Resources available for engaging and communicating with staff to increase vaccination uptake

Over the last 12 months we have worked together to deliver vaccines to our NHS staff. It is vital that we continue to drive up vaccination by engaging in meaningful conversations with unvaccinated staff to minimise the potential impact of VCOD across the healthcare service. In order to achieve this we must:

  1. Increase engagement with targeted communities where uptake is the lowest, including extensive work with ethnic minority communities and faith networks to encourage healthcare workers to receive the vaccine.
  2. Use Chief Professional Officers to encourage staff vaccination uptake for all NHS staff.
  3. Introduce 1:1 conversations for all unvaccinated NHS staff with their line manager (or equivalent).

NHS England and NHS Improvement has curated resources to aid 1:1 conversations around staff vaccine hesitancy. For further information on how to have a 1:1 conversation to support vaccine uptake, please see the ‘Guidance to support COVID-19 vaccine uptake in frontline staff’.

Targeted engagement with communities where uptake is the lowest has proven to be an essential tool in tackling vaccine hesitancy. Most key messages about the vaccine should be consistent across all audiences. However, for specific groups and communities, tailored messaging which takes into consideration their concerns is important when delivering messages about the vaccine. NHS England and NHS Improvement has created communication toolkits specifically targeting groups that the data has identified as being vaccine hesitant.

These tools can be used as part of the 1:1 conversations to address specific areas of concerns and hesitancy that individual staff may have. The toolkits contain key messages, FAQs, social media posts, videos and other materials to assist with building a targeted communications campaign.

Toolkits and resources

Breastfeeding, fertility and pregnancy

Ethnic minority communities

General resources for specific target groups

Senior leadership engagement

Trusted members of senior management should assist in delivering the message to the workforce. Senior management with a clinical background should be encouraged to be the face of the communications within their professional capacity.

Here are some examples of senior management communications:

For more information on the implementation of the regulations and materials to support local communications and engagement, please visit the Vaccination as a Condition of Deployment workspace on the FutureNHS web platform.