It's a good idea to draft a communications plan that will support consistent communications with your team, with other UBTs and with leaders in Kaiser Permanente and the Union Coalition. Make sure you take into account the basic communications components of objective, audience, message, venue and budget.

Use the tools in this section to improve your communications. Some key tools for communication planning can be found in the right-hand column of this page; below is some information about how and why to use them.

Communication plan for stakeholders
This tool provides a place to record your audience, message, venue, timeline and person responsible for communicating. Provide a copy of the worksheet to your team and then fill it out—using the communication mapping tool and your meeting notes—to ensure communication with all stakeholders.

This tool will help your team to identify the following:

• What is being communicated;
• Who needs to be communicated to;
• The method used to communicate and obtain feedback;
• When and how often the message will be communicated;
• Who is responsible for communicating this message.

Team communication plan
This tool helps organize information that needs to be communicated to team members who missed a UBT meeting.

Communication mapping tool
This worksheet can help team members identify their "communication targets"—those individuals or departments that need to be involved in helping the team improve a function or who will be interested in the work the team is doing.

UBT co-lead report to sponsors
This tool provides the UBT co-leads a way to capture the work focus and progress for the team's sponsors. Provide a completed copy to the team's sponsors on a regular schedule or as requested.

After successful completion of this tool, your team's sponsor will know:

• What goal the UBT is working on;
• What measurement team members are using to test for success;
• What small tests of change are being done to further the team's goal;
• What team members have learned from their tests;
• Whether the team has completed the PDSA cycle and implemented any of the small tests of change and, if so, what changes have been implemented.