Band 5 nursing campaign by award-winning talent attraction agency, WDAD

South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust (SLaM) provides the widest range of NHS mental health services in the UK and employs over 4,600 staff, many of whom are Mental Health Nurses.

However it operated in a challenging environment, with the impact of  increased work pressure caused by the lack of Band 5 nurses on the wards being cited by current staff as the primary reason for leaving.

In this highly competitive environment, SLaM decided that they needed a more strategic and cohesive advertising strategy and above all, they needed to ‘shout’ louder to make themselves heard when they did go to market. This led to the appointment of a dedicated Band 5 resource – an Employee Resourcing & Employer Branding Manager (ERBM) with a brief to reignite attraction channels to bring the NHS Trust back into the forefront of candidates’ minds as an Employer of Choice.

The Trust committed to a long-term profile-building strategy to work alongside their talent attraction campaigns. WDAD Communications were asked to work with the Trust to produce the campaign creative concepts.

Research indicated that two of the Trust’s biggest selling points – the breadth of services the Trust deployed, and the training and career pathways it offered – were either not being communicated or was not understood in the external marketplace.

This information helped to inform the creative brand messaging with the objective of raising the level of awareness/knowledge of the Trust with potential employees. We developed a year-long media schedule with online channels, but also turned traditional thinking on its head by focusing on ‘old school’ print advertising with a series of employer brand building and PR advertisements in the London Metro and Evening Standard.

Online collateral for nursing advertising campaign by WDAD
award winning recruitment advertising

The results

We had three distinct campaign phases all based around  a central creative theme of ‘The Mind is Fascinating’. One such phase included a series of graphical visual puzzles to really draw people in and engage with them. The results were remarkable;

A total of 158 Band 5 ‘direct’ starters joined, which over the 12 months helped to reduce SLaM’s vacancy rate by nearly 66%. Turnover also dropped from 23% to 14%. It also represented a significant reduction in staffing agency use, estimated to have saved the Trust c.£14k per appointee, equating to a huge saving of over £1.9 million.

The achievements were recognised by a shortlisting at the Public Service People Managers’ Association (PPMA)  in their Best Frontline Recruitment Campaign category.