British Dental Association
Strategy
2015 - 2018
Foreword by Mick Armstrong, Chair of the Principal Executive Committee
Put simply, a membership organisation is its
members. And like all organisations financial
resource and stability is essential to providing
service and support. At first pass then, it may have
been attractive to frame this strategy document in
terms of how many members we aspire to have and
how much money we seek to generate. However,
following extensive consideration of the road before
us, such aspirations and targets would be trite in
the absence of a serious consideration of what we
are and what we do. Needless to say, everything set
out in this strategy is based on a desire to serve our
members – they remain at the heart of everything
we do.
However, across the whole social demographic
there has been a significant change in attitudes
to belonging. In times gone by membership
of a professional group or affinity association
would represent a normal course of behaviour
– this given no longer applies. Only if there are
perceived and immediate benefits will people
join and remain members of associations. We
have also seen significant year on year real terms
erosion of dentists disposable incomes. This
reduction in spending power makes them be more
discriminating on what they spend their money on.
How dentists transact has changed, including new
approaches to learning, reading, buying and access.
These social developments are unrecognisable
when compared with behaviours as little as ten
years ago. With the use of online purchasing,
e-books and social media platforms, it is safe to
say that the way we all do business has been
revolutionised. What is possible has also changed.
The technological revolution is much vaunted –
limitations have disappeared and opportunities
have progressively multiplied. As such it is essential
to consider which elements of the old order should
be retained and which innovative solutions should
be adopted to augment or replace them.
It is important to consider when and where people
avail themselves of services. National devolution
has generated wide divergence of the experience
of dentists throughout the UK. As a committed UK
organisation we are determined to offer support
to all. At a domestic level individuals are making
choices about what they do at home and what
they do at gatherings. The Association needs to be
live to these changes and choices if it is to serve its
membership effectively.
But the pressures and challenges facing the UK
dental profession have never been so great. A
failing professional regulator, straitened public
funds, and ongoing delays and uncertainty in
relation to contract reform put the profession
at risk and under stress. We will continue in our
efforts to tackle these issues and make progress
in these areas. This is the very time when a strong
Association is needed most.
We enter our 136th year having modernised our
representative and governance structures to deliver
greater clarity and efficiency. We have rationalised
our membership structure to allow greater choice
in the support required, and will keep this under
review to ensure it is fit for purpose. It is now
time for us to prioritise our operations to serve a
changing profession. Though our resources are
constrained our ambitions to support and meet
the needs of the profession are great. All aspects
of our mission statement remain important and we
will continue to act as a professional organisation
campaigning on oral and public health issues.
However, we need to make tough choices. The
2015 – 2018 strategy represents an articulation of
those choices, concentrating on relevance, service
and modern methods of working. In doing so we
can be confident of a growing membership and a
financially robust Association.
Mick Armstrong
Chair, Principal Executive Committee June 2015
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Strategy 2015-2018
This document sets out the strategic and operational themes for the British Dental Association for the next
three years.
The themes have been chosen in recognition of the significant challenges facing the profession. They
represent the Principal Executive Committee’s (PEC) view of how the Association should equip itself to best
support its members. The themes have been developed following detailed preparatory work by the Senior
Management Team, discussion and consideration by the PEC, and feedback from Country Councils and
staff.
Implementing the new strategic and operational themes will involve the delivery of a comprehensive
programme of work. In the months ahead details of what this will entail will be set out by the Senior
Management Team through specific papers brought to the PEC for discussion and agreement.
Before setting out the Association’s strategic and operational themes it is important to provide some
context and background by outlining the Association’s core activities and reiterating our mission, values
and beliefs.
Mission
The Association’s mission statement was last formally articulated in 1996. It sets out that we will:
• Promote the interests of our members;
• Advance the art, science and ethics of dentistry;
• Improve the nation’s oral health.
It is our view that this mission remains as relevant today as it was nearly 20 years ago.
Values, beliefs and actions
In developing the new governance and organisational structure that led to the creation of the PEC, the
Association set out its core values (what it believes) and its actions (what the Association will do). These
values, beliefs and actions directly relate to our mission, continue to be pertinent and have helped the
development of our new strategic themes.
Our values:
• As a membership organisation, the Association’s duty is to serve the needs of its members;
• As a trade union, our fundamental belief is that together, we can achieve more than we could
individually.
