The future of communications and engagement in the NHS

 Matthew Taylor: Hello, and welcome to a special episode of Health on the Line. This episode looks at the future of communications and engagement within the NHS. It was recorded recently at our wonderful Confed Expo Conference and it's presented by our splendid director of communications, Daniel Reynolds, with three special guests.

Enjoy. 

Daniel Reynolds: I am delighted to be joined by my three favourite communications director. I said that last year… 

Edna Boampong: You really did [laughs].

Daniel Reynolds: …but these are genuinely my new three, apart from Tom in the front, row. But my three of my favourite communications directors who I admire a lot. So firstly for those in the room to my left, Edna Boampong, director of communications and engagement at Liverpool City Council. Up until recently, a comms director in the NHS at an ICB. Multi award-winning person. Say hello, Edna. 

Edna Boampong: Hello everyone. Thank you, Daniel. Morning everyone. 

Daniel Reynolds: Ranjeet Kaile, who we think is the only comms director in the country of both an ICB and an NHS trust, down in South London at the Maudsley. Welcome Ranjeet.

Ranjeet Kaile: Great to be here. Thank you. 

Daniel Reynolds: And then Rory Hegarty, executive director of communications and involvement at NHS North West London, ICB. Hi Rory. 

Rory Hegarty: Morning everyone. 

Daniel Reynolds: Brilliant. Great to have you here today. So look, let's start with the restructure and the Change programme. So I want to start by casting your minds back to the 1st of April. The letter came out from NHS England, which talked about the cuts that are going to be required in the coming months. It did include quite a prominent mention of communications and engagement roles. I think I read it as I was drinking my coffee and spat it out. I was a bit concerned, but yeah.

So it caused a lot of reaction. One of the kind of lines in there that I think caused a bit of concern was around duplication within the system. So I'm going to turn to Rory first. Rory, how did you feel when you read the letter and do you think we have a problem in terms of duplication in the system?

Rory Hegarty: How I felt, disappointed is my measure. I don't want to swear on your podcast, but very disappointed when I read the letter, I don't think it's a duplication issue. I think there's generally been a sense of comms being mentioned a lot in some of these communications in quite a negative way.

If you look at what ICBs do, reaching out to communities, they communicate about ICB programmes and other organisations don't do that. It's a completely different role. So, yeah, surprised.

Daniel Reynolds: And we were talking a bit before, this is a common problem, the kind of, the breadth of what comms and engagement directors and their teams do, both in trusts and ICBs is still little known.

Rory Hegarty: I think so. So, I think there's sort of an impression that there's lot of press officers running around talking to journalists. I mean, we do that, but it's a very small part of what we do. It's all about, for me, it's about reaching our communities, understanding our communities and communicating NHS programmes and what we're doing locally.

Daniel Reynolds: And Ranjeet, you are looking at this both from your ICB and your NHS trust perspective, so how's it played out in your area? 

Ranjeet Kaile: Yeah, I agree  with Rory. I think equally when I saw the letter, I was really disappointed because we know the strategic value of communications and we just know exactly what takes place in between the lines. And that's not seen. So that's underneath the iceberg in a sense.

So it was really frustrating to see comms and engagement kind of singled out in that way. But where I slightly have a different view is I think there are layers of duplication.

So working in a provider and working in an ICBI can see that there are some areas where we might be able to work together more closely.

So one of the things we talked about is digital, social media or where we might be able to do some work around the production of like communication assets or materials, et cetera. There are those things that are more tactical. The difficulty is that where it becomes into strategic and relationship management or work with particular communities that one organisation doesn't. So I definitely see some pros and cons, but the blanket statement that there's duplication everywhere was wrong. 

Daniel Reynolds: Yeah, completely agree. And Edna, you've now left this as the Change programme's about to happen. You're now in Liverpool City Council. You've had a really slow start to your… and then we'll get to that a bit later actually.

But how did you react when you saw the letter? What were your thoughts? 

Edna Boampong: I agree with Ranjeet in the sense that there is some duplication, but that's like saying there are too many doors in a house. I saw that expression. It's not as crude as saying that there are so many people and there's a lot of duplication that therefore we need to get rid of some of them. It's about understanding what that duplication is and then working to relieve some of that. 

