We connect the dots between health and life to create communications with impact.

Bringing  healthcare to life

About Us

Our Services

A winning strategy is simple to understand and execute. Finding that simplicity is the hard part.
We help clients re-think their direction, interrogate complex problems and offer fresh thinking to ensure their strategy lands well with stakeholders and delivers on its promise.

Strategic counsel

Campaigns that push boundaries drive people to change their behaviours and attitudes.
By bringing together a strategy rooted in audience insights, a spark of creativity and executional brilliance, we create bold, omnichannel disease awareness campaigns that make waves and result in positive change.

Disease awareness and public health

It’s no longer enough to just listen to patients and understand their needs. Patient collaboration and co-creation must be designed into the plan from start to finish.
New approaches that involve patients in the development, design, and delivery of healthcare innovations mean they’ll be adopted by the communities that made them.

Patient engagement and advocacy

Improving patient outcomes requires high-value medical education that makes a lasting impression. 
To have long-term impact, we must make data and opinion meaningful by understanding their consequences within the medical landscape and the patient community.

Medical education and scientific engagement

We understand that employee satisfaction has a direct impact on company performance, because that’s how we run our business.
Whether your company is going through a change management process, or you want to launch a new initiative or recognise achievements, we have the know-how to get your teams engaged.

Internal communications and employee engagement

We build long-term brand loyalty and shape company reputation for the better. 
We do this by understanding the environment, exploring ways in which we can initiate positive action and identifying opportunities for collaboration.

Brand and franchise communications

In our technology-infused world, no campaign is complete without a degree of online activation. 
Whether it’s building a website, developing a digital strategy, or creating content that resonates across platforms, CHC can help you approach the online landscape with confidence.

Digital and social campaigns

As the volume of content we consume every day increases, our attention spans shrink, and trends pass more quickly. 
We can help you find the right space and words for your story, so that your message is seen, heard and actioned by the audiences that matter to you.

Media relations and storytelling

Our Team

“Non, je veux savoir les resultats de touts mes tests medicaux. C’est mon droit de les connaître pour mieux prendre soin de ma santé.”
“No, I want to know the results of all my medical tests. It’s my right to know the results, so that I take better control of my health.”
I call my mom, who is 76 years old and French but based in Canada, three times a week. She usually jabbers on at me in French about her latest pickleball endeavours (yes, it’s a real thing), her daily five-mile walks, or her volunteer friends from the local hospital where she spends every Friday helping people get to their appointments. 
She was in a right huff on this particular day. She’d gone to get a bone density scan two weeks before and was infuriated that her doctor hadn’t yet called to tell her the results, despite already being on medication for osteoporosis. She also raged about how for the past 40 years of living in Canada, she’d always had an annual check-up or health MOT, but that the government had now stopped them due to budget constraints. She now felt worried that doctors weren’t proactively looking after her health. 
Now, in my opinion, my mother is a well-educated, strong, and independent woman. She carries a notebook with her everywhere she goes and writes everything down: from the podcasts she’s listened to that she needs to tell me about (she calls them ‘pot-casts’), to the flowers that were in bloom on her walk and even all her results from health tests (yes, even though they are available online). 
On our call I explained to her that here in the UK, you usually don’t get your test results unless the doctor spots something abnormal that needs to be investigated further. I also told her that not everyone wants to know, can understand, or can even begin to process, what the test results mean. Whilst she could empathise with many of these reasons, she was still shocked. For her, she owns her health and like everything else in her life, she wants to have full control of it. She believes that it’s up to her to know the levels of various vitamins in her body, track her bone density, and understand how her body is changing because of ageing. 
I thought she was being pedantic, but as alluded to in our recent blog, I’m definitely the type of person who knows what I need to do, but don’t always want to hear the hard-hitting truth that my doctor will serve up to me. 
So, I thought I’d do a bit of digging. Turns out, maybe I should take a leaf out of my mother’s book (her little notebook, to be specific).
A recent paper published in <a href="https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2802672">JAMA</a>
surveyed 8,139 people in the US about their attitudes to having immediate access to test results via an online portal. An astounding 96% of them wanted to see their results immediately. Now, the average age of respondents was 64 years old, which made me wonder if perhaps this was something more important to people as they got older? 
Turns out I was wrong, and this time I didn’t need to scour through medical publications – I just had to look in my bathroom cupboard. My husband (who is nowhere near 64) has been using <a href="https://clarkhealthcomms.sharepoint.com/Shared%20Documents/CHC/CHC%20Marketing/4.%20Marketing%202023/Blogs/Taking%20control%20of%20your%20health/thriva.co">Thriva</a>
for years. He pays to prick his own finger with a needle, and on a quarterly basis, sends off the vial of blood to the company’s testing centre. Then, in his email, he is sent something that looks like this: 
<figure><img src="https://d33q76zddxsi8i.cloudfront.net/THRIVA-results.jpg" alt="" /></figure>
 
