Customer Stories
Harnessing the power of social media to fill over 98% of job vacancies
University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB) is one of the largest trusts in the country, helping 2.2 million patients a year and employing over 24,000 staff across its 4 hospitals.
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At the heart of everything the Trust does is its vision of ‘building healthier lives’ and its core mission to ‘improve the health and wellbeing of the population they service, shape an equitable and sustainable future and create an excellent experience for its patients and staff’. Having top talent and the best staff in place to achieve this vision plays a vital role.
With this in mind, UHB has looked to address some of the reputational issues and bad press that it has experienced over the past few years relating to staff, culture and workload – topics that will be all too familiar across many NHS organisations. With both a national and international reputation to protect, the Trust needed to work with its employees to repair its reputation, build employee advocacy and ultimately attract new talent to its hospitals. To bring about this change, the Trust’s CEO, Jonathan Brotherton, set out three key objectives:
- UHB to be an outstanding place to work
- Rebuild reputation
- Ensure staff attrition is kept low
In 2024, the Communications Lead and Recruitment Lead at Solihull Hospital (UHB) embarked on the Trust’s biggest recruitment drive in recent history, with over 240 vacancies to fill, in a relatively short space of time, as the Trust expanded its facilities, including the newly built Elective Surgical Hub, and looked to combat waiting time issues to improve customer experience for patients across its four sites. The roles were varied – from anaesthetists to housekeepers, physiotherapists to junior doctors. The task at hand was met with some scepticism both internally and externally, with many saying that filling vacancies on this scale just wasn’t achievable, and that using social media wouldn’t help recruiting historically ‘hard-to-fill’ roles.
Real people, real stories
The team set about creating their recruitment strategy based on extensive research and insight, which showed that the most impactful, successful content was video-based and featured real people telling real stories. Looking to current employees working across the Trust to portray its culture, personality and authenticity, they created a short video to do just that. With zero budget, they made use of existing in-house resources and created a piece of content that embodied true advocacy from staff and showcased the wider impact an individual can have when working at the Trust.
The finished video featured colleagues from a variety of roles talking about why they love working at the hospital. They also shared their excitement about the new developments at the Trust – notably the Elective Surgical Hub, and the fantastic new job opportunities this investment was bringing to the community. Showcasing the Trust’s commitment to the health and well-being of its staff and its promotion of diversity and inclusivity.
The video was then shared as part of the recruitment campaign, across its Facebook and LinkedIn social channels to reach and appeal to potential new talent. The success of the recruitment drive was aided by the already engaged audience the Communications Team had built up across their social channels – increasing visibility and engagement on the campaign posts to appeal to a diverse range of candidates.
The team stood by their approach to this campaign and were able to demonstrate that sometimes the simplest ideas, like sharing personal stories and experiences, can quite often have the most significant impact.
The results
The recruitment campaign proved a huge success, with the social media element of the team’s strategy seeing some stand-out metrics off the back of their activities. From only three social posts, total link clicks topped 183, reach was at 13,600 and impressions for these posts topped 18,600.
A staggering 98% of all vacancies targeted as part of these campaign activities were filled as a result of this social media campaign, alongside one piece of media coverage and LinkedIn outreach. Without a doubt, this campaign helped the Trust lay the groundwork of having a skilled and passionate workforce in place, enabling UHB to achieve its vision of building healthier lives for its community.
Internally, the effects of the newly created video, featuring real hospital employees, were felt right across the Trust. Employee advocacy and positivity towards their roles, as well as the pride they felt for the organisation, was clear to everyone, with noticeable impacts.
“There’s a camaraderie. There’s a willingness to really support our colleagues and I think that translates into patient care. We’ve got a workforce here that is always willing to go above and beyond to make sure that the patients are having the best outcomes, but also experiencing the best patient journey possible. I’m proud of the workforce here. I’m really proud to be part of the team.”
Chris | Lead Theatre Practitioner | University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust
With the recruitment campaign also being picked up by the local ITV News, the team were able to start turning the dial on their reputation issues and recent negative press coverage. This campaign was able to meet the three, core objectives and also feed into the Trust’s main purpose.
Efficiency
98%
of vacancies filled as a result of the campaign
Engagement
9K
campaign video views across social
Engagement
183
link clicks on social for the campaign
Orlo Insights has been instrumental for us. Alongside the preset reports for brand, demographic, trend and experience, we have worked closely with our Customer Success Manager to create bespoke reports, tailored to our needs.
Laura Hogan
Social and Digital Communications Manager
