NHS Internal Communications Strategy: Using an Employee App

The future of healthcare cannot be separated from the technology that will support it. As digital transformations roll out across the NHS, community care, and other healthcare organisations, here’s where your employees fit in.

In every healthcare sector and organisation, significant digital transformations are underway. Whether it’s automating certain aspects of patient care, digitising as many patient interactions as possible, streamlining access to information, and other digital-first initiatives, all eyes are on transforming patient outcomes, satisfaction, and even the bottom line.

But to really make a difference in patient experience, it can actually be effective to start on the inside—by using technology to improve internal communications and enhance the employee experience. The research has been loud and clear that there’s a strong link between employee engagement and quality of work performance. Patient safety and hospital profits in particular improve when healthcare employees are engaged.  

Just as technology is the way to engage today’s patient and community populations, and even to improve data quality and support cost-saving measures, it is also the way to improve engagement within the ranks of the healthcare workforce.  

Using Technology to Empower & Engage Your Healthcare Workforce 

The benefits are multifold: for starters, there is the simple matter of improving employee experience and the power of technology to do that. For another, for all team members to adopt the massive digital changes that are impacting their roles, the vision and the steps to achieving it needs to be communicated in ways that are clear and empowering.  

That can obviously be harder than it sounds, and you can’t have sweeping organisational change if you can’t successfully communicate. Healthcare team members are often on the frontlines, deskless, working in urgent situations, and serving in a diverse set of roles.  

An employee app can help bridge the gap, bringing communication to your workforce wherever they are, rather than forcing your workforce to go to the communication.  

Here we’ll look at three instances in healthcare where organisations successfully adopted an employee communications app that helped them to overcome specific challenges, unite disparate workforces, improve company culture, and get employee buy-in for major organisational change.

#1 The challenge: lack of timeliness and clarity of information had damaged employee morale

Springfield Home Care offers a range of specialised care services and has more than 425 beds across five care homes in York, Leeds and Ilkley. Their six regional offices cover Yorkshire, Humberside and the North East.

Being so spread out brought challenges in clarity and consistency of information sharing. Communication between employees and leaders was spotty, and a lack of recognition had a devastating impact on morale. The internal comms team heard repeatedly from employees that communications were unclear and overall poor.

The solution: an employee app that allows easy access to documents and keeps communication flowing consistently.