THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION IS THE TRADE UNION AND PROFESSIONAL BODY FOR DOCTORS IN THE UK. FOR ALMOST 200 YEARS THE BMA HAS REPRESENTED, SUPPORTED AND NEGOTIATED FOR DOCTORS.

As a member run and led organisation, the BMA was recently brought into sharp national focus when during an unprecedented global crisis they played a leading role campaigning to protect doctors fighting COVID-19.

During the national lockdown, we began work alongside the BMA to strengthen connections with its people, partnering with them to develop an approach to bring their strategy to life and connect it more deeply with their inspirational mission “We look after doctors so they can look after you”.

As well as the challenges brought by the pandemic, this was a time of great internal change for the BMA. With a new leadership team and a new approach to developing strategy, it was important that we were sensitive to varying stakeholder views.

Working alongside the Strategy and Internal Communications leads, we developed an approach that would layer over time as more of the organisation’s emerging strategy, response and initiatives were revealed. We started with a core Strategy on a Page document with a creative treatment that positioned people at its very heart. Content was kept purposefully high-level to accommodate the changing context and interactive elements were added to bring the document to life.

Alongside this, we developed an engagement approach based on enabling and facilitating great conversations. This would encourage people to recognise their role and contribution, fostering a sense of ownership. Importantly, ahead of launch we worked with the internal project team to engage stakeholders with both the content and a new way of communicating strategy to what the BMA had experienced previously.