’
The spontaneous appearance and organic growth of local COVID-19 Facebook groups posed a particular challenge early in our pandemic response.
Dogged determination and diplomacy got us added as administrators and we were better placed to deal with disinformation, rumour and scaremongering.
It set us up well for the inevitable scepticism about the new COVID-19 App.
The general public, so the adage goes, have had enough of experts. But we couldn’t get enough of them.
Thankfully there were clinicians, technology specialists, developers and public health experts available to us – to help us understand the technology, the risks and the challenges, but also to help us explain it to the public.
Lesson:
Influencing the conversation on social media isn’t about pumping out press releases, posting links and counting reach.
Find out where your community is and play an active role in the conversations that they are having.
In the eye of the storm
All but non-essential travel was curtailed but journalists are key workers too.
The App launch saw national and international print and broadcast journalists descend on St Mary’s Hospital and pound the strangely quiet streets of Newport looking for people to vox pop.
On one day in May, the trust comms team prepared and fielded 15 different spokespeople simultaneously to the assembled national and international broadcast media. They came from right across the trust… ambulance drivers, doctors, housekeepers, nurses and physiotherapists all supporting the comms campaign. They were way out of their comfort zone. But we did it and it clocked up more broadcast activity in 8 hours for us than in the whole of 2019.
The council was busy fielding spokespeople too, for broadcast media and for our own channels. It seemed like the entire public sector, from GPs to maintenance engineers, were mobilised urging the public to play their part.
The weeks of coverage weren’t easy. The clamour for data, the need for daily stats to show how we were doing was intense and caused confusion. But here’s where relationships come in. If your local media know and trust you, you can cut through the noise at a national level. We remain grateful for those open and honest conversations with our local reporters.
Lesson:
Be prepared, be open and honest. Start working on your relationships with local media now, get to know the reporters and build trust because in the teeth of a crisis you will need to be able to pick up the phone and have conversations based on that trust.
When everyone is going global, you go local… hyperlocal
In a crisis we all feel the urge to control everything, to grip it. Resist the urge.
Think about your networks, map your stakeholders and make sure you can reach them when you need to – because no organisation is an island, even if you’re on an island.
We did some excellent work early in the pandemic to reach out to businesses and to community and voluntary groups.
On a hyperlocal level, the council is now plugged into community organising almost street by street. So we were able to reach out to people in a new and powerful way. We reached people via organisations and associations, through town councils and village support groups. We got messages out through our call centre and across all the NHS channels at our disposal.
It worked. By bringing these complex and varied stakeholder groups together, by giving them the tools to amplify our messages we cut through to people of all ages, in all communities.
There’s a bandwagon coming, jump on it
With blanket local, regional and national media coverage and stakeholders shouting from the roof tops, it’s not surprising that people and businesses saw the opportunity to get involved.
Isle of Wight App t-shirts popped up for sale, celebrity endorsements rained in and pushed organic PR and social media reach that we could only have hoped for in the planning stage.
Lesson:
If people get involved organically, lean in. Bring them into your campaign.
Communications as a strategic function
I’m proud of how our island responded. We led the way and played a significant part in the country’s fight against COVID-19.
Our experience has proven the power of effective communications and engagement, in a way no evaluation report or stakeholder session could.
Our task now is to keep our seat at the top table by reacting effectively to the many and varied challenges coming our way as the nation navigates this new normal.
Kirk Millis-Ward is director of communications and engagement at Isle of Wight NHS Trust and Isle of Wight Council.
An experienced journalist and qualified physiotherapist, he is passionate about the role that communications and engagement plays in delivering better services for communities.
He lives and works on the Isle of Wight where the close-knit community and the integrated nature of small-scale public services present unique communications opportunities as well as challenges.
Twitter: @KirkWard_NHS
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kirk-millis-ward-0071131b3/