Foundation Tapping the Potential: more attention to women’s potential
In the Netherlands, part-time work is much more common on average than in other Western European countries. In the care sector it has even become the norm, especially for women. If these women were to work a few more hours per week, this could in theory be a solution to counteract the growing labor shortages. In addition, it contributes to women’s economic independence. The only question is: what stops them from working more and how do we remove those barriers? Never before has this been researched. Stichting Het Potentieel Pakken did, resulting in the report: ‘Het Potentieel Pakken in de zorg – De kansen rond grotere deeltijdbanen’, packed with interesting insights. But how can the insights from the report be shared with the outside world to create awareness? It was up to De Wolven to make this happen.
Approach: focus on a newsworthy aspect
The pitfall with many interesting insights is that you often want to share them all. There is a chance that this will diffuse the message and the press will subsequently draw their own conclusion (perhaps a conclusion you don’t want to share). Our strategy was therefore to select an insight that immediately underlines the mission of the foundation in a positive way: ‘A quarter of the employees in the care sector want to work more’ (here lies potential that the foundation wants to make better use of). The press release and report were shared with a select number of media before publication. This allowed room to prepare major pieces and interviews. Along with the research results, personal stories were also shared so that media could make the story from different angles. From health care employees to health care institutions that had participated in the study and of course the initiator of the study played an important role.
Results: from radio to TV
That the strategy worked is evident from the media results: from national media to trade media and from TV to radio, they all paid attention to the report. A small selection: Linda Nieuws, NOS, Skipr, Eva Jinek, Kassa, Radio 1, NRC, Het Financieele Dagblad, de Volkskrant, RTLZ, Arts & Auto and Hart van Nederland.
"That the topic is media-generated came as no surprise. It is often thought that women don't want to work anymore and this report proved the opposite, media feast on it. For us, the challenge lay in conveying a nuanced message, for which the president of the foundation had to be given space to tell her story. To achieve this we have had intensive contact with journalists and with success! The story of the foundation was already very powerful, we only had to tell it. And with such a promising message, that becomes even more fun to do."
Marre de Visser, Senior PR Advisor
