Item 05
Council
27 January 2016
GDC Communications and Engagement Strategy
Purpose of paper
To provide a strategy approach to GDC
communications and engagement activity
Action
For approval
Public/Private
Public
Corporate Strategy 2016-18
Integral to the delivery of all the corporate
strategy
Business Plan 2016
Decision Trail
Council was consulted on and provided
feedback to the revised Strategy throughout
2015
Recommendations
Council is asked to approve this paper
Authorship of paper and further
information
Lisa Cunningham
Head of Communications
[email protected] 020 7167 6197
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Effective, high quality communications and engagement for the GDC: a strategy for
success
1. Background and current situation
The GDC’s new corporate strategy was signed off by the Council at its meeting in November 2015
and will be launched on 26 January 2016. It sets out the strategic aims and objectives for the GDC
from 2016 to 2019. It was developed using engagement with key stakeholders including patients,
patient and consumer groups, dental professionals and other key stakeholders.
The corporate strategy will be used as a step-change in GDC communications activity; it will act as
a platform for the communications function to deliver effective, high quality communications and
engagement, providing the framework and core content for associated activities. This
communications and engagement strategy sets out how this will be achieved.
2. The corporate strategy and communication and engagement for the GDC: a
relationship
The GDC is currently building a new, effective, high performing communications function, which has
been established as part of the 2015 Organisational Change Programme (OCP).
An effective, high quality communications function will do the following:






explain the purpose of the GDC clearly, concisely, consistently and compellingly
set the tone for all communications activity in accordance with the GDC’s values, which are
fairness, transparency, responsiveness and respect
support the GDC in achieving its strategic objectives by successfully engaging with relevant
external and internal stakeholders
support the GDC in responding to opportunities and threats that emerge in the external
environment, helping to ensure that the GDC leads and shapes relevant debates
where appropriate, rebut unfair criticism
support colleagues across the organisation to communicate effectively on the behalf of the
GDC while embedding the understanding that high quality communication is everyone’s
responsibility.
The GDC’s 2016-19 corporate strategy provides the communications function with both a framework
and core content to enable improved engagement with external and internal stakeholders: patients,
professionals (including students), partners, staff and associates. If done effectively, this will result
in a better interface between the GDC and its audiences as well as help the GDC navigate and
shape the external environment. The corporate strategy will guide what the GDC says, who is says
it to, how it says it and, to some extent, when it is said.
Launching on 26 January, the 2016 – 2019 corporate strategy will allow the GDC to explain our new
organisational objectives, describing how they will help the GDC meet our statutory functions and
how they will be delivered. The launch of the corporate strategy will be marked with a panel debate
with key GDC stakeholders that were engaged in the development of the strategy. This will be the
first event of a substantial engagement programme with patients, professionals (including students
and trainees), partners, staff and associates that will contribute towards meeting the aims and
objectives set out in the corporate strategy. The launch event with partners will be replicated in each
of the capital cities of the UK and events tailored for patients, professionals and students will be
developed.
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The launch of the corporate strategy is also an opportunity to explain the role of the newly
established Policy and Research Board (PRB), introduce the members of PRB as new
spokespeople for the GDC and describe how they will be engaging with stakeholders. The PRB is
also helping to shape the communications and engagement strategy, supporting and informing its
implementation, including the involvement of Board and other Council members in delivering
engagement activity. Further events with GDC partners and the PRB will be developed in order to
support the delivery of the PRB’s work programme.
3. What we are trying to achieve: setting our communications objectives
The communications function has three broad objectives, set out below. These will help the GDC
better understand the environment it operates within, ensures that the tone of GDC communications
reflect the GDC’s corporate values, engage more effectively with key internal and external
audiences.
A. Improved understanding of the external environment
The GDC does not exist in a vacuum; our context and the extent to which we engage
effectively with it influences our ability to fulfil our statutory functions and meet our
organisational objectives. The GDC therefore must improve its understanding of and
response to the external environment. A description of how this objective will be achieved is
set out in section four.