In 2022, Thriva was in the top 10 of Europe’s fastest-growing companies according to the <a href="https://www.ft.com/ft1000-2022">FT</a>, with a compound annual growth rate of 322%. The company was built on the idea that blood test kits could keep you out of hospital ⁠— if used to identify and address problems before they spiral out of control. Their simple, visual platform helps to address the challenges I flagged to my mother about one’s ability to understand the myriad of health tests – it simply explains the various measures, plots them on a nicely coloured graph, and voila! Results that anyone can understand at their fingertips. 
In this article from <a href="https://sifted.eu/articles/thriva-founder-interview/">Sifted</a>, the founders of Thriva did acknowledge that their biggest challenge was people like me: “Logical arguments in health often don’t win. We know preventative health is a good idea but individuals tend to exist on a ‘live today’ basis, which means they think it’s a really good idea, but don’t actually act.”
With preventable, long-term conditions being the largest cause of illness and death in the UK, it’s time we leveraged the wealth of resources that exist to take an active role in our health and wellbeing. And this is what will allow us to connect the dots between health and life – by taking control of our health before problems arise (or before it’s really too late), we can make the necessary lifestyle changes so that we can live long, healthy and fruitful lives well into our old age.

Team insights

Mother knows best: How a 76-year old took control of her health

Look, let’s not beat around the bush. Yes, we can see the irony. Yes, we work in healthcare communications and yes, we spend every working day encouraging people to seek healthcare advice to ensure the correct diagnosis, lifestyle change or treatment is implemented early. But do we always practice what we preach? The honest answer is no. So, let’s talk about it, because if you’re reading this and you also work in the healthcare industry, it might sound all too familiar. 
We’re not here to lecture you. We don’t need to tell you that delaying seeing a healthcare professional can impact health outcomes, including mortality (yes scary, but it needs to be said). We’ve worked on enough disease awareness campaigns throughout the years to know better. But there’s something within us that stops us from booking that much needed GP, dentist or physio appointment – the list goes on. 

Everyone’s busy, and we’re all human. But we can’t advise others about positively changing behaviour if we’re not holding the big old healthcare mirror up to ourselves too. As one of our 10 Challenges for 10 Years of CHC, we’ve decided to challenge our team to nip their inner health hypocrite in the bud for the rest of the year and get those lingering health concerns addressed. 
We’ve all got different reasons for not accessing healthcare when we need it. We’ve explored some of the most common barriers to seeking healthcare. While many of these barriers require system level change, some can be overcome by the individual. The first step of any behaviour change is to be conscious of your thinking and actions, so that you can change them. So, what’s stopping us from taking action?

