Background on the NHS staff survey:

The NHS staff survey has operated since 2003 and provides a rich source of comparative data and is recognised as one of the largest workforce surveys in the world. Last year over 630,000 colleagues took time to complete, fulfilling an aspiration of the survey that “we each have a voice that counts”.  The survey is abased around 111 questions, aggregating into 21 sub scores and 9 overall themes and responses are provided by all 215 NHS statutory provider organisations and around 50 other health care organisations.

The questions include alignment to the Copenhagen Burnout Inventory and the Health and Safety Executive stress assessment and tools and have also aligned workforce disability and race equality standards into the survey and standardised analysis on the confidence of staff to raise concerns and be confident these are acted upon are derived from the answers.

NHS England state there are four main purposes of the survey; 1) consistent survey, 2) ability to compare changes over time, 3) understand variation in staff experience and 4) drive improvement.  The first two are always fulfilled and latter two left entirely to the individual organisations to pursue.   Whilst employers must take primary responsibility to drive improvement in staff experience and support, local, regional and national regulatory/oversight architecture is not using this data forensically to aid them in their responsibilities.  Two areas standout as ripe for using the data effectively.

Firstly our regulatory environment must be able to benefit from an evidence based analysis of the culture and views of staff in an organisation they are focusing on. Which inspector would not do their job well if they had analysis, broken down by staff groups cut into themes of safety, team working, compassionate leadership, diversity and inclusion etc.  A healthy working culture takes time to build up and is a good indication that our teams are able to provide great care to local residents.

Secondly there is (rightly) a huge focus on health service productivity currently, but issues with productivity will not be solved unless you look under the bonnet. Alongside surveys such as the GMC training survey, we have an abundance of data to identify at team level, the dynamics that stop us being productive and report after report have concluded this will often be issues of leadership, culture, inclusion and safety.  So alongside data from the getting it right first time and the model hospital, why are we not getting into root causes of issues and publishing staff survey data to shine a light on what needs to change at organisational and team level?

Matthew Winn, podcast host and an experienced leader in healthcare in the UK.