HR teams within NHS Trusts will soon have access to vital feedback from employees on their health and wellbeing in a new quarterly national survey being launched in April.
The online survey taken from around 50,000 staff from across all Trusts in the UK will give HR teams information on employees’ current health and wellbeing, the individual support they receive from their Trust, and how they think services can be improved. Trusts who sign up to receive the survey will be able to benchmark their own performance against national and regional averages from anonymised data broken down by job grade and gender.
NHS Opinions has launched the new survey in the wake of the Boorman Review, which estimated that the NHS could save £555million by improving employee health and reducing absenteeism. HR managers are now tasked with meeting employee health targets under the Department of Health’s new Health and Wellbeing agenda.
It is the first time that Trusts will have access to quarterly data of this type. They currently rely on the annual NHS Staff Survey for information on employees’ health and wellbeing, or locally run surveys that don’t enable them to benchmark performance.
Chris Heather, Chief Executive Officer for NHS Opinions said: “This data could prove an invaluable tool for Trusts to measure and improve employee health and wellbeing. It will enable Trust HR teams to assess the services they offer staff every few months, and quickly implement improvements and adjustments where necessary.”
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Trusts that take advantage of the survey results will be able to obtain feedback on issues specific to their own employees, as well as the nationally benchmarked questions, which will include:
- How staff currently rate their own health
- Whether they feel line managers take a positive interest in their health and wellbeing
- Whether they have come to work not feeling well enough to perform their duties, and the reasons for doing so.
The quarterly surveys will be carried out over two-week periods, with results and analysis sent to participating Trusts within three weeks.
