Valuable feedback from the national staff survey

The trust has a variety of ways of getting feedback from people who work in the organisation. The national staff survey is one such approach and over 2200 colleagues completed this for 2024, an increase on previous year.

The board of the trust in May 2025 will consider what our medium-term ambitions are for each of the 9 staff survey measures. These 9 areas are the 7 people promises plus engagement and morale.

The information in the staff survey is broken down across the 23 directorates by which we run RDaSH for the first time, and there are significant differences between different parts of all of our 6 groups.

The focus of work over the next 6 months will be working with colleagues across the trust to think through what good practice we need to make trust wide. Our new Trust People Council, which includes our staff governors, will play a key role in that work.

We have valuable anonymised comments from around 15% of those who responded. And we will look to use regular Pulse surveys in the year ahead to build on that work.

The initial review of our data shows that:

We scored higher than our peer group average in the following categories:

• staff morale
• we are compassionate and inclusive
• we are safe and healthy
• we work flexibly

But at or slightly lower than our peer group average in others:

• staff engagement
• recognised and rewarded
• always learning
• voice that counts
• we are a team

Carlene Holden, Director of People and Organisational Development, said: “Thank you to our colleagues for completing this survey and letting us know about their experiences of working here. We had identified most of the areas of focus which colleagues highlighted through the survey and work has started in these areas. It’s pleasing that our morale score is higher than our peer group and our staff engagement score remains categorised as good. Both of these areas act as a solid foundation for us to further enhance working experiences in the trust.”

Toby Lewis, Trust Chief Executive, commented: “I am pleased that the hard work of many line managers and our Race Equality and Cultural Heritage network, sees this year’s survey show improvements in measures of racism and discrimination. We have a long way still to go to meet our promise 26 commitment. The launch of our Carers’ network last month may help us to better support colleagues across the trust to adapt their work to the rest of their lives and commitments. We want to improve engagement further, without losing the ability to work at pace and introduce the innovation our patients deserve.”

Read the full NHS Staff Survey Benchmark Report 2024 (opens in new window).

Published: April 01, 2025