Communications, engagement and behavioural insight support for service redesign

Our strategic advice support will review the service redesign proposal, consider your local situation and evaluate learning from engagements completed for previous programmes of change.

Based on our experience and understanding of legal requirements, we will advise you on the most appropriate engagement approach to deliver your objectives. This could range from a targeted approach to a wider stakeholder engagement exercise depending on the services and the groups most likely to be impacted.

We also advise on the optimum duration of the engagement work based on the nature of the service change and the likely level of interest. We utilise our tried and tested engagement methodology but have the flexibility to adapt this approach based on monitoring and evaluation of previous phases of delivery.

We will develop a comprehensive communications and engagement strategy to meet your key aims and objectives.

The strategy will include a detailed stakeholder mapping section which will categorise stakeholders by their level of ‘interest’ and ‘influence’ and will ensure that everyone who needs to be is informed and involved. This will be used to help us to develop a stakeholder database.

The strategy will include:

• an introduction and background
• the key target audiences and stakeholders who are likely to be impacted on or interested
• the most suitable communications and engagement channels to reach these audiences
• the communications and engagement collateral required
• the key messages
• a media and social media strategy
• risks and mitigations
• how we will monitor and evaluate the success of our work.

At all stages of the process, we will be cognisant of the needs of people with one or more protected characteristics as well as seldom heard groups.

Utilising the communications and engagement strategy, we produce detailed delivery plans that clearly outline timescales and responsibilities.

Planning for delivery of all the communications and engagement activities will be aligned to the overarching service redesign project plan and as well meeting the Triple Aim duty. All delivery plans are regularly updated based on progress and any change of approach or timescales required.

We provide advice on the most appropriate engagement and consultation materials to reach your target audiences.

Our in-house design and copywriting teams have extensive experience of producing attractive materials written in a style and language which is both suitable and accessible for different audiences. We are accustomed to producing a wide variety of materials including engagement and consultation documents, summary documents, posters, flyers, website banners, social media content and graphics, presentations, videos, animations etc.

We regularly produce written content for websites, intranets, newsletters, case studies, letters/emails for different audiences including patients, clinicians and other key stakeholders. Our graphic designers are also skilled in the use of infographic approaches to convey complex information in a clear and simple way. All communications are created using plain English with the content and tones adapted for different audiences.

Our established team has extensive experience of using a wide range of engagement tools and techniques.

We work collaboratively with you to understand your objectives and your target audiences and recommend the most effective techniques. These could include an online or printed survey, focus groups, one-to-one telephone interviews and events. We will also work with you to understand your project timescales and any other influencing factors (for example, the pre-election period) before recommending the duration of the engagement activity.

We have extensive experience of all aspects of planning and delivering both small and large-scale events (online and face-to-face) including promotion, registration, sourcing speakers, producing presentations and collating the feedback in an engagement report. All of our engagement tools are tailored according to the needs of the target audience including those who don’t have digital access or require materials in different languages or formats.

Patient or stakeholder reference groups are frequently used to successfully engage with key stakeholders from the early stages of the activity. We also work with voluntary organisations and patient groups to recruit members and advise on involvement strategy and communications and engagement materials to ensure that they are relevant and meet the needs of our target audiences.

We will ensure that all the feedback we receive is recorded so that we are able to demonstrate how stakeholder views have been listened to and, where possible, used to influence the proposals.

In recent years, there has been greater scrutiny (and subsequent legal challenges) on how consultors arrived at the options for a consultation. Therefore, an options appraisal process is an essential part of any service redesign.

We co-design essential criteria with key stakeholders, patients and the public and manage the process to ensure that all relevant stakeholder groups are involved throughout the engagement period.

We offer both standard and enhanced reporting options based on the individual needs of our clients.

Our standard approach provides the frequency of responses to each of the survey questions, with the enhanced approach providing a more detailed analysis of all answers classified by the demographic characteristics of the respondents. Data analysis is robustly and rigorously undertaken with feedback from all open questions themed and coded.

We agree the format of the engagement report with you and present information in a user-friendly way including tables, charts and infographics.