Blue lozenge 25: the power of professional, strategic communication in healthcare
The NHS brand is a masterclass in demonstrating the power and value of professional, strategic communication in healthcare. 25 years ago this month the national roll out of the NHS blue lozenge began. Healthcare communication professionals across the land were equipped with a new set of national guidance explaining how they should use the new corporate identity.
The NHS blue lozenge very quickly became one of the most recognisable logos, not only in England, but across the world. A study by NHS England found that, by 2015, the NHS logo had, at 98%, almost universal recognition[1]. People felt that it had existed “forever”. The study found that, “for the general public, the NHS is broadly understood as a single entity with an overarching ethos: the NHS logo is a signifier of consistent, high-quality healthcare, and it is also – and independently – a signifier of the public purse.”
The NHS brand has powerfully shaped the English public’s perception of its national healthcare service. This wasn’t always the case. When the NHS was created at the end of the 1940s, a hospital was just your local hospital; the larger structure behind it was less tangible. The People’s History of the NHS explains [2]:
“Even the NHS acronym had not yet become widespread. In many instances, people were told about the ‘new health service’, not even the ‘National Health Service’. Labelling was far less consistent and less important than it was to become.”
Effective communication helps to make the complex simple. This was well understood when the NHS brand was introduced, it brought together over 600 variations into one compelling corporate identity, an identity that resonated with every single member of the public. The values of that identity were later embodied into the NHS Constitution. And the recent report, the British Social Attitudes Survey, found that the public commitment to the underlying principles of the NHS are as strong as ever [3].
The NHS brand evokes purpose and trust, and in a world where public trust in the NHS is declining and there are huge challenges with the health and care workforce – proactively managing communication has never been more important. The reputation of the NHS is based on three factors, performance, behaviour and communication. This is known as the reputation equation:
The NHS brand provides a single identifier for healthcare – the double-edged sword of an effective brand is that public perception is often polarised. Therefore, an individual’s experience of performance, behaviour and communication at a local NHS service means that they conclude that the whole of that service is either evangelically good or wholly inadequate. Neither of which are likely to be true.
Effectively managing communication in healthcare leads to more time to care
What is true is that there are huge benefits in proactively managing your brand and communication. In healthcare we believe that the ultimate benefit is that it provides more time to care. Rolling out one effective brand saved millions of hours of local time and budget, where previously hundreds of variations existed. Time and money that could be spent elsewhere. One, strategic, powerful programme of communication still helps a workforce of over 1.4 million people and a population of around 56 million understand the goals, strategic approach and direction of our health service.
Branding isn’t the only place where the power and value of communication can be seen in healthcare.
- For internal communication there is a positive correlation between better healthcare, employee communication and engagement and work-related commitment; a negative correlation with turnover intentions [4].
- For operational communication there is a positive correlation between higher levels of workforce engagement and reduced mortality rates in hospital [5].
- For patient communication there is a positive link between the use of online patient feedback and better-informed quality improvement projects [6].
- For behaviour change communication effective community engagement underpinned the success of the Covid-19 vaccine campaign in improving uptake in marginalised groups.
This is why we and hundreds of communication professionals in health and care turn up to work each day – not to pretty a poster or draft a powerpoint. Let’s be clear that investment in well thought through communication is never a cost pressure it is always a cost saving – and if we need a reminder let’s just look at the power of the NHS brand!
As part of our celebration of 25 years of the national rollout of the NHS blue lozenge we’ve asked some well-known experts their views on the NHS brand and why think it’s endured and what the future will hold. Take a look.
References
[1] NHS England, 2016. https://www.england.nhs.uk/nhsidentity/wp-content/uploads/sites/38/2016/08/NHS-Identity-Research-phase-one-and-two.pdf
[2] https://peopleshistorynhs.org/encyclopaedia/branding/
[3] Nuffield Trust, British Social Attitudes Survey March 2024
[4] University of Greenwich Greenwich Academic Literature Archive – Evaluating the evidence on employee engagement and its potential benefits to NHS staff: A narrative synthesis of the literature
[6] University of Oxford Using online patient feedback to improve NHS services: The INQUIRE multimethod study – ORA – Oxford University Research Archive
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