So I think that you can see there is some duplication within the NHS, within trusts, within the Department of Health, within NHS England. There are things that we could do differently because it's true - when I was working in ICBs, sometimes you wouldn't know whether it was NHS England that were leading on a particular campaign or a comms project, or it was Department of Health. There was a little bit of duplication and equally within trusts and with ICBs, sometimes it was a bit like, is it your responsibility? Is it our responsibility? 

There is some duplication and things that we do need to do differently and do better and be more joined up about, but I don't think that singling out comms and engagement in that way, saying there was duplication, so therefore we need to get rid of comms and engagement people essentially is how I read that letter felt like a fair reflection of what was happening.

And equally what I would've liked to see, and I say this now working in local government, some reference to how could the NHS and local government work more closely together? Because what I'm not seeing is a lot of discussion around how we move better, faster towards integration.

In an integrated care system, integrated care boards there was very little conversations about how do we integrate comms and engagement teams to actually, for the benefit of patients and benefit of communities, I think that that's something that's definitely missing. 

Daniel Reynolds: Yeah, agree. And one of the things we're worried about, a few of us here who've been around for a while after the 2012 NHS reforms headed by Andrew Lansley, we had a lot of communications capacities that was stripped out. If you remember back then, the coalition government was really determined to reduce waste, inefficiency and NHS managers were in the firing line for that. We lost a lot of really good people and we spent many years getting that expertise and capacity back in.

So I wondered if a couple of you could reflect your own personal stories there. I'm going to start with you, Rory, because you were…

Rory Hegarty: I was one of those people. I lost my job in that restructure. I was restructured out and my organisation closed down and I went interim and I basically worked at the NHS for three years on interim contracts and then was gradually moved back into the NHS, which I think happened to quite a lot of people.

Daniel Reynolds: Absolutely. And we'll get onto this later on in terms of the other unintended consequences around the diversity of the profession that we're quite worried about really. 

So, Edna, going back to you, one of the things we're picking up is obviously some senior communications roles being taken out of structures.

And my sort of worry, and I say this as a personal perspective, is we're going to leave organisations bereft at the strategic communication support that they need. I know it's a personal thing, but you experienced something very similar. And then the flip side, if you may, tell us a bit about week one at Liverpool City Council, what you had to deal with and the power of comms and engagement in terms of what you did.

Edna Boampong: Oh yeah. There's nothing like a major incident to induct you into an organisation, let me tell you. 

So starting with your first point about how the comms profession is being undervalued, I would say, and I think that what happens in a restructure is quite often people that don't really understand the value and the strategic value of communications and engagement and making decisions around how we should cut services.

And what quite often happens is they think that they don't need a communications director, or actually they're going to change the communications director's role quite significantly and make it something completely different, whether it's around governance or business or whatever.

And that is a similar story that happened to me, and I felt that it showed a bit of a lack of understanding about why comms and engagement is so important and why the profession needs to be respected. 

So, I use this example all the time, but during the covid pandemic, before we had track and trace, before we had the vaccine, the only tool we had was effective communications to keep people safe, to ensure there was compliance, to give them information that they needed. And that's when you saw the power of communications. 

And then, if I talk about my own experience, just a few weeks ago in Liverpool where we had that major incident, which was really devastating for our city, my team were at the coalface of that. It was my team that were briefing the media. It was my team that were briefing our leader to go on and do a press conference to be able to give that messages of reassurance, et cetera, to the community. 

It was me that was looking at some of the things that were happening, or some of the language and rhetoric that was starting to come through on social media that was briefing up to gold saying, how are we going to ensure that we make sure that our communities aren't impacted by this because there is a narrative that's starting to play out, which is quite worrying. 

So having an eye on that, being able to have the ear into gold command, having the ear to the chief exec, the ear to the leader, meant that we were able to ensure that our messaging and the way that we were coming across to the public calmed things down. And also restored some level of reassurance. 

So in that scenario, it just demonstrates how important it is to have an experienced communicator when there is a major incident, in particular.

