High Potential Scheme for Health and Care Video Series

The brief

North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust approached Hyperfine Media to help them showcase the new High Potential Scheme for Health and Care. The scheme helps to identify, develop, and support the next generation of inclusive system leaders. Successful applicants of the scheme benefit from mentoring, careers coaching, and undergo two stretch assignments over a 12-month period.

The videos we were commissioned to develop needed to promote the High Potential Scheme for Health and Care to the wider system, inspire individuals to enrol in the scheme, and encourage health and care professionals to take on leadership roles within the scheme.

Working with Hyperfine Media has been a delight. They are professional, creative, and flexible. Their design skills have elevated our information to a new level, making our messages and content more widely accessible to a larger and more diverse audience. We provided them with a brief outline of our requirements from which they produced the finer detail and content based on their knowledge of the NHS. As a project team they have kept us informed of progress throughout. We regularly engaged in content review with them, and they worked with us to finalise content from comments provided. Feedback from our audience has been very positive and as a result our local content has been recognised nationally to be used across England by the NHS Leadership Academy.

Michele Wilcox, OD Practitioner and Jane Rook, Associate Director Lead & Systems OD, Leadership and Inclusion, North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust

Our solution

In order to meet the three requirements of the brief, we recommended creating two sets of videos aimed at two different audiences. One set focussed on the journeys of participants who had enrolled on the High Potential Scheme. The other set of videos focussed on promoting the scheme’s leadership roles, to encourage senior leaders to consider applying for these roles. To ensure that both sets of videos were engaging, we recommended combing interview footage with animation. The animated elements of the animations would enable us to visualise complex information in quick and accessible way.

Our process

We initially planned to conduct interviews in person, but with the advent of Covid we quickly adapted by conducting online interviews instead. To ensure the interviews were of the best quality, we used remote recording software which provides higher quality of footage and audio compared to recording on platforms such as Zoom or Teams. In total we coordinated and conducted 27 interviews with individuals from across six different organisations.

For the videos that focussed on participant journeys, we spoke to a selection of participants at key moments during their time on the scheme. This enabled us to capture their experiences when first starting the course, after undergoing stretch assignments, as well as their experiences of being coached and mentored.

For the videos that focussed on promoting the scheme’s leadership roles, we created videos that focused on the assessor, mentor, careers coach, sponsor, placement manager, and steering group roles. In each of these videos we scripted and produced an animated introduction that explained the role, responsibilities, and key attributes required. We then edited in clips from the different individuals we interviewed who shared their experience and benefits of taking on the role.

Throughout the scripting, design, and animation phases of the project, we met regularly with the North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust to ensure the videos reflected the organisations key messaging. Each asset was shared with the client’s wider team for feedback and final sign off.

The results

We successfully developed a series of 12 videos for North Staffordshire Combined Healthcare NHS Trust that promoted the High Potential Scheme for Health and Care. These videos are now being used by the client to promote the scheme to the wider system, inspire individuals to enrol in the scheme, and to recruit health and care professionals to take on leadership roles.