We delivered a successful ‘short and sharp’ campaign to recruit more permanent nurses to the George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust​.

Background

George Eliot Hospital NHS Trust needed to recruit more permanent nurses. Our communications and engagement team designed and implemented a short, targeted social media campaign to boost recruitment.​

Action

We listened to existing nurses and nursing leaders to understand the national nursing recruitment crisis and what factors made a workplace attractive in order to identify the hospital’s unique selling points. We identified the key digital channels to reach our target audience and drafted our messages around three main themes.​

Using testimonials from existing nurses and midwives, we gave an insight into working life at the hospital to convey the strong team ethic that exists in the organisation. We also: ​

• created a hashtag for the campaign: #JoinTeamEliot​
• leveraged national events and awareness weeks such as International Day of the Midwife to extend reach​
• promoted a ‘Theatre Open Day’ through a Facebook event, staff videos and live tweets​
• arranged ‘takeover days’ on our social media accounts.​
• developed a recruitment microsite: http://www.workingwithgeh.uk/ ​

Impact

The campaign directly led to the recruitment of seven theatre nurses. ​

Evaluation of Twitter activity on the International Day of the Midwife showed that the Trust achieved 10 times more engagement compared to a normal day. We achieved our target for an increase in Twitter followers. ​

The campaign received a gold award at the CIPR PRide Awards in 2016 (Chartered Institute of Public Relations). ​

Further information

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