Results from the NHS Staff Survey question
The National Staff Survey captures the responses of NHS Staff to a range of questions annually. The Trust, like all other NHS organisations, participates in the staff survey and uses the responses to benchmark performance over time and against similar organisations.
Since 2018/19 Trusts have been required to include information regarding their performance against two indicators within the staff survey in their Quality Accounts regarding equal opportunities for career progression or promotion and harassment, bullying or abuse from other staff.
Does your organisation act fairly with regard to career progression / promotion, regardless of ethnic background, gender, religion, sexual orientation, disability or age?
| Best | 55.2% | 55.8% | 62.4% | 60.2% | 58.9% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your Organisation | 40.1% | 38.4% | 42.6% | 37.2% | 35.7% |
| Average | 46.2% | 46.1% | 48.5% | 49.8% | 46.2% |
| Worst | 40.1% | 38.4% | 42.6% | 37.2% | 35.7% |
In the last 12 months how many times have you personally experienced harassment, bullying or abuse at work from managers?
| Best | 31.2% | 23.7% | 20.9% | 29.0% | 24.2% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your Organisation | 21.3% | 21.4% | 20.9% | 29.0% | 24.% |
| Average | 17.8% | 17.5% | 15.2% | 14.8% | 13.9% |
| Worst | 12.3% | 11.6% | 11.1% | 8.3% | 5.3% |
In the last 12 month how many times have you personally experienced harassment, bullying or abuse at work from colleagues?
| Best | 23.6% | 22.2% | 24.2% | 26.8% | 25.9% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Your Organisation | 19.7% | 21.4% | 21.0% | 26.8% | 25.9% |
| Average | 17.3% | 18.3% | 18.1% | 17.4% | 17.7% |
| Worst | 9.4% | 14.0% | 16.2% | 15.3% | 15.8% |
We still have the lowest scores among ambulance Trusts, which is disappointing, but understandable given the challenges we face and the work we know we still have to do. However, the survey does identify some important improvements that have been made:
• Fewer of our people are experiencing bullying from managers or feeling under pressure from their manager to come into work when they are unwell
• A greater number of our people also feel safe to report unsafe clinical practice indicating we are creating a culture which is becoming more open and which can learn from mistakes when they happen. That sense of increased safety is also reflected in the fact that fewer people also experienced violence from service users
These numbers still need to improve further but they are providing us with the confidence that we are able to make a difference to the experience of our staff and volunteers.
There are other areas where we have seen a reduction in our score, the most important of which are that fewer of our people would recommend the Trust as a place to work and that more of our staff feel that relationships are under strain. We also scored low on people’s ability to access training.
We know that we have further work to do to tackle the deep-rooted, long-standing issues which have affected our staff and volunteers and we are moving quickly to accomplish this. Since the survey was conducted in November 2021, we have made progress in a number of areas, this includes:
- A significant reduction in legacy employment relations
- Encouraging people to speak up with a 900% increase in people coming forward due to our ‘Speak Up, Speak Out’ campaign
- Recruiting a substantive Executive Team which is now complete
- Transferring some 600 trainees to the new training provider Medipro and securing a new training facility at West Suffolk College
- Continuing to invest in staff health and well-being with a new health and wellbeing team, welfare wagons, mental health and 130 TRIM practitioners
- Working with NHS partners on managing demand through cohorting and developing alternative pathways – to help people stay out of hospital
- Making good progress at completing outstanding actions that our regulators have set for us
Next steps:
Our focus now is on building on these initial steps to increasingly make our Trust a better place to work for everyone. We are doing this in a number of ways including:
- Finalising our People Strategy and launching a new approach to training and education for our people
- Strengthening our People Services team so we can sustainably manage employee relations cases and begin to tackle the root cause of these cases by creating a team of business partners who will work alongside frontline managers to help resolve issues at work and to speed up our systems and processes
- Commissioning an independent review of race and disability within our Trust so we can get to the core of issues of discrimination and redouble our efforts to be a truly inclusive place to work
- Further developing our approach to health and well-being
As we move forwards, we will be measuring our progress against the ‘pillars’ of the NHS People Promise, which sets out a vision for everyone who works in the NHS.
Next Page: Commissioning for Quality and Innovation (CQuIN)