We’ve developed a new communications toolkit to support a shared approach to our written communications across our organisation. It’s a practical guide created to help us all communicate more clearly, more confidently, and with more impact.
Why we did it
Communications happen everywhere across our organisation - whether we’re sharing research, writing a letter, updating our websites, responding to a complaint, writing a news report, publishing guidance, or writing a news article for our staff newsletter.
So, how do we make sure we’re all supporting our shared sense of purpose and direction, even when we’re working on very different things? That’s the thinking behind the toolkit. We created it to help us develop a more consistent, thoughtful, and joined-up way of communicating - one that reflects our values, supports our strategy, and works for the people we’re writing for.
What we did
As communications across our organisation grow more varied and more visible, we wanted to develop a shared way of working that keeps things consistent and connected.
We set out to create something practical and useful, something that answers common questions. Something that reflects how teams are already communicating and will help people feel more confident about what we’re doing - and why we’re doing it that way.
The toolkit gives us a common foundation for planning and delivering written communications. It’s about making things easier, clearer, more effective and more efficient for everyone who’s involved in communications across our organisation.
It includes guidance on how to:
- apply our principles of communication
- be consistent with our tone of voice and identity
- use plain, inclusive language
- plan and write news reports or blogs
- use a consistent style and language.
Positive feedback
We asked some of our staff teams and representatives from our Patient and Public Partnership to review the toolkit. We got positive feedback. People found the toolkit easy to understand and easy to use. They said they would find the toolkit helpful and would refer to it often in their work. They also gave us some useful suggestions that has already helped to improve the toolkit.
A starting point
This is a first edition, and like all good communications, it’s something we’ll keep evolving. We’ll continue to improve it to meet everyone’s needs.
This version brings together our approach, some practical guidance, and a set of tools, templates and examples to get us started. It’s designed to be easy to dip in and out of, depending on what you need.
We’ll be testing it out over the coming months, listening to feedback, and building on it. We’ll add more real-life examples, case studies, and new tools based on what’s useful in practice.
What happens next
We’ll start using the toolkit across teams and projects from now. We’ll be sharing more information through team briefings and staff webinars.
This is just one step in making our communications more purposeful and joined up. It’s an important one, because good communications not only help people understand what we do, it also helps people feel connected to it.
- Got questions or feedback? Send us an email - we’re here to help: communications@screeningservice.ie