B. Ensuring the tone of GDC communications reflects the GDC’s values of fairness,
transparency, responsiveness and respect
The new corporate values of the GDC must be lived and breathed by the organisation. Part
of this is ensuring the GDC’s communications reflect these values. A description of how this
objective will be achieved is set out in section five.
C. Engage effectively with external and internal audiences: patients, professionals,
partners, staff and associates
In different ways, the GDC’s audiences can help or hinder our ability to fulfil our statutory
functions and meet our organisational objectives. The GDC must therefore improve its
engagement with each of its audiences. A description of how this objective will be achieved
is set out in section seven with the content that will support this engagement described in
section six.
The following sections of this paper will describe how these objectives will be met. Below is a table
that summaries this work and provides timescales attached to individual projects and activities.
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Objective A. Improved understanding of the external environment
Project/activity
Timescale
Improved monitoring of the external environment
Q1 2016
Establishment of an editorial board
Q2 2016
Objective B. Ensuring the tone of GDC communications reflects the GDC’s values of
fairness, transparency, responsiveness and respect
Development of organisation wide key messaging and core content
This activity will also help to meet objective C
Improve communication of GDC statutory decisions
This activity will also help to meet objective C
Development of corporate key messaging and core content tailored for
all GDC audiences
This activity will also help to meet objective C
Tone of voice project
Begin in Q1 2016 and
ongoing throughout the
year
Begin in Q1 2016 and
ongoing throughout the
year
Begin in Q1 2016 and
ongoing throughout the
year
Q2 - Q4 2016
This activity will also help to meet objective C
Comprehensive brand review
2017
Objective C. Engage effectively with external and internal audiences: patients,
professionals, partners, staff and associates
Launch GDC corporate strategy
Q1 2016, with an
ongoing engagement
programme
Improve relationships with the trade press
Beginning in Q1 2016
and ongoing
Improved engagement programme with stakeholders across the
patient, professional and partners groups, including review of regular
communication channels, such as newsletters, aimed at these groups
Beginning in Q1 2016
and ongoing
Redesign of GDC website
Q1 – Q3 2016
Review of internal communications channels and activities
Q2 2016
This activity will also help to meet objective B
Publication of first The dental landscape report
Q3 2017 (this is an
estimation, but may
change once the project
has been scoped)
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The recruitment to the vacancies within communications team was completed in January 2016. This
provides the ideal opportunity to develop a communications team workplan, which will provide more
operational detail as to how and when the above projects and activities will be delivered. The
following sections will describe the above projects and activities in further detail.
4. Meeting objective A: Understanding the external environment
The GDC does not exist in a vacuum: our context and the extent to which we engage effectively
with it influences our ability to fulfil our statutory functions and meet our organisational objectives.
To help improve its performance, the GDC must successfully understand what is happening in the
external environment, which in turn will help us exploit external opportunities and manage external
threats. This will also improve the agility of the GDC to respond to emerging events, as well as
informing the judgment call as to whether to respond or not.
Projects that will help us achieve this are as follows

Improved monitoring of the external environment
The GDC’s media monitoring is currently patchy and slow, not covering the trade press nor
monitoring all of the key issues that are of significance to the GDC nor giving immediate
visibility to issues of importance to the GDC. This existing monitoring service will be
bolstered in quarter one to include trade press and social media, ensuring the GDC is
monitoring the most important and relevant information. It will also integrated with monitoring
of our stakeholders, such as government ministers, the other health professional regulators
and the British Dental Association. This information will be used to better inform the GDC’s
understanding of the issues that are being reported in the press and how they are being
reported as well as informing how the GDC ‘sells in’ its own media activity.
This improved monitoring will also include more strategic stakeholder intelligence gathering.