1. Trust: Sharing health concerns and symptoms, seeking advice and making decisions all require trust in the healthcare professional and service being used. Mistrust and misinformation can prevent access to healthcare for many people
2. Accessibility: Navigating the healthcare system is not always easy with multiple barriers along the way from language and digital literacy to travel and time to attend appointments
3. Shame: Perceived embarrassment and stigma around seeking health advice for ‘taboo’ issues, such as mental and sexual health, substance abuse, menopause or dementia can prevent people from seeing a GP or nurse
4. Fear: We all know that feeling of ‘what if it’s really serious?’ So, burying our head in the sand can feel like the easier option at the time
In addition to the points above, we can’t forget good old ‘Dr Google’. Pre-Google, we went to our trusty family doctor or maybe popped into the local pharmacy, but this is no longer the case. With access to a vast array of online health information at our fingertips (literally), faster-paced lifestyles, the rise of artificial intelligence, and continued pressure on NHS resources, having an in-person, pre-booked appointment can feel very disconnected from our very connected lives. And this means we can often put off making that all-important appointment.
We’ve made progress with our challenge and feel better for it! Since writing this blog and exploring our own barriers, members of the CHC team have taken this latest challenge head-on. Across the team, we’ve tackled a range of health worries that we’ve been avoiding for too long. An odd-looking mole was checked out, and an abdominal ultrasound was completed – both were given the all-clear. We registered for a new doctor following a city move and visited the optician for what we now know is a lazy eye! Without getting into detail or oversharing, we have collectively felt a sense of relief to finally have had these health worries checked out.

Look out for our next blog on how some of our team, and their families, are going one step further to look after their health.

Thought leadership

Challenge Four: Holding up the big old healthcare mirror to ourselves

Irrespective of who you follow on your social channels, there’s one topic that has dominated the headlines recently: ChatGPT. With over 100 million users signing up to the platform in two months, and 13 million unique visitors per day in January1, there’s been no escaping the topic. 
Many industries are now grappling to understand how this new and emerging technology could be utilised to change their everyday work and the opportunities it could unlock. As the noise around ChatGPT swirls, we’ve taken time to consider what impact this mind-blowing AI tool could have on certain healthcare audiences. 
Haven’t heard of ChatGPT? <a href="https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt/">Here’s a link to find out more.</a>
How could it impact patients?
One of the most talked-about possibilities of ChatGPT for patients is as a potential replacement for the notorious ‘Dr Google’. We’ve all been there – a small cut on your hand or funny feeling in your little toe and we’re Googling away, trying to decipher which life-threatening condition it could be. Then eventually, we book a doctor’s appointment to find out it’s nothing to worry about. 
Here’s where ChatGPT comes into action: it can provide personalised and timely responses to patients’ queries, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, based on the wealth of health information it’s trained on. By being incorporated into a safe and confidential healthcare platform or app, such as Babylon Health, it could also help in instances where patients are hesitant to seek care due to stigmas or fear of being judged about sensitive health issues. 
Alongside answering questions, ChatGPT also has the potential to help patients with chronic conditions manage their health more effectively. Imagine being able to use continuous monitoring and personalised reminders via an integrated platform, to share timely interventions with patients, leading to better control of their conditions and improved outcomes.
Alongside the positives that come with AI innovations, there are of course numerous questions and concerns to be addressed. For example, in its current form, ChatGPT has very limited knowledge of the world after 20212, so users must be mindful of this knowledge time gap, given the speed at which science and healthcare progress. This type of limitation must be considered for real-world applications, especially ones as serious as patient care.
How about healthcare professionals (HCPs)?
HCPs are notoriously busy, having to balance time spent on patient care with routine administrative tasks. By automating routine tasks, such as appointment scheduling, ChatGPT could enable HCPs to spend more time with patients.
Harnessing the analytical power of ChatGPT could also help HCPs provide more personalised care by offering patient-specific recommendations and tailored treatment plans. By analysing patients’ medical histories and data in seconds, ChatGPT could provide HCPs with valuable insights, such as drug-drug interactions and possible adverse effects, enabling them to make more informed decisions.
Additionally, if it’s provided access to an up-to-date library of medical literature, ChatGPT could also provide HCPs with the latest information and guidance, helping them to stay on top of advances in their fields.
And not most importantly, but importantly for us… healthcare communications agencies?
So, will ChatGPT replace agency teams? By analysing health data and social media trends it can provide valuable insights about specific audiences, which in theory, should enable agencies to efficiently develop targeted programmes that will resonate with these audiences. 
It’s not looking good for us agency-folk so far, but surely humans are needed to turn those insights into outputs right?
Wrong! ChatGPT also utilises its ability to understand natural language to create audience- and tone-specific outputs, streamlining the content creation process (don’t believe us? Ask ChatGPT to write you a song about the pharmaceutical industry in the style of Ed Sheeran, and then another one in the style of The Clash. As we said before, Mind. Blowing.) 
But it’s not all bad news! There is still a vital role for us agency-humans to play. Think about it – if every agency starts developing content in the same way and using the same AI tools, the outputs will end up being bland and similar. So yes, maybe ChatGPT can provide us with audience insights and develop a first draft, but we must continue to use our creative and unique human input to add meaning, make it nuanced, and ensure it stands out from the crowd to create the desired impact.
Phew. 
What does this all mean for healthcare? 
While the potential benefits of ChatGPT and other AI tools for healthcare are immense, there are also some significant challenges and considerations that need to be addressed. One of the main ones is ensuring the accuracy and reliability of the information provided by these tools. As with any AI, the output is only as good as the data it’s trained on. It’s therefore essential the user applies their own critical thinking to interpret the outputs and figure out the best way to use them. If the challenges can be addressed, then the potential is both exciting and a little scary – could we be on the cusp of the next revolution in healthcare?
References
<ol><li>ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base - analyst note. Reuters. Accessed at: <a href="https://www.reuters.com/technology/chatgpt-sets-record-fastest-growing-user-base-analyst-note-2023-02-01/">https://www.reuters.com/techno...</a> Last accessed: 22/02/2023.</li><li>ChatGPT: Everything you need to know about OpenAI's GPT-3 tool. Accessed at: <a href="https://www.sciencefocus.com/future-technology/gpt-3/">https://www.sciencefocus.com/f...</a> Last accessed: 02/02/2023.</li></ol>

