2006 staff survey key findings

In October 2006, more than 128,000 staff gave their views and experiences of working for the NHS in England for the national staff survey. The response rate was 53 per cent.

Key findings

The key findings for all staff in the 2006 NHS national staff survey are:

• Staff job satisfaction (out of 5): 3.43 (down from 3.44 in 2005)
• Extent of positive feeling within organisation (out of 5): 2.97 (down from 3 in 2005)
• Staff appraised in the previous 12 months: 59 per cent (down 1 per cent from 2005)
• Staff having well structured appraisal reviews in the previous 12 months: 31per cent (down 24 per cent from 2005)
• Staff appraised with personal development plans within the previous 12 months: 49 per cent (up 2 per cent from 2005)
• Percentage of staff receiving training, learning or development in the previous 12 months: 95 per cent (no change from 2005)
• Staff who had experienced discrimination in the past 12 months: 8 per cent (up 1 per cent from 2005)
• Staff experiencing harassment, bullying or abuse from other staff in the previous 12 months: 17 per cent (up 2 per cent in 2005)
• Staff suffering work-related stress in the previous 12 months: 32 per cent (down 4 per cent from 2005)
• Staff using flexible working: 72 per cent (down 1 per cent from 2005)

What NHS Employers is doing

NHS Employers will be developing a number of work programmes to support the NHS in the key areas highlighted in the survey findings.

Over the coming year we will be working with employers to understand why appraisals are not working as well as they could across the NHS and to identify what can be done to address this. This work will also feed into our review of the appraisal process which has been recommended by the recent White Paper.

There have been some significant new requirements of trusts in the equality and diversity agenda over the last year, in particular the age discrimination duty which came into effect in October, the disability discrimination duty which came into effect in December and the new gender duty which comes into effect in April this year. We have been working closely with trusts to enable them to understand the implications of these new duties, to assess their compliance and to ensure they meet them.

We will continue our work on bullying and harassment, which shows a slight increase in this year's survey. We have been running a major campaign in the last year to help employers address issues surrounding bullying and harassment of staff and we hope that this will continue to focus attention on the issue and what can be done to tackle it.

The IWL initiative has been hugely successful and evidence shows that its principles have now infiltrated into every part of the NHS. We are now working in partnership with the unions to identify what we need to do to build on the successes of IWL and to take it into the next phase.