We will centrally capture our current interactions with stakeholders to guide a more
structured, systematic approach to engagement; secondly, and building on this, developing a
centralised ‘stakeholder hub’ that will manage the GDC’s stakeholder relationships, housing
intelligence from stakeholder meetings held across the organisation and providing briefings
for those attending meetings with stakeholders. The outputs from stakeholders, such as
press releases, social media and newsletters will be added to the GDC’s monitoring so the
GDC has a fuller picture of the views of stakeholders. We will use this intelligence to better
understand current stakeholder perceptions and priorities. This in turn will inform how we
better engage stakeholders in the work of the GDC, giving us a better understanding of
stakeholders’ priorities and views of the GDC itself meaning we can tailor our key messaging
and address any misconceptions accordingly.
This improved monitoring will also facilitate better judgement calls about whether and how to
respond to emerging events, helping the GDC to be a more relevant and responsive
organisation.

Improved internal reporting of external monitoring
The intelligence gleaned from the improved media and stakeholder monitoring will be
analysed to provide improved reporting of activity in the external environment to key groups
within the GDC, such as the Council, Policy and Research Board, Executive Management
Team and the wider organisation. The analysed intelligence will be shared weekly, with very
important information being shared with key groups in real time. This insight will be used to
develop a more strategic internal reporting service, for the Council, executive management
team and the wider GDC. This will provide an analysis of developments in the external
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environment, suggest implications for the GDC and, where possible, describe how the GDC
intends to respond.

Establishing an editorial board1
It is crucial that the outputs from above changes are owned across the whole organisation,
to inform better decision making, prioritisation and planning. To achieve this, an editorial
board,2 which will have representation from functions across the GDC, will be established.
Its role will be to assess the insight from improved media monitoring and stakeholder
intelligence gathering against agreed organisation-wide plans, such as the operational
business plan and the communications grid. The editorial board will be responsible for
providing regular reports to Council, PRB and EMT about how the GDC is responding to and
seeking to shape the external environment. It is suggested that the PRB provides oversight
to the development of the editorial board and helps to assess its effectiveness.
5. Meeting objective B: the tone of GDC communications and engagement
The corporate strategy sets out new corporate values for the GDC. They are
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
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Fairness – we will treat everyone we deal with fairly
Transparency – we are open about how we work and how we reach decisions
Responsiveness – we can adapt to changing circumstances
Respect – we treat dental professionals, our partners, and our employers with respect
All of the GDC’s communications and engagement should express these values. Work needs to be
done to help the GDC achieve this ambition; three key projects are planned for 2016/17 and are set
out below:
1

Tone of voice project
How and what the GDC communicates needs to go hand in hand with the corporate values.
This needs to be understood across the organisation as every member of staff, associate
and Council member communicates on the behalf of the GDC. Functions within the GDC
have their own and overlapping audiences and use various communications channels, such
as email, telephone and face-to-face meetings. Staff need support to understand and embed
what it means to communicate in a way that is reflective of the values of the GDC. This
project will involve developing a description of high quality GDC communication that reflects
the corporate values, which is in keeping for a professional regulator. An output of this
project will be a corporate-wide ‘house style guide’, which will facilitate consistent
communication. To inform this work there will be an audit of GDC current communications
and a programme of workshops to train firstly communications ‘champions’ across the GDC
and secondly to communicate the highlights of the house style to all staff will be developed
and delivered. A version of the house style will also be developed for associates, which will
include key information about the GDC so they can speak with authority about the range of
work the GDC does.

Redesign of GDC website
The website is a key communication channel for the GDC: it is the portal to the organisation
for all stakeholders. Working in collaboration with the web team, the communications team is
overseeing the redesign of the GDC website. The aim of the redesign is to ensure the
‘Editorial board’ is a working term and the label may change as the concept develops
2
Initially, the editorial board will have solely internal representation but this will be reviewed once the board
has become established to assess whether it would benefit from external input
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website reflects the values of the GDC, content is presented as clearly as possible and users
navigate around the website easily, finding the information they want quickly. Once the
redesign of the website has concluded a further project will be initiated to review the content
of the website, ensuring it is consistent with the principles in the house style and that it is upto-date and relevant.3 The ambition is to constantly review the content on the website to
ensure it remains relevant, clear and improves wherever possible.4

Brand review
The GDC’s current brand is applied inconsistently and arguably does not reflect the new
corporate values. In 2017, the good work already achieved by the tone of voice project will
be developed further by conducting a full brand review. This will involve revision of the
GDC’s logo, strap line and the colour pallet the GDC uses for design work.