ChatGPT: A new AI-ge in healthcare?

As the health of our team drives the health of our business, we tried ‘No Social Sundays’ for our second challenge in our 10 challenges for 10 years of CHC series. Did we succeed in avoiding social media every Sunday for the whole of October? Well, not exactly. But here's why we’re not ashamed to admit this. 
The team had very different approaches to this challenge. Jess – the only one to succeed – set a Sunday morning reminder on her phone each week. As for the rest of us… well, we struggled. Scrolling through social media has become so ingrained in our daily lives that we often found ourselves mid-scroll without even realising it. And, as Candice honestly admitted, some of us didn’t even try to avoid indulging in this pleasurable pastime. 
At the end of the challenge, we asked our team to reflect on whether social media has a positive or negative impact on their mental health. Here’s what some of the team had to say:
“Instagram can be great; it enables me to keep up to date with my favourite music artists, clothing companies and my close friends and family. However, Instagram naturally promotes comparison, a hallmark evil of social media. In a podcast I listened to recently, they suggested pausing every time you reach for your phone and go to open Instagram. Pause and take note of how you feel…it is very rarely when you feel good. You will often do it when you feel stressed, anxious or stuck at home with no plans and a bit of FOMO (fear of missing out). I find this is the cause and catalyst of feeling bad about myself, so I have dramatically reduced my use of Instagram.” – Will 
“I think both [positive and negative]. I use it to communicate with my friends, watch cute animal videos and keep up to date with pop culture, the news, and even politics sometimes (I’m ashamed). But there is definitely a toxic side to it, such as beauty standards, the ‘addictive’ nature of it, and of course the studies showing how it has impacted attention spans.” – Georgie 
“It depends on who you follow! I remember I used to be absolutely enraged by this influencer I followed on social media – there was nothing “wrong” with what she said or did, and I obviously never commented on her posts, but for some reason, they really got to me. I would sometimes spend 30 minutes of my lunch ranting to my husband about her life. I then realised I had the choice to simply unfollow her. And presto, she was gone.” – Candice 
Realistically, social media isn’t going away any time soon - it’s part of our society and the work we do, but this challenge gave us the opportunity to pause and reflect on how it’s impacting our lives. Overall, self-awareness was the most useful outcome of the challenge. By becoming more aware of how we use social media, we can reap more of the benefits and fewer of the risks. We can choose to let social media empower us, by reminding ourselves that we have control over what information we consume. 
So, whether that’s avoiding social media for a set number of hours or days per week, unfollowing things that impact us negatively or using it purely to connect with people, our team is taking steps to change the way we use social media. 
Perhaps failing this challenge and becoming more aware of what does and does not make us happy wasn’t so bad after all?

