Paul Kumar – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Corporate Services

Individual or Team Nomination?

Individual

Qualifying Qualities

In these challenging times, nominators were asked to show how the nominee had demonstrated the following qualities:

Exceptional work ethic - going above and beyond their job description, especially in the past 12 months.
Outstanding achievement/s in work or outside of the organisation where relevant.
Drive for innovation and proactive leadership in these challenging times.
High level of interpersonal skills, such as kindness, empathy, loyalty and thoughtfulness to staff and patients.
A resilience considering Covid to their role and to the health and wellbeing of their colleagues.

Nominators Answer

Nominee's story :

Paul is a key member of our small communications team (5.46fte). Between us we provide internal and external communications support to a large integrated NHS trust with services across Shropshire, Telford & Wrekin, Staffordshire and Stoke-on-Trent. With such a broad catchment area, and over 8500 staff, communications can be quite a challenge, but however wacky or ambitious our ideas, Paul always does his utmost to make them happen. He has; Used a wheelchair to make a mobile camera platform when recording staff singing a flu vaccination campaign song Produced guidelines for a DIY recording studio, using chairs and duvets Taught himself animation to produce our Staff Survey messages (see supporting information for a link to video) and an advent calendar (see supporting information for an example post) for social media Been the technical genius behind our staff awards Most recently however, he was the lynchpin of our most ambitious project ever. The Big Shout Out was a 10 hour digital initiative like no other, three virtual festival tents, over 40 hours of digital content, based on the themes of compassion, collaboration and celebration which engaged all our staff, and welcomed their families too. Paul went over and above to prepare for the event, working many extra hours, late into the night, and held it all together on the day, even dealing with a global MS Teams outage. In 33 days from the first meeting to the event, Paul was key to recording, editing, coordinating and sharing live digital content ranging from a Mr Motivator workout, Midlands Island Discs, Taskmaster-style executive briefing, a kitchen disco and even a bedtime story read by Nick Knowles (see images in supporting information). As well as his vital contribution to making things happen in our Trust, Paul is not afraid to challenge ideas and suggestions and ensure they are fit for purpose and reflect our key mission that ‘together we are making life better for our communities”. He also demonstrates our values, putting people at the heart of what we do; delivering better health, better care in partnership; and empowering people to improve care and wellbeing. He will always encourage those who come to ask for his help to try and find the solutions themselves, offering training and development if required, but equally is always ready to help a colleague in need. Paul has an IT background which is invaluable for team members now all working from home. He keeps us digitally safe and has impressed on us all the importance of secure passwords. He insists on good naming conventions for our shared files and helps us utilise the technology available to us – and regularly gets the less technically adept of us out of an IT hole. We can’t imagine what we would do without him! Paul is very much an unsung hero and never seeks the limelight. It would be wonderful to show our appreciation of his invaluable contribution by securing an Unsung Hero Award 2021.