Tell us what you want, what you really, really want?
In this blog, Steven Weeks shares his views on the end of the NHS Staff Survey 2025 response period and reflects on what organisations can do before the results expected in March 2026. He also highlights some new buzzwords and phrases that have come to light in 2025.
Employees across the NHS have now completed the annual NHS Staff Survey. Despite a challenging context, NHS organisations have delivered probably the biggest employee opinion survey in the world. Now that staff have had this opportunity to share their voice at work, there is a short interval before organisations need to start analysing results and thinking about how to communicate them internally.
Over the past few years, a lot of innovative work has been undertaken on how best to understand the data. Trusts have focused on identifying key drivers that have the most impact on results. Using available IT tools, it is now possible to get results presented in a visually impactful way and calculate the strength of links between questions and overall themes. In addition, organisations have also explored free text comments to get a better idea of why staff feel the way they do, as well as just looking at what answers they have given. In many cases, organisations are now using AI tools to assist in understanding the comments, though it continues to be vital to read and reflect on them as well.
Many employers have also reviewed how they communicate results internally to make the results more localised for departmental managers and to identify actions that can be taken at local level. There has been an increase in the use of dashboards to present data in an understandable way. Trusts are also communicating to staff what they do with the results to demonstrate the role of the survey as a feedback channel. The traditional you said, we did approach has evolved to incorporate staff involvement in developing solutions to issues raised.
This year, the medium-term planning guidance including a framework for how organisations should set out the actions they are taking to address the most common issues in the survey. It also emphasises the importance of free text comments.
Results are still under embargo, so it essential that guidance is followed. However, this does not prevent internal analysis and communication around results.
Once the full results are published, NHS Employers will offer an opportunity to reflect and share learning. In the interim, please do get in touch with queries or to share ideas.
HR buzzwords of 2025
In 2025 we have seen the usual proliferation in the HR press of new jargon to describe sometimes new and often not-so-new issues. Here are my favourite three, which you may or may not want to use, but you will want to be aware of them as they have some relevance to the NHS.
The Big Stay: replacing the "great resignation" of the post-pandemic period (much commented on, but not as noticeable in the NHS as other sectors); we now see the reverse: an increase in retention rates. In a tighter labour market employees are more likely to stay in their existing jobs. There has been a significant improvement in NHS turnover rates since 2021 with positive impact. The by-product of this though is that organisations cannot rely on turnover to help achieve workforce reductions.
Rage Quitting: a practice hopefully not found very much in the NHS (and it has yet to show up in national data), where aggrieved employees quit without notice leaving posts unfilled until replacement can be found. The use of stay interviews and identifying hot spots of high likelihood of leaving from staff survey data could help address this.
Micro shifting: the practice of seeking to work in multiple shorter periods rather than more traditional daily or weekly patterns. In the NHS this can be reflected in approaches to flexible working. It can help those individuals who have non-work commitments but also creates complexities for organisations to ensure continuity of care.
There are many more (up to 25 according to the Association for HR Academy) and not all apply in an NHS context, “ghost jobbing” being unlikely and "coffee badging” impractical.