News

Challenge Two: No Social Sundays

With a few of our team on holiday and some struck down by illness (well, that was their excuse for getting out of the walk!), six members of our team courageously tackled the 10 miles from Vauxhall to Tower Bridge and back. Completing the loop in under three hours! Whilst spending your Friday night walking around in the rain might not be everyone’s cup of tea, as we’ve said before – we like a challenge. 
Fuelled by tea and biscuits at the start line, the joy of our Canadian-raised teammate (Candice) discovering the joys of Toffee Crisps, and Roland’s outrage that Freddos have yet again changed shape, we set off. Spirits were high, which meant it was only natural that it started pouring with rain the minute we passed the start line. There was no going back… we had set ourselves a challenge and we WERE going to complete it. 
Luckily the rain didn’t stick around for long! Despite some members of the team – who shall not be named – asking ‘are we there yet?’ at mile three and another couple – who shall also not be named – missing a turn, we powered through with witty repartee for entertainment. Well, I say witty, but I’m ashamed to report that at one point, our conversations turned to where the best place was to hang washing out in our houses, so perhaps it’s fairer to say it was a long three hours…. But the medals were worth it and the sense of achievement even better. Not to mention the BBQ and glass of fizz at the end! At CHC, the health of the team drives the health of our business, and it was great to get some exercise together, challenge ourselves (mentally and physically) and try something new. Here’s to the next challenge! Watch this space…<figure><img src="https://d33q76zddxsi8i.cloudfront.net/Untitled-design-36.png" alt="CHC team" /></figure>

Challenge One: 10 Miles for 10 Years

But as explained so well by <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/brianscudamore/2020/01/31/when-is-the-right-time-to-start-a-business/?sh=6cd2793e486b" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Forbes</a>, here’s the thing: There’s never a right time to start a business. There will never be an ideal moment. There will always be reasons to put it off. And so, it comes down to this: you have to create the ‘right time’. Because only you can make this happen – and if you’re waiting for the perfect moment, you just might be waiting forever. But how do you create this set of conditions that make it possible to make your dreams a reality? 
Well for me, creating the right conditions meant three things: 1. Having a family with faith in me – that I could do it and would be happier for it. 2. Having clients who valued me – with real confidence that I could compete with their current agencies (some of them very big!) and deliver great results. 3. Having a remote team of freelancers supporting me – trusted colleagues that I could partner with and grow with as the business evolved. And I must have done something right, as my family, and some of my first clients and remote team members are still with me today!
The challenge of starting an agency is one thing, the challenge of maintaining a successful agency for over 10 years is quite another! It’s certainly been a journey and of course, there have been ups, as well as some downs, along the way. Looking back, the main highlights have been the great programmes we developed and implemented with amazing clients alongside inspiring healthcare professionals that were rolled out all over the world. I feel immensely proud of what the team has achieved over the last decade, as well as what lies ahead as we continue to grow. To all those clients, partners, members of the team past and present, and my family, a massive thank you!
As we’ve been thinking about how best to celebrate 10 years as a successful independent healthcare communications agency, the team came up with the idea of doing 10 challenges to celebrate the 10 years we’ve been in business. Challenges that push us out of our comfort zone – some just a little, and others quite a lot. Either way, they’re all designed to bring us together, do some good and create some memories. 
So, keep your eyes peeled for our first round of challenges over the coming months and if you have any bright ideas and want to put us to the test, send us an idea for a challenge at <a href="mailto:hello@clarkhealthcomms.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hello@clarkhealthcomms.com</a>.

