The Big Shout

Digital isn’t always the solution. The solution will be found by listening and understanding your audience. 

The Big Shout – Internal Newspaper for Avon Fire & Rescue Service.

By talking and running surveys, we found a lot of operational staff (fire firefighters or non-desk employees ) just simply weren’t getting updates/information due to the unpredictability of their job.

Issues faced were

1. Time required to logon and access particular information digitally
2. Isolating some staff due to where some IT systems had been positioned within stations.  
3. Not very accessible

So we split the project to create Big and Mini Shouts. The mini was to be delivered into inboxes as an e-newsletter on a weekly basis with highlights and the Big Shout to be delivered to departments on a quarterly basis.

The Big Shout staff newspaper was created to deliver:

1. in-depth stories
2. celebrate service and employee success more widely
3. focus topics of Health and Wellbeing
4. access critical information happening across the service area
5. new employees and recruits introductions.
6. can be view at someones leisure in a location of choice.
7. and employee engagement and recognition. 

We also devised a collaborative and engagement game section at the back, such as cross words and spot the difference. Creating an internal newspaper allows Avon Fire & Rescue Service to bridge the gaps across various different departments and put them on to a level playing field in terms of how information is communicated.

With around 50% of Staff in Avon Fire and Rescue Service having Dyslexia, collectively, the service needed to improve accessibility.

1. Line length – Making it more legible to read by breaking up line length
2. Pull out quotes
3. Better use of H1, H2, H3 – to clearly define Heading styles 
4. Printed on off white paper
5. CTA’s with flag’s and sign posting. – Giving the reader a clear instruction
6. More engaging layout by zoning
7. Better navigation giving the reader control over what they see
8. Removing the use of Italics generally and for quotes
9. Paper size – readability, the paper size itself was tested, we didn’t want to have something that was too small or to large it was a pain to hold, nor make content squashed and not have enough room for images, so we opted for tabloid.

Sustainability

28PP – The paper chosen is made from renewable virgin fibre. EU Ecolabel and FSC certified. The inks used are 100% certified green energy and contained in fully recyclable containers. They are also also de-inkable, meaning the newspaper can be completely recycled to create new newsprint. Whilst Avon Fire & Rescue Service didn’t print in-house, they used an external company called the Newspaper Club, and their Solar panels at the warehouse’s generate over 100MWh of electricity per year producing enough power to print all their newspapers.