Our beliefs:
• Members are at the heart of everything we do;
• Together, we are stronger.
Using these core values to guide the organisation, we are committed to:
• Support our members throughout their professional lives;
• Use our influence for the benefit of members, the dental profession and patients;
• Share our collective knowledge and expertise.
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Core activity
In developing our strategic themes for the next three years it is necessary to confirm the core areas of
activity that relate to the Association’s mission, values, beliefs and actions.
The following diagrammatic representation describes how the Association supports its members; works to
influence; and shares its collective knowledge and expertise. It demonstrates a natural split between trade
union and lobbying activity on the one hand, and advice and education on the other. Underpinning all of
the Association’s activities is its reliance on knowledge.
Media & Public Affairs / Research
National & International Representation
Oral Health message - patient involvement
Lobbying
Advice
Online
One-to-one
Publications
Knowledge
Ts&Cs
Negotiation
Representation
Trade
Union
Education
Online
Journals
Conference
Events
Local Branches and Sections
Preparing the strategy
The mission, values, beliefs and actions continue to underpin the day to day work of the Association, and
have been instrumental in preparing our new strategic themes. This preparatory work involved reviewing
the organisation both structurally and financially and looking at how key areas of responsibility are
currently divided. It also became apparent through this preparatory work that our research, analysis and
ability to interpret events provide us with a clearer understanding of the dental landscape than any other
organisation.
This understanding has allowed us to identify significant competing challenges now facing the profession,
and recognise that there are opportunities to improve our internal operation and external regard by
enhancing our systems and exploiting the technological resources we have available.
Strategic themes
The following strategic themes have been selected as a culmination of these efforts. They fit naturally into
the four core areas identified as being key to our day to day activities, and relate directly to our mission,
values, beliefs and actions.
Over the next three years we will:
1. Develop and enhance our communications with members, stakeholders and across our structures;
2. Explore the differentiated nature of our UK wide membership and address the needs of our
communities of members at a local and national level;
3. Improve how we represent and serve associates, both individually and collectively;
4. Examine the impact of the various types of dental practice ownership on the working lives of dentists;
5. Identify the causes of stress in the profession and provide assistance to those affected;
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6. Set out the key components of an acceptable system of professional regulation and advocate its
adoption;
7. Enhance our educational offering to members, non-member dentists and dental care professionals
in order to establish the Association as the principal source of high quality professional learning and
development.
Operational themes
The successful implementation of this strategy involves the delivery of specific operational themes within
the organisation. This will involve investment, re-organisation and redeployment of resources.
Our strategic themes will be supported by:
1. Developing a comprehensive communications strategy, reviewing our engagement with members,
non-member dentists, dental care professionals and other stakeholders, and strengthening our
communications function to enhance the speed, consistency and accessibility of our messaging;
2. Examining our local, regional and national structures and developing new ways to meet the changing
needs of these member communities;
3. Reviewing our current offering for associates and identifying new ways to meet their needs both
individually, collectively and democratically through the Association’s committee structure;
4. Improving our member intelligence to allow a thorough analysis of membership trends including
member needs, behaviours and preferences, and identifying opportunities to attract non-members;
5. Upgrading the Association’s technological infrastructure to enhance service delivery;
6. Developing an extensive range of high quality educational offerings to enhance our connection within
the wider dental community and provide opportunities for increased income generation;
7. Researching and delivering support as appropriate to help members facing professional stress;
8. Exploring members’ views (through web-user and membership surveys, focus groups and regional
debates) on the key components of an acceptable system of professional regulation, and campaigning
for the inclusion of these in a system of regulation that is truly proportionate, consistent, transparent,
targeted and accountable;
9. Gathering intelligence about the shape of the current dental practice ownership market to better
understand the impact of the various ownership methods on the working lives of dentists;
10.Redesigning our internal operations to focus our member-facing activity around representation, advice
and support, and learning.
These operational themes are described in more detail below.
