As an ex employer of 30+ full time Speech & Language Therapists I was proud of the team’s positive morale and without a doubt I knew I was “liked” by the team. I would regularly receive heart-felt emails from my employees thanking me for the opportunities my service had provided them etc etc.
Since ‘moving on’ I have become increasingly aware of what could be described as ‘competitiveness’ within Speech & Language Therapy independent world that, having owned and run one of the largest services in the UK, I previously was none-the-wiser to. How naive I was!
The following blog is slightly controversial and in no way is aimed at the SLTs out there doing their very best for the families they worked for.
Speech & Language Therapy is very much a “calling” and the vast majority of clinicians I come across absolutely love their jobs; no matter who employs them or whether they work for themselves. Working outside of secure employment can at times be daunting however, thankfully, I’m relatively long in the tooth and my diary is consistently busy. The same may not be true for all independent clinicians and I know of quality independent SLTs who have second and third jobs to make up their work.
Over the past 2-3 years it has become abundantly clear that marketing companies have noticed that small businesses, including SLTs, are looking for Unique Selling Points (USPs) and that one USP is to be “award winning”. When I ran my last company, no word of a lie, I would receive an email each month telling me the service had won a whole host of awards and that to receive the ‘award’ all I had to do was to pay for either a ticket to their sparkly awards event; an advertising space in their newsletter or even, don’t laugh, a trophy to be made with my company’s details and said award on it.
Now I’m all for celebrating business and entrepreneurship via accredited/ sponsored awards (there’s quite it a few, often organised by banks like NatWest or firms like PWC) where there is a rigorous selection process and awards are genuinely won. I’m also all for celebrating clinical / therapeutic success in SLT via accredited awards (such as Giving Voice).
What I do think is disingenuous, on the part of the marketing companies that create random awards just to sell tickets to their events / sell advertising and make themselves £££, are awards for SLTs and SLT services that have zero whatsoever selection process and are not awarded due to merit.
I’ve been THAT SLT in the past and I have hold my hands up that I too claimed to be “award winning” too when in fact all I had done was answer an email with the word “accept” on to receive my PDF image of my company and ‘SLT Team of the Year” under the healthcare marketing brand’s logo.
Let’s celebrate the genuine awards in Speech & Language Therapy, like the NHS Innovation awards or the Giving Voice awards, and stop paying marketing companies for cheap awards and our playing part in confusing families and commissioners.
I’ve just done a 10 second search of my emails and attached a few examples from over the years…??
Comments welcome are per usual!