6. Meeting objectives B and C: Content is king! Telling the GDC story
One of the corporate values of the GDC is transparency. The corporate strategy describes this as
being open about how we work and how we reach decisions. From a communications and
engagement perspective, transparency can be interpreted as the need to repeatedly explain:
explain the GDC’s purpose, processes, decisions etc to each and every audience time and time
again. In order to do this effectively core ‘corporate content’ needs to be developed. This will allow
the GDC to clearly, compellingly and consistently explain its purpose, how it makes decisions and
the outcomes of these decisions. This content will be in formats that are usable across all of the
GDC’s communications channels and be tailored for the needs of each audience. This repeated
explaining requires corporate key messaging and core content to be successful.

Corporate key messaging and core content
Key messaging will be developed from the corporate strategy supplemented with other
sources where necessary that will explain the purpose of the GDC, the benefits of ‘right
touch’ regulation and how the GDC regulates. This key messaging will be used as the basis
for briefings for high level meetings, presentations and speaking notes for events. This will
ensure that GDC spokespeople are talking about the GDC in a way that is clear and
consistent.
The corporate key messaging will also be used to develop external facing digital content,
housed on the GDC website and used regularly on GDC social media channels. This will
describe:
o
o
o
o
GDC’s statutory functions, including the over-arching duty to protect patients and the
public, our work to maintain the professional register and our role in education and
training and setting and monitoring standards
Fitness to Practise processes and powers
Improvements that are being made to Fitness to Practise
The performance of the GDC across all its statutory functions
We will also seek opportunities to explain the relationship between each of our statutory
functions and use contact points we have with registrants and students to promote various
messages. A good example would be to use the interaction registrants have with the GDC
when they pay their Annual Retention Fee to promote different standards and/or lessons
from fitness to practise to them.
3
This project is dependent on additional resources
4
Again, this ambition is dependent on additional resources
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
Publication of The dental landscape report
There is potential for GDC to be well placed to make a significant contribution to external
debates about the future of dental care. Producing a report that describes the ‘state of
dentistry’ will give the GDC an improved platform to influence the external environment. The
internal capacity and external need for this needs to be scoped, but a useful comparator
would be the GMC’s State of medical education and practise reports. It could cover issues
such as key trends within the dental team, an analysis of complaints about dentists and
dental care professionals and any issues that relate to professional standards. It is likely that
the largescale registrant survey would be a key source of data for the report. This would
require scoping and if the scope is approved, the first edition is likely to be published in
2017.
7. Meeting objective C: Effective stakeholder engagement across all audiences
The GDC cannot fully meet its statutory functions, nor the objectives set out in its corporate
strategy, without effectively engaging with its audiences. A backbone of stakeholder engagement
will be developed for the GDC that will encompass patients, professionals and students themselves
as well as the GDC’s partners. This will ensure that the GDC is regularly engaging with our key
audiences. This regular engagement will be supplemented with specific engagement programme for
key projects, such as the complaints programme the Policy and Research Board is undertaking.
Specific projects that will meet particular needs of the GDC’s main audience groups are detailed
below.
7.1 Patients
We will put patient and public protection at the heart of what we do and we will
empower patients to make informed choices about the care they receive.
Patients, professionals, partners, performance: GDC corporate strategy 2016 -2019
The public and patients are key stakeholders for the GDC: our statutory functions state that our
prime duty is to protect patients and the public, but also that we are to work to ensure the public
have confidence in dentistry. The engagement work that has been done to inform the development
of the corporate strategy with patients and patient and consumer groups is an ideal springboard to
develop a strategic and meaningful approach to engaging with these groups. The appetite for
engagement was evident in the patient and patient and consumer group events held in recent
weeks.
