OUH Communications Team – Unsung Hero Awards

Nomination

Award Category:

Corporate Services

Individual or Team Nomination?

Team

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 :

Our Communications team have been there with us every step of the way throughout the COVID-19 pandemic – the highs and the lows – everything from communicating sensitively about the loss of members of our #OneTeamOneOUH who sadly lost their lives to the virus to celebrating our shared and individual experiences in an innovative e-Book which has been highlighted as an area of best practice by the Care Quality Commission. When COVID-19 hit in February 2020, the Communications team had a key role in absorbing new and ever changing information and communicating this in a meaningful and useful way to not only our 12,000+ staff but also patients, relatives, carers, key stakeholders and the general public. They set up a range of new internal communications channels to adapt to our new reality – everything from daily update bulletins and a dedicated email address for staff queries and questions to virtual Staff Briefings with our Executive Directors to a new COVID-19 Staff FAQs section on the Trust website, an online Guide to Health and Wellness, OUHStaffText service with regular alerts for staff who sign up, and regular Freedom to Speak Up virtual listening events. Working in partnership with our in-house graphic design, videography and print room team – Oxford Medical Illustration – they also produced posters, repurposed digital screens for staff facing information, and established a cascade to ensure that information reached staff without regular access to email or the internet. And they worked really close with our hospital Charity to communicate everything available for our staff working on the frontline and the outpouring of emotion and support from our local community. Throughout all the different stages of the pandemic over the past 15 months, our Communications team has responded, reacted and ensured that information is readily available in a variety of formats and approaches – a trusted source to keep everyone safe during what has been quite a scary time for people both personally and professionally. They have also helped bring us all together – particularly important during a time when many support staff and staff who are clinically vulnerable have been working at home while frontline staff have often been asked to work in different areas of our hospitals in order to meet patient needs. Early on in the pandemic the Communications team started using #OneTeamOneOUH as a shorthand for this togetherness and sense of shared purpose, and it’s now become part of our lexicon – not only in communications from the Trust but also in Board papers and in everyday conversations. This is a profound and permanent cultural shift for our staff and it has also added strength to the positive work which the Communications team has done when we have been able to celebrate our successes – for example, when the first Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccination in the world was administered by our Chief Nursing Officer. The team have been proud to do this important job during the pandemic, having the privilege to support our #OneTeamOneOUH staff throughout such a challenging time.