It’s our 10th birthday! Founder and Chairman Jeremy Clark explains how it all started

We were lucky enough to have Rosie and Hatixhe join us for the week as part of their school’s dedicated work experience programme. They came to us bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to find out what it’s like to:
1. Work in healthcare comms 2. Be part of a central London-based agency 3. Work a 9-5 day 4. Make the difficult decision of either Pret or Wasabi for lunch 
The CHC team was keen to provide a well-rounded insight into the work we do and the difference we try to make with it. A chock-a-block calendar of activities that featured interactions with each of our team was put together, covering every aspect of our day-to-day responsibilities and an insight into what we’re currently working on and our client mix. The ladies were brought into the thick of it from day one, helping with research for some of our projects, including finding women’s health social media influencers, researching the population demographic mix in Liverpool to aid an upcoming stakeholder interviews project, and supporting our internal marketing projects. We also gave them the opportunity to live out their London office dreams – fancy lanyards ✅, Starbucks in hand ✅, and the opportunity to dip into the free biscuit stash whenever they liked ✅.
“Our favourite part of the week was learning how to carry out research tasks and reflecting on how much we learnt about different conditions such as heavy menstrual bleeding and routine adult vaccines. We really enjoyed finding out how we can use social media to help understand different conditions and what it’s really like to live with them.” - Hatixhe and Rosie.
If you’ve been around long enough and been to many a networking event in our industry, you will have heard people say, “I ended up in healthcare comms by accident”. This is a well-known trope, but at CHC, we’re trying to change this. We want to inspire the next generation of communicators and help them identify that this is the industry they want to be in and plot a path to it.
“During the week, we got to do both research and creative thinking. This enabled us to understand our personal strengths and start to understand the different types of jobs within healthcare communications and what we think we might want to do in the future. Being in the office was a really important part of the experience as it allowed us to understand all day-to-day things no one tells you about – how people at different levels interact, how the team speak to clients and suppliers and how many cups of coffee everyone drinks!” - Hatixhe and Rosie.
Both Rosie and Hatixhe were a great addition to the CHC team and provided great learnings for all of us. With their departure, we look forward to welcoming more budding young communicators to the CHC team in the future.
If you’re interested in doing work experience with us or an internship, please do reach out and contact us at <a href="mailto:hello@clarkhelathcomms.com" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">hello@clarkhelathcomms.com</a>. We’d love to hear from you.

CHC Work Experience: Helping create the next generation of healthcare communicators

Jessica Lowrie joins CHC with over eight years of experience in the healthcare industry, both in-house and agency, and will focus on key accounts in oncology, internal communications and patient advocacy. Having recently moved from Vancouver, Canada, where she managed the Global Marketing Communications for a leading clinical diagnostic laboratory, Jessica will also be responsible for leading the omnichannel workstream for CHC. Also joining the team is Emily Coppen, with over six years of experience delivering healthcare communications and patient advocacy programmes in the UK and globally, alongside successful agency culture development projects at her previous agency HAVAS Just::. Emily will be leading key accounts in vaccines, women’s health and internal communications, as well as driving CHC’s marketing team, where she will utilise her patient engagement, creative content development and in-house experience.
Kirsty Somerscales, who joined the agency in February 2021, has played an instrumental role in the ongoing evolution of CHC. Kirsty’s contribution to new business wins, mentoring the growing team, and leadership of client accounts in change management, telehealth, and vaccines, earned her promotion to Senior Account Director in March 2022. With this promotion, Kirsty has joined the CHC Management Team and will be providing input into the agency’s strategic direction alongside leading the internal people workstream.
“I’m super pleased to welcome Jessica and Emily to the team. They both have the talent, experience and dedication that has become synonymous with our team here at CHC, and they bring new ideas that will stretch us and help us grow,” commented Siân Hurst, Managing Director, CHC. “Together with Kirsty’s well-deserved promotion, we will continue to develop as an agency and do what we do best – bring healthcare to life.”

Team updates

CHC strengthens its senior team with two new hires and a promotion to support continued growth

