Sustaining excellent staff experience at Frimley Health

Overview

Frimley Health, a historically high-performing trust, saw a dip in NHS Staff Survey scores in 2022. In response, it adopted a more focused approach in 2025, targeting key staff experience priorities and introducing initiatives such as an employee experience team and champions network to strengthen engagement, wellbeing and employee voice.

Key benefits and outcomes

• Improved NHS Staff Survey scores across key themes, including staff engagement, culture, health and wellbeing.
• Increased staff advocacy, with 68 per cent recommending the trust as a place to work (up from 67 per cent).
• Higher engagement with wellbeing support, including increased attendance at trust-wide sessions.
• Strong workforce indicators, including low sickness absence and above-average staff retention.

What the organisation faced

The Trust has been a consistent high performer in the NHS Staff Survey; however, it experienced a dip in its scores in 2022. In response, the Trust reflected on its approach and, in 2025, introduced a more focused and targeted strategy to improving staff experience, building on its existing strengths while addressing areas of concern.

What the organisation did

The trust has had a long-standing focus on staff experience and in in 2025 decided to focus on a small number of issues to have maximum impact. It used staff survey data and feedback from staff to inform its approach. In 2025 staff experience initiatives included: 

• creating its Employee Experience team, allowing a focused effort on several key initiatives and improvements in employee engagement  
• refreshing the organisation’s values through close partnership with staff side representatives and staff networks, making them clearer and more closely linked to expected behaviours, as well as appraisal and development processes. The new approach was shaped through extensive dialogue and engagement with colleagues 
• updating the its approach to recognition through a trust-wide colleague recognition scheme known as the “Star Awards”. This introduced a wider range of ways to recognise staff, including everyday recognition, formal recognition for the small things that make a big difference, and annual awards for transformational contributions. The trust also expanded its Long Service Awards, with recognition delivered through peer-to-peer, managerial and organisation-wide celebration. 
• enhancing health and wellbeing support including initiatives such as the Menopause Aware Workplace, improved rest spaces and better promotion of its Employee Assistance Programme. The trust also focussed on violence prevention measure. The trust also supported greater visibility and use of flexible working options 
• enhancing Freedom to Speak up arrangements and focus on bullying and harassment, with a “Be Brave, Speak Up” campaign highlighting all available options to speak up 
• celebrating a more inclusive culture through events such as a trust supported Iftar and Easter celebrations and a greater focus on tackling inequality in staff experience.

Results and benefits

In 2025, the trust saw improvements across a wide range of staff experience measures in the NHS Staff Survey. Scores increased in key areas including culture, staff engagement, and health and wellbeing, reflecting the impact of its more focused approach.

• 68 per cent of staff would recommend the Trust as a place to work, up from 67 per cent.
• Among the highest scoring acute trusts for staff engagement.
• One of the lowest rates of sickness absence.
• Above-average staff retention.

These results are supported by ongoing monitoring through staff survey data, workforce metrics and feedback gathered via the employee experience champions network, enabling the trust to track progress and respond to emerging issues.

Overcoming obstacles

As a large and complex organisation, the trust recognised challenges around communication—particularly in demonstrating how staff feedback leads to tangible improvements in staff experience. Ensuring that colleagues feel heard and can see the impact of their input was a key barrier.

To address this, the trust took a more structured and transparent approach, it:

• worked closely with directorates to share relevant staff survey results and local insights more effectively
• analysed free text responses to gain deeper understanding of staff concerns and experiences
• collaborated with staff groups to co-develop solutions, using qualitative feedback to bring survey data to life
• continued to engage active staff networks and strengthened partnership working with local staff side representatives.

This combined approach helped to improve visibility of actions taken, strengthen trust in the process, and ensure staff voice is embedded in ongoing improvement efforts.

Takeaway tips

• Communication is key. Through a variety of communication channels, the trust ensures staff feedback is key to development of its approach.  
• Embedding a local network of trained staff volunteers can strengthen feedback loops, improve visibility of support, and sustain culture change over time. 
• A step-by-step approach to change has the most impact. The trust uses staff survey data to identify a manageable number of key issues to address each year. Cultural issues will take time to shift there are still areas where the trust is aiming to improve. Sustaining engagement is challenging even in a high performing trust. 
• Staff experience is not owned by HR. It is the responsibility of all parts of the organisation with people professional providing advice and support to line managers. Visible support from senior leaders is also vital.