It is important to accurately describe the patient audience. Too often, the labels ‘patient’ and ‘public’
are used interchangeably and ‘consumer’ is not reflected. Patients, the public and consumers are
overlapping groups, which have different nuances, affecting their expectations of dental care and
relationship with the dental team. Broadly speaking patients receive NHS care, consumers pay for
treatment, such as tooth whitening and members of the public may not engage with dental care for
significant periods of time.
There are a number of projects that have been described above that will help the GDC to better
engage with patients. The aforementioned redesign of the GDC website will be an improved tool for
patients and the public by more clearly explaining the role of the GDC and improved signposting to
sources of information and help. In particular, information about how to resolve a complaint about
dental care will be clearer.
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In collaboration with relevant colleagues, the communications team will be rethinking the way that
the GDC communicates the results of its statutory decisions, primarily relating to Fitness to Practise
(FtP). This will involve improved media engagement so that we take a proactive approach;
particularly with the trade, regional press by providing them with advanced notice of our FtP cases
and prosecutions, offering briefings where applicable and having spokespeople able to give
broadcast media interviews. It will also allow us to explain why we have made certain decisions and
explain what we are doing to promote learning from the situation. This allows us to demonstrate that
we are putting patient and public protection at the heart of what we do. It is also good for the
profession as it allows us to place sanctions on those not deemed fit to practise, which in effect is
removing those that bring the profession’s reputation into disrepute. We will also improve how we
communicate the learning to registrants and students from our fitness to practise cases.
7.2 Professionals
We will support dental professionals to deliver good quality dental care
Patients, professionals, partners, performance: GDC corporate strategy 2016 -2019
The GDC’s ability to meet its statutory functions, achieve the objectives set out in the corporate
strategy and improve its performance is maximised by developing and maintaining a respectful and
healthy relationship with those it regulates. As stated in our corporate strategy by 2019 our ambition
is to have a much stronger relationship with the dental professionals we regulate, with significant
progress being made before then. Recent events have bruised the GDC’s relationship with dental
professionals. Anecdotally we know our relationship with dental professionals, particularly dentists,
is poor with some having strong feelings of anger and frustration towards us.
To help achieve this, the communications team will be focusing on better explaining the GDC to
dental professionals and students, as broadly discussed in section six of this document. Specifically
for this group, we will improve how we explain the role and benefits of the Dental Complains
Service, which has been a particular source of misunderstanding and antagonism between the GDC
and the profession. To address this, case studies will be worked up of professionals and patients
that have used the service and can explain its benefits.
Other tactics that will be used to better explain the GDC to the profession include improved media
engagement using opportunities such as blogs, bi-lined articles and thought leadership pieces to
explain our work. We will also explore establishing a regular column in one of the trade magazines.
In addition, we will review the regular newsletter that is currently distributed to registrants to ensure
the content is relevant and is of consistently high quality. To facilitate the review we will develop a
content calendar to plan proactive communications to registrants. This will include developing
content based on the experiences registrants are having, so they feel like the GDC is speaking to
them in ‘real time’. Examples of this involve developing content based around exams registrants are
sitting, better exploiting the engagement we have with them during registration points, etc. The
layout of the newsletters and imagery will also be improved as a priority in 2016.
The GDC will also do more to demonstrate a supportive relationship with professionals and
students. Examples of this include revising the communication plans regarding the GDC’s
whistleblowing service and holding regular events for students and professionals to better explain
the role of the GDC and listen to the issues that are of importance to them.
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7.3 Partners
We will work with our partners in the dental sector to protect patients and make the system of
dental regulation in the UK more effective
Patients, professionals, partners, performance: GDC corporate strategy 2016 -2019
The GDC can only be effective if it engages in a meaningful way with stakeholders across the wider
system of dental regulation. This includes our peer health professional regulators, system regulators
and the NHS in each nation of the UK among others. Similarly, we can only continuously improve
our performance if we work collaboratively with our partners to share innovation and good practise.