Occasionally, we do really mean it, but most of the time, particularly at work, we say it out of habit. It’s become synonymous with saying hello and opening a conversation.
While the intention behind the question is innocent, the way we answer it can affect us profoundly.
I know from experience being a busy MD that when people ask how I am, my default is to say, “I’m fine”, “I’m ok”, or “I’m all good” in my usual cheerful voice.
However, many years ago now, I learnt that saying “I’m fine” without properly thinking about my answer, isn’t always helpful – either to myself or those around me. It resulted in me internalising stress and becoming ill. And it resulted in my colleagues feeling guilty because they thought I was ok when I wasn’t.
You’re probably thinking, why did she do that? How stupid. But it’s not that simple. Being a strong, intelligent woman and successful MD doesn’t make me immune from making mistakes. I thought I was ok, albeit tired, under pressure and incredibly busy, until I really wasn’t ok and then it was too late. The damage was done and my body and mind needed time off to heal and recover.
I’ve learnt a lot over the years, but one of the most important, perhaps simplest things has been not to default to the autopilot language of “I’m ok” and “I’m fine”.
I passed on this learning to someone in our team recently and it worked. We agreed to only ask the question “how are you?” if we were prepared to give and listen to a proper answer. We also banned the words “I’m fine” and “I’m ok” to force a different type of conversation between us – thanks to Neil Crump for the training on this.
The impact was significant. She had to really think about the question and how she felt, and I had to really listen to what she was saying and what it meant, good and bad. We also implemented a rating system for each day, whereby a one meant she was having a tough day, to a ten which meant she was having a good day. It compelled her to think about what had happened throughout the day and to assess the sum of the day’s parts. We then unpacked ‘the number’ to delve more deeply into the good and bad, and put strategies in place to mitigate the number dropping on future days.
While we don’t use this technique all the time, it helped us both navigate through a busy period and is a tool in our back pockets for whenever we need it.
It’s such a simple skill that I wish I’d known about earlier in my career. So, to recognise <a href="https://www.mind.org.uk/get-involved/mental-health-awareness-week/">Mental Health Awareness Week</a> (9-15 May 2022) this year, I’ve challenged our team to try it out for themselves.
For one week, we’ve banned the words “I’m fine” and “I’m ok”, in search of more meaningful answers. I hope that sharing this technique with the whole team will help us stay true to our core value which is ‘the health of our team drives the health of our business’.
If you feel like trying it with your work colleagues, I’d love to hear the results!

I’m fine, I’m ok – the masters of mental health disguise

A few weeks ago, I discovered a Ted Talk by Tim Ferriss on how defining your fears, rather than your goals, could help make good business decisions. As a self-confessed perfectionist wanting to make an impact in my new role, it appealed to me. It also appealed to the agency, as CHC is in a period of growth following three consecutive pitch wins. My job is to ensure that the business grows happily and healthily for our team and our clients, and making good business decisions is central to that.
As an experienced agency leader, I’m used to setting goals. But fears, well that’s a bit different and sharing them with the whole agency… it was a first for me! Anyway, I went for it. I sold it in to Jeremy our MD who loved the idea and we then ran a session for the whole agency where myself, Jeremy, Nadine our finance manager, and Candice an Associate Director shared our fears about growth.
Now, the key thing about this exercise is to surface the fear and then focus on the solutions, which can all be captured on one simple slide using the headings below:
1. Define your biggest fear in relation to your business right now
2. Identify how to prevent it happening
3. Identify how to repair things if it does happen
4. Consider the benefits of success
5. Consider the costs of inaction
The results were amazing. By talking about our concerns alongside our ambitions for growth, we were able to re-distribute responsibilities, agree some ground rules, make some important hiring decisions and prioritise refreshing our agency benefits package and training programme. All this will ensure that we continue to keep our current and new clients happy, and that our wonderful team feel happy, healthy and engaged in the journey as we grow.
The key learning for me and other members of the senior team, was recognising that what we fear doing, asking or saying, is very often what we most need to do to achieve success and avoid bumps in the road. Next week, the rest of the team get to reveal their fears and solutions to us.
So, don’t be spooked. Fear setting isn’t a trick, but a practical technique to help you make good business decisions. Watch the 13 minute video <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J6jAC6XxAI">here</a> and see if it could help you. We’d love to hear if it was successful.
“It was a brilliant training session. Initially, setting our fears sounded like an odd concept to me, as while I’m used to setting goals, I’d never thought about it from the other perspective. It was eye-opening and reassuring to hear the senior team share their fears and see how simple the solutions could be. Doing this exercise showed trust and transparency and boosted team spirit as we continue to work from home. These things will become even more important as we enter this new phase of growth, and I’m excited to be a part of it!” – Georgie, Junior Account Executive

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