Daniel Reynolds: I should say to the audience, shock, horror four communications directors saying it's very important to have communicate.

But, so one of the things I've been really impressed about within the communications profession in the NHS, we experienced the 1st of April letter - you kind of almost go through a grief cycle. There's five stages, but I think we sort of sped through the first three or four phases of that and very quickly got to a, okay, what the hell are we going to do about this? You know, let's put our best foot forward when thinking of: what should the comms and engagement operating model of the future NHS be thinking about? We've got the ten-year plan coming, we've got consolidation among providers. We know, as Ranjeet said, there's some duplication obviously, so how do we kind of best do that?

So a group of us have been sort of slightly self-appointed, but you know, enthusiastic volunteers have been coming up with ideas and plugging into the model ICB kind of work. And I think we've shifted the dial a little bit and I think it's in a better place. But I'll start with you Ranjeet, in terms of where we need to get to at the end of this process, what are your thoughts? 

Ranjeet Kaile: Well, firstly, I think you're absolutely right. I think the ability for comms, to digest that information and then get on with it and be really pragmatic is really important. I think to Ed's, Rory's point, I think the shift that we've seen over the last sort of ten years in our profession is about moving to be more strategic in a way that we'll be able to deal with these big changes.

And I should also say that it was really impressive to see the way that the communications and engagement community came together to respond to that model ICB in a really pragmatic way that didn't just say, oh, this is terrible actually. Well, what are we going to do about it? How are we going to make it better? How can we, we make it land better for our community? I think that was really impressive.

 Where do we want to get to in the end? I think it's that point about retaining key talent and make sure that we remain at a strategic level, because that's where we can really influence the way organisations work. Whether it's through commissioning cycles, whether it's through delivery with providers or partners. And to Ed's point around the integration with local authorities or VCSEs, that that happens through conversation, the softer side of those things, it's not through a press release, it's pressing the flesh, going out and meeting people.

So I really want to make sure that comms and engagement is seen strategic and is at the top table and isn’t removed to or delegated to a junior person because that's when you lose out and that's when patients and communities lose out. 

Daniel Reynolds: I agree. Well said. And Rory, I suppose one of the things you and I have talked a bit about is we've brought together communication and engagement and public involvement, really important that we feel that two sides of the same coin.

There are sort of concerns in some systems that they might be kind of separated out, so how are you seeing it play out in your system? 

Rory: So in my system at the moment, I think we're winning the argument for keeping them together. I know that's not the case to lots of other systems. I think that there's so much part of the same process and part of continuum really, aren't they?

The engagement bit is they're going out and talking to communities, but what do they do that with? Who does the messaging? Who writes it up? So to me - I've often seen this in trusts where engagement sits in different directorates. I don't think it ever works. I think it is part of the same function. So absolutely, that would be quite key for me. 

Daniel Reynolds: And Edna, given just one of the other things we've talked a bit about, given the breadth of what we do, a lot of it's about public accountability. It's about information. Obviously there's so many things we do beyond the kind of press office side of things. Do you think we've got a branding problem, ironically as a profession?

Edna Boampong: Yeah, I think so because I think there is a misunderstanding about the role of communications and engagement, and I think that's the reason why it can be one of those specialisms, or one of those functions, that during a restructure it is targeted, so to speak, because it's quite often seen as just a corporate function, as Ranjeet said, we write press releases, we do blogs for the chief exec, et cetera. 

Well, actually yes, okay, we do that, that's part of our function. But there is so much more to what we do. And if I take my team, for instance, and the work that I've done, I'm an insight-led marketeer. I deliver behaviour change campaigns and some of the campaigns that I've delivered have essentially saved lives.

So I've delivered campaigns that have massively increased the number of people from ethnic minorities that are taking up vaccinations. I've delivered campaigns that has massively reduced ambulance handover delays because people knowing the right, the right services to access at the right time, et cetera, which has reduced people coming through the door at A&E.

So we do, of course, have a corporate function, but we have a very strategic function and some of our engagement activity is also around ensuring that we are hearing the voices of our community and using that insight to help us improve services. So it helps us deliver services that are fit for purpose and are designed around people.

