Megan Edwards – 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 :

Megan joined the team in a new role in June 2022 from university. Megan is responsible for all recruitment comms – with a focus on both filling open vacancies and promoting the Trust as a great place to work to improve retention. Before Megan joined the Trust, recruitment comms was minimal and a lot of campaigns were commissioned by external agencies. Now, all recruitment is done in-house. Megan uses innovative and creative techniques to give the recruitment drive a refreshed look and feel. Imagery is bright and colourful, there is more use of video to promote senior positions and new social media channels have been created to support the retention initiatives, including TikTok and Instagram. Megan runs career-specific social media accounts, including on Facebook and X, as well as contributing to the main TikTok and Instagram channels. She is using creative, organic posts and paid advertising to increase followers every month and, in November 2023, she reached over 138,086 people with recruitment-related content, of which 2,444 followed relevant links to application forms for varying positions. She also grew the following on the recruitment accounts by 898 new followers. She has run some successful campaigns designed to promote the organisation, including a social media campaign called #GreatPlaceToWork which shares photo and video testimonials, particularly in some of the lesser known roles available. In fact, this campaign has seemingly improved the Trust’s staff survey results for 2023, recognising the Trust as a workplace that comes recommended. This particular campaign reached over 41,000 people through its five-week running period, with just under 1,000 people expressing interest in finding out more about current vacancies through the Trust’s bespoke recruitment microsite, which Megan also manages. The #GreatPlaceToWork campaign was also recognised in the quarterly staff survey results, with an increase of 3 per cent from those who would recognise the Trust as a great place to work. The most popular page on the careers microsite is the vacancies page with 5,516 total views in November. Megan ensures the microsite is kept up-to-date, featuring ‘jobs of the week’, and sharing regular case studies. She also takes a keen interest in coming up with innovative ways of promoting other areas of recruitment, including highlighting T-Level students, working with the Trust’s Academy on the routes into healthcare for young people with learning disabilities and taking a proactive and consistent role in the organisations Stay and Thrive programme, which seeks to recruit staff from overseas. Megan has brought the recruitment of a number of senior positions, including Executives and Non-Executive Directors in house. A recent Non-Exec Director campaign helped save the Trust thousands of pounds in agency fees and was the most successful NED recruitment campaign ever seen at the Trust. Megan has built a good network of contacts across the organisation who she can tap into for videos and case studies. She is happy to support with wider communications work where needed and, as the youngest member of the team, has brought new and fresh ideas to the teams communications approach.