Going Back to My Roots - Branding Stockport NHS Foundation Trust
For the third instalment of my Design Deconstructed series, I’m going to take the opportunity to be a little bit self indulgent and use this blog space to shine a spotlight on my hometown, Stockport.
At Just R, we are fortunate to have developed a national network, from Bradford Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust to North East London Foundation Trust (NELFT), gaining valuable insights into potential process pitfalls, staffing shortages and fundamental frustrations from NHS Trusts the length and breadth of the Country. Not only is this exciting from a design point of view; our designs are engaged with eyes everywhere, but we are the external eyes the NHS as a whole needs in order to identify, implement and improve change across the board.
A bit of a backstory…
When I first started at Just R in August 2020, a relationship had already begun with the team in my hometown of Stockport, initially delivering a digital attraction campaign to attract newly qualified and experienced nurses to a virtual recruitment event. So, for personal reasons, I knew that this would be a campaign I just had to be part of.
I first got into design because I loved having something I had created out in the world for people to see. This was my chance to get my work in front of family and friends, and make a difference to the community which I grew up in. And I could do all of this from Carlisle, my home of 12 years now, some 118 ½ miles away!
…why so precise with the distance I hear you ask?
It’s a fact that’s firmly lodged in my brain due to staring at the famous fingerpost on the A6, from the window of The Nelson pub over the road during my College and Uni days!
I was born in Stepping Hill Hospital and now I’m helping to fill vacancies with sustainable workforce solutions!
A longstanding relationship
The collaboration between Just R and Stockport began way back in 2019 and we’re thrilled to have launched their latest campaign to attract Nurses and HCSW’s, driving potential candidates towards a recruitment event, held in Stockport Town Centre over 2 days.
Due to the long standing relationship, we have gone through multiple refreshes over time to ensure the campaign doesn’t become stale and stays scroll-stopping on the socials.
”In Search of” has become well established as the employer brand of Stockport NHS Foundation Trust, but brands can be at risk of becoming white noise and ignored if they don’t stay new and refreshed.
By keeping the established display typeface but incorporating a new colour palette as set out by Trust brand guidelines and making subtle changes to the style and appearance of the search bar, we have created a campaign which feels familiar but different enough to attract attention. We’ve built upon brand awareness and remain recognisable to previous incarnations which still feature on long lasting advertising placements such as vehicle decals, while still providing something refreshing and original to coincide with our new recruitment campaign.
The bigger picture…
At Just R, our mission is to deliver sustainable workforce solutions. Saving the NHS money through reduced reliance on agency staff, and increased retention through values based recruitment. We also support with the shaping of the onboarding process through project management and candidate screening, narrowing down the best pool of applicants for the Trust which usually equates to huge sums for the NHS, including the time spent filling vacancies. But if Just R can save a Trust money and time in the recruitment process with sustainable workforce solutions we have succeeded in our ongoing mission to help the NHS.
It’s not often in a design career that you can say you 100% feel like you have contributed to making a real difference to society, and it may sound cliche, but I get that feel-good feeling for every campaign I work on at Just R.