So we have quite a broad role and there are a number of things that a communications and engagement team do, but if you are only seeing it through one lens and that's usually through the press office lens, which is the bit, that is the reason why this, we seem to have too much duplication or we're spin doctors, et cetera. Then of course you will potentially think that we're not required. But I think there is an education piece that we need to do and we need to educate in particular people that are making decisions about the functions. Exactly about what we do. And I think Confed and others are doing that excellently.

Daniel Reynolds: Yeah, well said. And I think if you look down the track of what's coming - so I talk to members a lot about this: there's major restructuring programmes coming down the line and I won't name them, but there was one I thought, fantastic example recently where four maternity sites rationalised down to three.

It was a three-year programme, 300-plus community events consultation process. It was meticulously done. Now when the kind of closure actually happened there was barely a, you know, couple of local newspaper stories about it, but there wasn't a mass demonstration. Didn't go up to the secretary of state and raised in parliament.

But fast forward if we kind of lose some of that engagement, public involvement, communications capacity, these are the trade-offs, aren't they? So Ranjeet, any thoughts on that? 

Ranjeet Kaile: I think right, isn't it? Because often when you work in comms and engagement beyond the kind of like normal stuff that we'll do, you have a sense, you have a kind of conscience of like what's right and how to be able to work with communities.

I think it's about being upstream and spending that time with the local counsellors or the communities, understanding what's happening, really hearing and listen and responding before it becomes a big issue. 

And I think the question you were asking Edna about do we have a branding problem? I think absolutely. Because sometimes we might respond to a particular acute need, but our comms and antenna should be always on looking at how we can like avoid the next kind of pitfall or have we engaged the people when we're not just in a crisis mode. 

So I think that's the example you've given, is a brilliant way that an organisation has gone out and responded to its communities and listened and made sure they’d answered the questions that might come up later on.

If you didn't have constant engagement, you'll just have hundreds of people appealing or protests outside hospitals; maternity's such a polarising issue as well, so I think that's the things people don't often see. They'll just see at the end they won't see all the invisible stuff that happens in between.

I do want to just say very quickly, clearly, once we all are really passionate about comms engagement, we recognise change is important, right? Change is important, and it's about remaining in line with that. So I think there's a lot of value in us kind of reflecting on some of that. 

Daniel Reynolds: And that's perhaps a good example where you can do things more at scale. So if I think about behaviour change campaigns and I'm probably sitting among some of the most talented people who do that, but it's probably fair to say not everybody in every communications team in every part of the country is expert in how to run a kind of really affected behaviour change campaign.

So, Rory, I don’t know, before we go onto the next part of the conversation, any thoughts around how? Things like that, perhaps we can do better at scale and in a shared space. 

Rory Hegarty: I really do think that is one area where you can do it scale. You could run, for example, we've got five systems in London - you could run a winter campaign across London without, you couldn't do the public engagement bits. You could certainly do the comms bits. So I think there's absolutely potential for being to collaborate on that in that area. And we do with councils anyway. So I think it's definitely an area that everybody doesn't need their own behaviour change team, but I think everybody needs to do a bit of behaviour change. 

Daniel Reynolds: Well, perhaps in Liverpool you can, now you're at the council. Edna, you can start to… 

Edna Boampong: I'm already doing…

Daniel Reynolds: You're already on it. 

Edna Boampong: I'm already on it. 

Daniel Reynolds: So, just sort of moving on, one of the things we're really cognisant of as part of the Change programme is what does it mean for communications professionals from diverse backgrounds, particularly ethnic minority backgrounds? 

The evidence suggests obviously they're disproportionately affected in restructuring programmes. So Edna's doing the most amazing piece of work at the Confed and NHS Providers leading a big diversity task force, which we're going to be publishing in the near future. So, Edna, just tell me your thoughts on, first of all, your concerns about the direction of travel more positively, what we can do about it and give the people here a bit of a sort of heads up around the task force and where we're headed.