An analysis is currently being conducted of the state of our current stakeholder relationships. This
covers identifying who in the GDC owns valuable stakeholder relationship and assessing the quality
of these relationships. This work will feed into detailed stakeholder mapping of the UK and
European dental landscape and also bespoke analysis by individual project or work area so we
have a clearer understanding of who we should be engaging with, why and how. An organisationwide stakeholder engagement programme, showing the partners that should be engaged with as a
priority, will be developed as a result. The ambition is to have a backbone of regular stakeholder
engagement with all GDC partners including governments across the four nations, Chief Dental
Officers, other health professional and system regulators and relevant EU and international groups.
We will also consider the benefits of proactively engaging with the Health Select Committee, to
proactively inform them of the work we are doing to improve our performance, for example.
Stakeholder engagement will also be developed on a project basis, with each GDC project having a
good understanding of its stakeholders and how to engage with them. This will start with the work of
Policy and Research Board.
This intelligence will be used to develop meaningful stakeholder engagement. We will have an
organisation wide contact programme so we understand who we are talking to and why, preparatory
briefings for GDC spokespeople, a robust feedback system so intelligence is captured and
appropriately shared and a proactive calendar of speaking engagements.
7.4 Staff, associates and the Council
The GDC has an important audience that is not described in the corporate strategy: our internal
audiences; staff, associates and the Council. A high performing organisation needs effective internal
communications to ensure staff are informed and fully engaged as well as understanding their
contribution to the organisation’s successes. Building on the work that has been done to engage
with staff through the OCP, an internal communications function will be developed to unite staff
around the common goals set out in the corporate strategy and ensure associates are engaged in
and understand the work of the GDC.
The recruitment of an Internal Communications Manager has brought the necessary additional
resource to realise these ambitions, but they will need to be supported across the organisation and
championed by the Executive Management Team and other GDC leaders; its success depends on
buy-in from staff at all levels. It will also require close working with the HR team to help to develop
and articulate an improved relationship between the GDC and its staff. This recruitment has also
brought the capacity required to ensure that that Council are communicated with effectively between
meetings via the Council bulletin. Work is ongoing to improve this.
The channels that are used to communicate with staff will be reviewed in 2016 with the aim of
improving engagement. In particular, the intranet will be developed so its ‘look and feel’ is more
band compliant and the navigation is improved. The content available to the intranet will also be
developed so it is more engaging. This will be done in collaboration with key members of staff from
across the GDC to ensure that the needs of staff in different parts of the business are captures and
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reflected. A programme of more and better ‘face-to-face time’ will be developed, building on existing
good models such as the FtP town hall meetings. These will be used to engage staff in the
corporate strategy, communicate more subtle messages around equality and diversity, for example,
as well as develop improved behaviours such as collaborative working.
Further, the way associates are currently communicated with will be scoped and reviewed in early
2016 with recommendations from improvements to follow. We will need to establish reliable
distribution lists and regular two-way communication channels to feed information back to share with
our associate audience.
8. Evaluation
The communications team is committed to continuous quality improvement; we want to deliver a
service to the GDC that continues to get better over time. It is crucial to evaluate our work to ensure
we know what works well and we will continue to evolve the measures used to evaluate the success
against this strategy. In the meantime, a mix of process, output and outcome measures have been
identified to evaluate the GDC against this communications and engagement strategy for 2016 2019. This are the initial measures that would be used to assess success against delivering this
strategy. As implementation embeds, the evaluation measures will be review to ensure they are as
sophisticated as possible.
Type of
measure
Measure
Objective
Process
Establishment of editorial board
A
Establishment of regular communication channel for
associates
C
Internal outputs
High quality monitoring reports to be delivered regularly to key
GDC groups
A
External outputs
Number of media interviews and coverage of GDC FtP
decisions
C
Benchmark measure to be established
Increase in number of external meetings and speaking
engagements
C
Increase engagement in GDC social media channels
C
Benchmark measure to be established
Increase in engagement with GDC website
B, C
Measure readership metrics
Outcomes
Increase in engagement with GDC intranet
B, C
Increase in engagement with the GDC Patient Panel
C
Improvement in registrants’ perception of the GDC
B, C
Use the existing registrants’ survey
Improvement in stakeholders’ perception of the GDC
B, C
Establishment of a ‘stakeholder barometer’
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