St. Helens and Knowsley Hospitals NHS Trust
Executive Summary for Submission of Paper to the Board
Paper No. NHST(13)025Subject: 2012 NHS Staff Survey Trust Board Report
Purpose: To provide the Board with an overview of the outcomes of the Staff Survey for 2012
Summary: :
· Purpose of Survey
· Structure of Survey
· Performance Overview
· Key Findings of note
· Proposed Actions.
Corporate Objectives met: Developing Organisational Culture and supporting our workforce
Financial Implications: Continued investment in services, no new financial requirements.
Stakeholders: Staff, Line Managers, Staff Side colleagues
Recommendation(s): The Board are requested to note the outcomes and accept for progression into a detailed milestone plan interventions to address the proposed actions.
Review Date: March 2014
Author (name and title): Adam Rudduck Assistant Director of OD
Presenting Director (name and title): Anne-Marie Stretch, Director of HR
Board date: March 2013
St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
2012 NHS Staff Survey
Trust Board Report
1. INTRODUCTION
The National Staff Survey (NSS) was undertaken by Quality Health for St Helens and Knowsley Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust (STHK) between September 2012 and December 2012
A sample of staff was used for the survey which was determined by the total number of staff employed, on a nationally determined sliding scale. The sample was generated at random on a nationally agreed protocol from all those employed on 1st September 2012. For STHK this equated to 850 staff
The data generated from this sample is for the purposes of the Care Quality Commission monitoring assessments, and is also used by other NHS bodies such as the Department of Health.
Questionnaires were, in the main, batch‐delivered to the Trust and distributed to staff through the network of Staff Survey Champions. Staff responded by using a pre‐paid response envelope provided by the contractor. Two reminders were sent; a first reminder letter, and a further mailing which included a repeat questionnaire. Additional promotional activities were undertaken including the chance to win an iPad in an effort to maximise the response rate. (Donated at no cost to the NHS)
This report pulls together all the conclusions arising from the survey and action points into an Executive Summary.
2. QUESTIONNAIRE CONTENT
The questionnaire content is agreed nationally after extensive consultation between the CQC, the Department of Health, and the Survey Advice Centre. In 2012, a shorter version of the questionnaire was used, using mostly questions from the previous year with several new questions. Many questions were dispensed with.
The Survey Advice Centre produces national feedback reports for each organisation, and these map individual questions to “Key Findings”. The allocation of questions to Key Findings along with their respective results is set out in Agenda 1 below.
The core questionnaire includes questions to fulfil the Health and Safety Executive’s Stress Audit.
Most of the questions in this year’s survey are directly relevant to Improving Working Lives.
In this report, the results of the questionnaire have been summarised and presented in the form of 28 Key Findings. (Appendix 1)
3. RESPONSE RATE
Local
415 completed questionnaires were returned from this sample. 4 members of staff returned their questionnaires without filling them in. A group of 8 staff were excluded from the official sample as ineligible. The response rate to the NSS was therefore 49% (415 usable responses from a final sample of 842), with the demographic breakdown of respondents representative of that of the Trust.
National
Organisations surveyed by Quality Health had a mean overall response rate of 50%. The overall national response rate for Acute Trusts in England was 49% equivalent to that of STHK.
4. RESULTS
Staff Engagement
This section presents an overall indicator of staff engagement which shows an improvement on the 2011 score and places the Trust above the national average for acute Trusts.
This overall indicator of staff engagement has been calculated using the questions that make up Key Findings 22, 24 and 25. These Key Findings relate to the following aspects of staff engagement: staff members’ perceived ability to contribute to improvements at work (Key Finding 22); their willingness to recommend the Trust as a place to work or receive treatment (Key Finding 24); and the extent to which they feel motivated and engaged with their work (Key Finding 25).
Local Results
The full management report document from Quality Health will be available under the Staff Matters section of the Trust intranet.
In general the results are positive with gains made over last year’s score for the majority of Key Findings. Of the 28 Key findings, 15 have shown improvement, 1 has remained unchanged with only 3 showing a statistically significant reduction.
Details of the changes for all Key findings are provided in Appendix 1.