Edna Boampong: Thanks Daniel. So first of all, I would just like to thank you and NHS Confed for your leadership in this space because actually this is such an important area that I'm glad that we are starting to really hone in and actually take a look at some of the issues that we face within our comms and engagement teams. 

But not just comms and engagement. We know there is a lack of diversity in senior roles in particular across the NHS in across local government, in public sector. It's a real concern that we don't have representation at the senior level in particular, and that for me is concerning because we have such diverse communities and we have some issues at the moment going on with community cohesion, et cetera. We've seen what's going on in Northern Ireland at the moment. We saw the race riots recently and some of the ways that we engage at, we communicate with our communities better is having more representation in those services.

So for me that is, this isn't just a nice to have. This isn't just around socially this is the right thing to do, it's absolutely essential if we're going to be able to communicate and engage with our very diverse workforce and communities. 

So we've been doing this work now for about nine months or so. And thank you to all those people that have given their time to be part of the task force - Ranjeet, Daniel and others. And I'm really proud of where we've got to in the sense that we have at this point in time.

We’ve spoken to almost 450 people and got an insight and input from about 450 people. So we've ran quite an extensive survey where we were collecting views of people from ethnic minority backgrounds, from across all sectors, whether they work in NHS or not, whether they've ever worked in NHS. And we got about 320 odd people that gave their views, which was fantastic. 

It was the first time that we'd done a survey that was just focusing on people from those backgrounds. We also did a number of focus groups with people from BME backgrounds and also from comms professionals across the NHS.

And a really good piece of the jigsaw was also we spoke to a number of senior leaders across the NHS to get some of their insights. We've got some fantastic insights that are coming through, which we’re pulling together to put into our final report. So I'm not going to give you too much away about what's in the report, but one of the things that is concerning, was very concerning for me, was just the percentage of people from an ethnic minority background in communications in the NHS that didn't believe that they would still be in those roles within the next few years. So, over a quarter of people felt that they weren't going to stay in NHS roles and bear in mind, this is before the recent restructuring, the cuts were announced. We had a number of people that felt like they'd had really poor experiences within the NHS. That was the reason why they were leaving. 

And in general, people seem to have a better experience or our ethnic minorities communicators seem to have a better experience when they leave the NHS. So that's quite concerning for me, and particularly as an ethnic minority communicator that's left the NHS for similar reasons.

We need to do something about that. And unfortunately in a time of restructuring and cuts, people from ethnic minorities are disproportionately impacted. There is lots of statistics that show this, so therefore people from ethnic minorities at the moment are communicators are feeling quite vulnerable. They feel like they're the ones that are going to go first. 

And I would say it's not just about if you are an ethnic minority, it's anyone that who is a little bit different. So if you are someone who's neurodiverse, you are worried about having to go and interview for your job again, against other people.

If you are someone who is from a more of a working class background, you are concerned about interviewing for a job against people that are from maybe middle class backgrounds, who are the ones that are potentially going to be appointing people because. Because comms and engagement can be seen as quite an elitist profession.

So, I think we have some real concerns that if we don't really address some of these issues, we are going to end up with teams that do not reflect our communities and our workforce. And that's a real concern for me. 

Daniel Reynolds: Thank you so much, Edna. And Ranjeet, you're also on the task force. Yeah. Tell me your thoughts.

Ranjeet Kaile: I think this kind of connects our conversation up, doesn't it? Because if you lose good leaders, you're losing good role models from the profession, and people always need to aspire, look up and go, actually, I could be like that, or, that's great, wow,  someone like Edna or Rory or Daniels did that. I could do that.

So I think we need to be able to make sure that we really enhance and protect that strategic value that we bring. I think it's really important. 

I also just want to talk a little bit about diversity in all its forms. So this isn't just about kind of ethnic minorities, it's also about people who are open and Daniel has done a great job of like facilitating this space. And most of my role models have been from white backgrounds, middle class, but they've helped lift me up and I think that's really important and we've got to be able to help lift people up. It doesn't matter what kind of background you come from, that's just really important. 

And I think on diversity, diversity comes in all its forms. People who are from really underprivileged backgrounds, we've got to be able to open the doors and create that pathway for people to step into this profession. I think is really important. 

