March marks the launch of our redesigned Faculty of Medicine internal newsletter, which is now being delivered to the inboxes of postgraduate research student members of our community as well as all Faculty staff members. The monthly email has taken on a new style and design following an extensive redesign project.
We in the Faculty’s Communications Team wanted to provide an insight into the redesign project and how changes made to the newsletter were driven by your feedback.
Why change the newsletter?
Although the Faculty newsletter scored positively in the 2017 Staff Survey – 70 per cent of staff agreed or strongly agreed that it was a useful communication channel – we were keen to review a structure that had remained largely unchanged for around five years. With the Faculty newsletter a crucial component of our internal communications, we felt there was a clear need to freshen the design and ensure it evolved to fit the needs of our community.
The newsletter was also designed at a time when it was the main piece of medicine-specific internal communications; necessitating a broad and varied remit. Since then, the Faculty’s departments have developed their own newsletters, which now cover a significant proportion of the newsletter’s original scope.
How did we gather insights?
Before making any changes to the newsletter, we were keen to hear what readers think about it – what works well, what could be done better and what additional content you wanted to see in the future. Over 600 staff members responded to our Faculty-wide survey which provided us with invaluable feedback, such as:
- There was a clear need to differentiate Faculty and departmental newsletters and avoid content duplication between the two newsletters
- There was a strong appetite for more people-focused news
- Readers felt it was hard to pick out the messages relevant to them
What did improvements did we make?
We listened to the feedback we received from the survey as well as face-to-face feedback and have made a number of changes to the design and content of the newsletter:
- Content badging – content in the news and news to use section is badged to indicate its intended audience (i.e. all staff, teaching staff). We hope this will help you to easily scan and pick out the most relevant information.
- Staff profiles – as requested in the survey, we will be running an informal profile piece with someone from a different area of the Faculty each month, to showcase the diversity of roles, people and backgrounds within Medicine.
- Imperial in the media – each month we’ll round up the best of Imperial’s coverage in the press and media that conveys our work and achievements to the wider world.
- More people-focused content – we want to acknowledge success, so wherever possible the focus of news stories will be the people behind the work.
- Futureproof design – we have moved away from a rigid template to a flexible design. As well as giving a fresh new look, we’ve designed the newsletter in a way that allows it to easily evolve and to respond to changes and needs within the Faculty.
- A new recipient list – we have also changed the way we define our recipient list to help ensure it reaches all the people we need it to, including our PGR students. Please do let us know if you have any questions about who receives this newsletter.
How can you help further improve our communications moving forward?
- Engage with the content – a new feature of this email allows readers to ‘like and comment’ on content. By using this feature, you’ll help us to understand what type of content you would like to see more of. Please treat any comments you submit as publicly visible – see the Web and social media comments policy.
- Nominate someone for a staff profile – if you have a suggestion for someone you would like to us to profile for the ‘Get to know’ feature, let us know.
- Get in touch with us – you can email your thoughts and suggestions to us at any time.