Reviewing our methods of communications and engagement
A comprehensive communications strategy will be developed to align our communications approach
with our new strategic themes and long-standing core activities. The Association has improved its focus
in recent years and demonstrated a significantly greater presence within the dental sector. Our efforts in
Parliamentary lobbying and networking within the general media have also increased. We will build upon
these earlier initiatives to raise still further the profile of the Association’s key dento-political and oral health
issues. This will turn on strengthening our public affairs activities and investing in systems that allow us
better strategic management of our messaging, greater coherence between communications channels,
and improved internal working across the organisation.
In developing our communications strategy we will focus on the communication challenges facing the
Association; the audiences we are working hard to influence; the choices we have in terms of channels;
the resources required; the stages we need to go through; and how we will evaluate success. Once this
has been agreed and put in place it will give greater clarity and focus to our wider messaging, enable us
to use our voice to better effect, and encourage members to engage more with the Association. This will
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also impact the more tactical/operational elements of the organisation, allowing us to define our digital
communications under this remit.
Meeting the needs of our member communities
The majority of our UK-wide membership will not come into contact with the Association at a central level
or at our London base. Members are currently supported by a Branches and Sections network that is funded
centrally but managed locally. This central support can only provide limited assistance and as such the
success of Branches and Sections rely heavily on volunteers – the results of these efforts is mixed in terms
of member experience, value, cost and overall quality.
As a result, we will review the current funding and support model and explore alternative options. We will
seek to improve the consistency and quality of our offering and explore a more robust model of delivery
in light of reduced volunteer support. This will specifically include a review of our ability to deliver a range
of quality educational and professional networking events that are managed and supported centrally but
delivered at a local level.
Serving the differing needs of our member communities also means recognising increasing national
divergence. The PEC remains wholly committed to offering a comprehensive membership service to dentists
across all four countries of the UK. This includes ensuring the needs of those working in community and
salaried settings in each country are met, and that these members are properly supported throughout their
working lives. We will continue to review the differing needs of members and the appropriateness of the
Association’s representative structures in the light of the ever-changing landscape.
Supporting associates
Although we have significant resources to advise associates, and provide a number of services and products
specifically for them, we will undertake a detailed review of the services and products we have in place
that are relevant to associates, and will explore what we can do to improve, expand and better signpost
members to the services and products we provide. We will also examine how our services and products are
packaged, and identify changes that can be made to improve how associates access and receive them.
We will engage with associates, directly and through relevant committees, to help us identify current
priorities for associates in practise, and provide a focus for new resources or the expansion of our existing
offering, as necessary. We will also consider how to best represent associates through our committee
structures.
We will review the way we deliver advice services and explore the merits of a separation of our advice
resources for associates and practice owners. This will encompass a review of our IT systems, our
compliance requirements and our day to day working arrangements. It will tie in with the review of our
methods of communications and engagement, exploring specifically how we engage with associates and
how we communicate with them.
We will also ensure that, where possible, the other strategic and operational themes set out in this
document have regard to, and make provision for, the needs and interests of associates.
Improving our member intelligence
We are currently less than two years into a new membership system and are therefore only part way
through understanding the full impact of these changes. Although the breakdown of members in each
membership tier seems relatively stable, we know that members’ needs and behaviours are changing as
they adapt to the new system. The structure of our current tiered membership system allows us to use the
tools at our disposal to adapt our offering accordingly. We will focus our efforts to better understand these
behaviours, explore the expectations of our members, and build our offerings around this.
To do this we will regularly engage with members to understand their needs, and gather sufficient insight
to understand the market and the demands of non-members. This development work is ongoing and will
inform our actions by helping us understand what our members value, identify gaps in our offering, realign
our services and pricing, and understand how our members engage with the Association.
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Improving our technological infrastructure
In recent years we have invested in a Learning Management System (LMS), which hosts our ‘CPD Hub’ and
will be used to run all the Association’s online courses. Our market leading radiography training course is
now run via the LMS and our oral health education training course will follow shortly. We will migrate onto
the LMS a new course that facilitates the training of decontamination assistants, and migrate others that
are in development. The technological building blocks now in place allow the Association to become a
significant online trainer and examination body.
The Association has migrated its web technologies into a Microsoft SharePoint environment. This
development generated substantial financial savings and offers the potential for greater flexibility in the
context of web design, usability and improved offer for the extranet. Using this platform we will develop
an effective intranet; facilitating improved collaboration, document handling and storage and internal
communication. We will move our data storage onto the cloud to significantly increasing storage capacity
as well as improve business continuity, data backups and other web-based services. In addition to these
ongoing developments, a sustained period of investment in both technology and staff-mix will be needed
to ensure we reap the full rewards of the systems already in place and can support the delivery of our wider
strategic and operational themes.