And then, just for me and part of the taskforce, where my focus ultimately is about that entry point. So those people who don't know anybody in comms and engagement, they haven't got an uncle or auntie or a parent or somebody that can give them work experience. How do we create that pathway? And that's through the communications apprenticeship scheme that we're creating. And that's really about the first step in where they get mentored and the opportunity to have a role in comms engagement. 

I think for me that's absolutely crucial because that creates a pathway. Obviously we need to have more people of diversity in board level roles, but for me, I think it's about getting people that first route in.

Daniel Reynolds: Yeah, that's crucial. I was going to ask you about the apprenticeship because that's, I think, it's not always a known profession for certain groups to go into, and they're not clear how to get in. So you are creating that kind of structured entry route. 

We've then got other organisations like Socially Mobile. So I've got three brilliant colleagues in my team at the Confed who've been on the Socially Mobile course. It's a ten-week programme. And Rory, we've talked about this because, as Ranjeet said, there are many different forms of diversity, you talked a bit about perhaps neurodiversity, you've managed, so tell us.

Rory Hegarty: I have a member of my staff who is neurodiverse. Absolutely brilliant by the way. But we deliberately recruited that person over somebody who wasn't. And he's talked to me a lot about his experiences and about coming for interviews, wanting to know what the questions are make a massive difference, somebody from that kind of background.

I think the other thing I would say that's brilliant, the work that you're doing. My team in North West London is quite diverse. It does reflect our communities, but not at the top. So I think what your point about senior roles, I think if you looked at our team, looked at our communities. It's not a million miles away; if you look at the people in charge, it's still some way to go. 

Daniel Reynolds: Our benchmarking was less than 4 per cent, wasn’t it, of senior comms roles are from ethnic minority backgrounds, which is pretty awful. 

Edna Boampong: And it's a real concern about the lack of diversity at the senior level and at the top, because as Ranjeet said, seeing is believing.

So in order for me to be able to offer people to feel like they can reach those levels and want to come into an organisation, you want to be able to see people that look like you, because then you'll probably have a bit more confidence that you'll have a better experience. And these sort of things are not going to happen overnight as Ranjeet said. 

We have not grown a pipeline of future leaders. And that's the concern that every time there's a restructure, so the creation of ICBs, there was a lot of talk about how we were going to do things; things were going to be different and we were going to look to get lots of diversity in at these senior levels.

It didn't happen. And that's partly because we haven't grown those people. We haven't got experienced people to be able to take some of those jobs. So when we did some of the surveying of people from ethnic minorities, one of the things that they talked about was not having those role models, not having those networks in order to support them to get into these types, types of roles, but also not having the, the family sort of approval to take certain jobs because, I know as an ethnic minority, African parents, they wanted me to be a lawyer, doctor, something stable. They didn't understand comms and engagement, so they would never have encouraged me to go into that type of role. 

So again, that goes, I suppose that goes back to our branding issue as well about comms and engagement. Do we need to do better at actually being able to describe what it is and the role and the function and how important it is, but then equally, to a certain extent, you’re probably right about it not being a stable role, a stable profession, because how many restructures have I been it through in the NHS?

So I think there's a kind of an issue there as well. 

Daniel Reynolds: I think I've always felt, because when we talk about roles, we don't talk about behaviour change experts and all these excited people we talk about, you know, press people or we talk about graphic designers or we, where do we go down that specialist route? But I think there's a more compelling way to sell the profession, if you like. 

So look, turning to our sort of last area, Ranjeet and I in particular, quite excited about this, so AI. So, where do we begin? 

Ranjeet Kaile: So, a deep, deep breath. 

Daniel Reynolds: One of the things we're picking up on, aren't we Ranjeet, is it's a time of huge financial constraint for the NHS. Roles are going to be cut. We can't escape that, and we're worried about that. AI is fast coming up, and there's an opportunity to use AI in our communication workflow to improve efficiency, but people are concerned that AI is going to replace communications roles. We’re not unique as a profession there. 

