As the weather gets colder, flu starts thriving and we see more and more of our systems under pressure due to avoidable admissions and GP appointments. An easy way to reduce the impact flu can have on your organisation is to continue to encourage your staff to have their own flu vaccinations, in order to limit the virus’ spread.

Our colleagues at the ‘Outstanding’ Northamptonshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust are top of the regional table for staff uptake in a community or mental health provider – currently sitting at 77% in the latest official PHE figures.

Hollye Enser, Assistant Communications Officer, has been working closely with the trust’s occupational health team to ensure the success of their internal campaign this year. Together, they’ve developed their top 10 tips to help make your flu campaign, and other occupational health projects, the best they can be. For more information on the trust’s impressive work, please contact Hollye or the team directly.

1. Team up – ensuring you have a good working relationship is an integral part to any campaign and working with your occupational health (OHW) team should be no different. Get to the know the whole team from admin to nurses to the head of the service.
2. Actively listen – answering because you know the answer doesn’t always help – let your OHW lead finish their thought process, express their worries and concerns as well as give their ideas. You might not be able to do those ideas but you can find common ground by being interested.
3. Compromise – from actively listening to reaching an agreement – your organisation might have overall goals but within teams those KPIs and objectives might differ or people might disagree with how you reach them. Sometimes you have to find compromise between both team’s KPIs and work with what you’ve got.
4. Message consistency – with a project like OHW the messages are likely to remain consistent so that should be an integral part of your campaign to emphasise and reemphasise using the different tools and channels that you have.
5. Brand consistency – in the same vein as messaging consistency, if the idea if to grow the OHW ‘brand’ as something identifiable within your organisation then keeping things on a chosen brand form will help to push forward their image and importantly keep it in the minds of the staff.
6. Respect them – you might not agree with the person you are working with. You might feel they should do other things to achieve their goals but not respecting them will get you, them and your project nowhere.
7. Manage expectations – one that we all have to work on. We can’t do everything – no matter how hard we might try, or how many hours we might try to fit in but the person you are working with will appreciate it more if you tell them you can’t rather than keep leading them around in circles.
8. Keep a record – keep a written record of when you did what and when, where it was delivered and whether there were any barriers. Keep your comms plans up to date and keep your direct line manager in the loop. Doing this enables your own personal development and can help to showcase where potential problems or support might be given in the future.
9. Move forward – when something goes wrong, people can often be quick to blame others – be annoyed, be frustrated and be angry for five minutes – brush yourself off and reset. You know your worth and what you bring to a project as a communications professional. You’ve got this.
10. It’s okay – these things don’t always happen, and they don’t always work and working relationships can be stressed and strained and that’s okay. Moving two steps forward and one step back is fine, you are still one more step forward then you were originally. It’s okay when it doesn’t work – but you’ve got to keep on moving and making progress because you are making a difference.