The collaborative Communications and Engagement team from Arden & GEM and Midlands and Lancashire CSUs worked with an NHS trust to deliver a new, engaging recruitment section on their website to highlight their commitment to care, respect and openness.

Background

Worcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust (WAHT) employs thousands of healthcare professionals across multiple hospital sites. The Trust wanted to enhance its digital recruitment by creating a dedicated and engaging ‘Work with Us’ section on their website.

The Trust’s aim was to better reflect its values and work culture and showcase the opportunities within the organisation, while making the area easy to manage and compliant with accessibility standards.

WAHT needed a flexible digital solution that would attract a wide variety of candidates, visually reflect the Trust’s branding and values, allow their internal communications team to build and manage content with ease and deliver an accessible, mobile-responsive experience.

Action

To meet WAHT’s objectives, we undertook a phased design and development process.

Discovery and planning: we worked closely with the Trust’s communications team to understand user needs, organisational goals and the type of content that needed to be shared with potential job applicants.

Bespoke block design: we designed and built a suite of bespoke content blocks featuring text that aligned to the Trust’s branding colour palette, video with parallax scrolling for text and quotes, flexibility to add text and images in one or two columns with dynamic image layout, testimonials with option to reveal more detail and graphics with interactive links.

Each block was built to visually align with WAHT’s branding and values imagery, creating a unified digital recruitment presence.

Empowering content editors: The block structure enabled WAHT’s trained content management system (CMS) users to build and update pages, combining featured elements as required. This approach delivered the flexibility and scalability they required, allowing new pages to be created without developer input.

Accessibility: accessibility was a cornerstone of the project. Each block was rigorously tested to meet WCAG 2.2 guidelines, including keyboard navigation, screen reader compatibility, colour contrast and font legibility and responsiveness on mobile and tablet devices through browser testing across different platforms.

Impact

The new ‘Work with Us’ area launched in July 2025, delivering a marked improvement in both usability and aesthetics. Key improvements included:

• Stronger alignment between digital presence and Trust brand
• More engaging layout and interactivity through bespoke content blocks
• Ability for Trust users to manage page content via the website CMS
• Full accessibility, enhancing inclusivity for all users.

Feedback

“The new Work with Us area has transformed how we present ourselves to prospective employees. The bespoke blocks not only look great but give us the flexibility to keep content fresh and engaging. The team made accessibility a priority throughout, and the end result speaks for itself.”

Rebecca Bourne, Deputy Director for CommunicationsWorcestershire Acute Hospitals NHS Trust

For more information

Visit WAHT’s Work With Us area: https://www.worcsacute.nhs.uk/work-with-us/

Contact us to find out how we can support your organisation.