I think you and I have a slightly different view on that, more optimistic view. This is where we get into something, the tech optimism that Ranjeet is our pioneer on. So Ranjeet, you and I are co-chairing a big task force on AI and NHS comms. Tell us what your hopes are. 

Ranjeet Kaile: I think it's really exciting where we've got to where people are energised about AI and people are worried quite rightly about what it is, and not knowing what it, what it looks like.

I think I'm relentlessly optimistic about this because I think AI is going to be transformative. It's going to be the bigger than the internet. It will be very, very different how people operate. I think ultimately AI will change our profession and it will change the sorts of stuff that we do, but it will also enhance us in many ways, and I'll give some quick examples of that.

Many of us have written pieces for our internal audiences and it's just read by one or two people. But actually those things could be used through AI and you could use AI to be able to create that very easily those campaigns. That lifts and frees up our teams to be able to focus on where we can really add strategic value. We talk about community engagement, get people out talking to people, patients and others, doing the stuff that really AI can never do, can never replace. I think that's really important.

I think the other thing that we've got with AI is actually an opportunity for us as professional communicators to pivot into this space. And often when we are having this conversation, Daniel, people will go, why is communications talking about ai? Shouldn't that be digital? We're like, no, we are in that space. We are the ones that have got the vision that can understand how AI will be transformative. So whether it's through automating the way that services work, making staff's life easier to be able to access services, whether it's for patients engaging in, in, in the NHS in different ways, whether it's about creating new tools or apps, I think that's where we really can come into our own. 

And just a very quick word on the task force, I think that's a really exciting piece and a great thank you to Daniel and Confed for, for bringing us together. But that is across the whole country. We're pulling together people who are really excited about what AI can do and giving them the opportunity to be able to learn about it or to be able to think about the ethics that are involved. Think about the governance. So much to - you can tell I'm excited about this, right?

Daniel Reynolds: He’s literally jumping off his seat here. But  I think you are right, and I think there's huge opportunities. What we need to do pretty quickly, which is what Ranjeet, myself and the task force are doing is come up with those really powerful use cases for AI and comms. You know, where should we really be using them? What are the tools and then the guardrails, because it is, as we call it in our upcoming report, it's a bit of a wild west at the moment. There's very little in the way of governance, ethics and people are quite uncertain and they need help and guidance with that. So that's the gap I think we're going to fill.

Ranjeet Kaile: I think that's right. Absolutely. And you know, there are some organisations that are blanket blocking access to AI tools. And if you try and put in a certain website link, you'll see ‘blocked’. And that's not necessarily helpful. You know, you've got to be able to educate. You can both say, look, what are the guardrails? How do you use it safely? And that's what we'll be able to do, to be able to put that in place. 

I think we are already seeing some really good use cases, like whether it's through translations or it's through avatars. Lots of great ways to be able to do it and think about the potential, like to engage patients. Some of this stuff is going to be amazing. 

Daniel Reynolds: Oh, absolutely. So we'll turn to Rory first then, Edna. Rory, in terms of your team's adoption of AI - low foothills or more? 

Rory Hegarty: I’d say low. We're starting to use it and we use it, sometimes it's a great shortcut. Sometimes if you want to write something - I'm sure you could do an annual report on AI. I think some people have. I would love to do that. 

Daniel Reynolds: The worst task of the year. Worst-read document ever.

Rory Hegarty: Yes, exactly. No one reads it. 

And we use things like Copilot in our organisation. So that will literally just tell you everything - even if you arrive late, it'll tell you everything that's happened in a meeting.

So that's really good. I think when you're writing something, it's a really good shortcut, sometimes. You still need the human element. I kind of agree with what Ranjeet said, really. I think it's a tool, isn't it? And it's something that you can use that can help you still will free us up to do the non-annual report bits, the more interesting bits. 

Daniel Reynolds: Amen to that. Absolutely. 

Edna, you’re so early on in your time at the council, where are local authorities with this? 

Edna Boampong: So I am very early on in the council, but I'm already sending narky emails to my director of ICT saying, why is this website blocked?