When reviewing these results, KF26, the percentage of staff having equality and diversity training in last 12 months has shown a dramatic reduction which for this Key Finding places the Trust in the lowest (worst) 20% of acute Trusts nationally. This is as a consequence of current Trust policy, validated by the NHS Litigation Authority, which requires staff to repeat this training every 36 months. As the majority of staff completed this training between 2010 and 2011 we would not expect to see significant number respond positively to this until our 2013 staff survey.
5. RECOMMENDATIONS
Since the 2011 Staff survey, there have been a number of significant changes that impact the use of the survey results.
The Care Quality Commission’s independent assessment of individual Trusts’ performance (Health Check) has now been withdrawn. However, the Department of Health’s Operating Framework 2012‐13 has maintained the significant changes to the way in which Trusts need to prioritise actions arising from the Patient and Staff Surveys introduced initially by the operating framework in previous years.
In December 2012 the Department of Health published the Operating Framework for the NHS 2012‐13 and the Operating Framework sets out specific arrangements by which the Department of Health will support providers and commissioners to ensure staff engagement during a time of policy fluidity and structural change. In particular, the Operating Framework in 2011 stated that special materials will be produced to assist in engagement with staff and in relation to the challenge of improving productivity required for the achievement of Quality Improvement and Productivity Programme (QIPP) goals. It is known that the patient survey programme will be extended in scope and that the national staff survey will continue in future years. Ensuring staff engagement is therefore a continuing supporting measure and Operating Framework states that "Our staff continue to be our most vital resource. All organisations must use the results from the National Staff Survey to improve continuously staff experience and service to patients".
The following are suggested action points for consideration by the Board for action planning are based on Quality Health’s recommendations within the report and the outputs of previous action plans. The four headline areas recommended for the Board to keep under close review throughout the year are highlighted below and will be monitored by the Workforce Council. Whilst some of these are consistent with those from the previous survey results it should be recognised that progress has been made.
5.1 Personal Development
· Undertake further work on the quality of training and its relevance to staff, particularly in relation to patient / service user experience, in light of the Francis Report which indicated that results from the in‐patient and staff surveys were key indicators for the level of performance. Work on implementation of training and systems that assure a patient focussed services encompassing the recommendations from Francis including but not limited to culture, customer service and HCA development.
5.2 Job
· Ensure that there are clear arrangements in place to listen to staff proposals, individual or collective, for improving processes, systems, and patterns of care, and that these encompass informal meetings with the top team, formal focus group work, and linkage into the business and clinical planning processes. This can be done by extending the listening events such as Team Talks that were re-introduced last year.
5.3 Managers and the Organisation
· Enhance the focus on communications to ensure that key messages upwards and downwards are communicated more effectively. Work on improving the cascade of information through existing processes such as team brief and intranet may be necessary, alongside the introduction of new approaches.
5.4 Health, Wellbeing and Safety at Work
· Identify the location of spikes in bullying and harassment incidents from patients and the public, through analysis of incident reporting.
· Improve awareness of the need to report bullying and harassment in a confidential fashion, by raising awareness of policy process and access to confidential hot line.
Publicising the results
In the spirit of openness already approved by the organisation, the results of the staff survey will be publicised through all available channels. This publicity will include:
· Display presentations in appropriate locations on St Helens & Whiston Hospital sites.
· The Management Report to be available on the Intranet.
· Copies to Clinical Governance teams and to Divisional and Departmental Heads.
· Copies to the local Staff Side representatives.
· Presentation to the Trust senior managers by Quality Health.
Reporting to staff on the outcomes of the survey, and telling staff what has been done about key issues arising from it is a major help in maximising response rates at the next survey and significantly improves the credibility of the process.
Each of these recommendations will form the basis of a detailed action plan with mile stones drawn up, agreed and monitored through the Workforce Council over the coming 12 months.
6. ACTION REQUIRED BY THE BOARD
The Trust Board is asked to note the content of this report and to approve and support the recommendations within it. An action plan will be developed following the Trust feedback presentation on the 19th April 2013. This will be monitored by the Workforce Council and assurance of delivery will be provided to the Governance Select Committee as part of the Board Governance Assurance Framework.
Prepared by:
Adam Rudduck
Assistant Director of Organisational Development
18th March 2013
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APPENDIX 1
Summary of all Key Findings for St Helens & Knowsley Teaching Hospitals
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