Developing our educational offerings
The Association offers a range of educational activities for members and non-members and dedicated
courses for the dental team. Over the next three years, we will use our improved technologies to ensure our
educational offerings are fully integrated and streamlined to improve the user experience and establish the
Association as the first choice for high quality continuing professional development for all members of the
dental team.
We will further develop our online courses for dental care professionals and expand this offering to include
member and non-member dentists. We see our educational activities as an important connection with all
members of the dental team and part of the wider enhancement of dental practice.
Helping those experiencing professional stress
Stress within the profession has been identified as a key theme by the PEC, and other BDA committees,
for some time now. We are committed to deliver a comprehensive piece of research over the next 12 to 18
months which will seek to establish the prevalence of mental health problems and burnout in UK dentistry;
understand the relationship between mental ill health, burnout, high job stress and working conditions
among dentists, and how these relationships may vary; and understand dentists’ experiences of mental ill
health and burnout and how these impact on dentists’ work and careers.
Our research will also identify strategies for promoting emotional and mental well-being at work among
dentists and for better supporting dentists, and raise awareness of mental-health issues and the risk of
burnout. This research will enable us to better promote the wellbeing of dentists at work, and also allow us
to consider and develop further support for those who experience burnout or mental health problems.
Developing an approach to professional regulation
Professional regulation in all sectors has changed radically over the last fifteen years. When viewed in the
context of these wide-ranging changes it is important to be aware of the level of influence that any one
profession can have in this area. Our approach up until recently has been reactive to adverse circumstances
– we will now proactively begin to describe the key components of a system that we think would work in the
interests of patients and in a way that does not cause harm and distress within the profession.
For professional regulation to be meaningful it must gather information and apply sanctions where
necessary. As a result, it will always involve a degree of intrusion into the lives of dentists. We will seek
to correct what has been seen as excessive interference coupled with reduced patient protection into
something that delivers better on both fronts. We will therefore begin a debate amongst members about
what professional regulation should look like, and develop a set of proposals with which to approach
parliament.
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Examining the impact of different practice ownership methods
After many years of acquisitions, consolidations and development, coupled with radical changes in the
way NHS dentistry is commissioned, a small number of large commercially-led companies now constitute
a significant part of the dental practice market. Some dentists have also taken advantage of changes
in the law to organise themselves more in line with corporate enterprise. This has resulted in a general
practice dental market that can be broadly described as comprising of large commercial corporates, smaller
practitioner led corporates and independent practitioner-owned practices.
The way that practices are owned will have a significant impact on the working arrangements of the
practitioners within them. Conscious that there are many myths and rumours surrounding the different
arrangements, we will gather better intelligence about the shape of the practice ownership market and its
impact on the working lives of our members.
Redesigning our internal operations
In order for us to better deliver our core activities and implement the strategic and operational themes set
out above, we will refocus our member-facing activity around three areas. These are Representation, Advice
& Support and Learning. Whilst, as descriptors these headings accurately describe a number of things
that we do now, we believe that by designing the organisation around them and restructuring our internal
management functions to reflect them, we will be able to drive greater efficiency, coherence and clarity. We
will consult with staff over the restructuring of these functions.
Funding change
These areas of activity represent a substantial agenda of change. The investments and organisational
refinements outlined above will also mean that we will need to be innovative in the way we deploy our
resources. Our detailed planning to deliver this programme of change over the next three years will include
consideration of how any changes will be funded and how the staging of any changes will be organised.
Included in these considerations will be how 64 Wimpole Street, the Association’s largest single financial
asset, could be best used in the interests of our members. This work will take place with staff input and be
presented to the PEC for consideration.
A stronger voice
This strategy and the accompanying organisational work streams represents a much needed redefinition
of the Association’s approach to meet the changing needs of the dental profession. It is our hope that
by responding to these changes through the implementation of this strategy we will be able to recruit
and retain more members across the UK and thereby strengthen the Association in its role as the voice of
dentistry.
BDA Principal Executive Committee
June 2015
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