Yeah. So exactly a you just said like, Liverpool Council in particular has blocked a lot of chat -sort of websites, but actually that's because they want people to use more Copilots but they haven't rolled out properly, so it kind of feels like, okay, I get where we're moving towards, but let's try and do it properly rather than just making people's life a bit difficult.

I think I agree. I think that this is a new space that we need to lean into. I think that I use AI quite a lot to save time. So I mean… minutes of a meeting. I no longer need to have one of my admin or PA to come on and do minutes of a meeting because you can use AI to take minutes and they're pretty good with a little bit of tweaking. Yeah, pretty good. How many hours does that save us? 

There are some really sort of bland bits of writing that sometimes you don't need particularly to have a really warm human touch to it that AI can help you with. As you've all said, you can't take away from the human touch. 

And I personally, if I'm writing something that's from me, I like it to have my tone of voice and you're never going to get that through AI. You always need to balance it between kind of feeling authentic, but at the same time trying to - the speed side of it. And we don't ever want to get to the space where we've all used those chat boxes and you are wanting to talk to a human, but you are talking to a bot and they just don't understand you. And you just in the end, ‘capitals’, can I speak to an adviser? 

So we don't want to get down that route where people feel like there aren't humans to look after them, particularly in healthcare. But actually the opportunities are vast, not just in comms and engagement, but in health more generally, how we can kind of respond to people in a lot quicker way.

Daniel Reynolds: Agree. 

And before we go to our last question, I think it's all about good prompts, isn't it? And one of the things we are going to be doing, Ranjeet, is looking at prompt engineering, how we can really help and support people to do that more effectively. Then the Nirvana really feels like, can we get an AI tool for the NHS comms profession that works like the government communications services assist tool?

Because they've been ahead of the game on this and they've made the code now open source and we're trying to …

Ranjeet Kaile: Definitely, which I think is really exciting. I think because it's that holy grail, isn't it, in a sense of being able to have a consistent application of how we'd be able to produce our comms plans, how we evaluate those.

And to use it through an AI tool, just that we're having this conversation is great, isn't it? We're actually being able to think, let, let's use code that's available for us to be able to create something that's going to benefit the whole of the comms and engagement community. I think it's really important.

I'm very confident that we'll get there and I think this is just the beginning. 

Daniel Reynolds: Yeah. Agree. So, we're going to wrap up now. Thanks everybody who's been here so far. I'm going to start with Ranjeet because I know what his answer will be, but what are you most optimistic about for our profession?

Ranjeet Kaile: You know, there's so much I'm optimistic about. I think genuinely believe we have a moment in time to pivot and I fully believe that AI transformation and aspect for comm engagement to own that, to shape it, we'll go way beyond what we do at the moment. It will transform the way organisations work internally and externally and we've got to grasp that. So I'm really enthusiastic about it. 

Daniel Reynolds: Edna?

Edna Boampong: What am I really excited about? Well, I'm now in local government having been in the NHS for 20-odd years, so I am really advocating for the NHS and local government, working more closely together, moving at pace, being bolder in the way that we integrate services and we integrate teams because ultimately, we all know that the money isn't there anymore. We know that we all have to find ways to reduce our running costs, et cetera, and we can do that in a clever way. And integration, working more closely together is the way to do it, in my opinion. 

So I feel like we've been talking about integrated care systems for so many years, but I know in a lot of areas I see very little integration. I think comms and engagement teams is an area where you can integrate them, and I think that we should be thinking a lot more laterally and be a bit more audacious because ultimately what we want is the best for our communities, and I think that's a way to do it.

Daniel Reynolds: Well said, well said. Rory? 

Rory Hegarty: Yeah, so  I think  I agree with both of those examples, but I think the thing for me that's positive is how upfront, and partly thanks to you Daniel, how up front and centre cognisant engagement is in the model blueprint for ICBs in, in the region subsidies is seen as absolutely essential.

So the skillset, the job, the work doesn't go away. Wherever you call organisations, however you organise ourselves, they'll always be a role for those skills. 

Daniel Reynolds: Well said. What a lovely note to end on. So I'm just going to thank Ranjeet, Rory and Edna. Huge thanks to my panel. So I'll just give you a quick round of applause.