Background to the NHS Staff Survey

NHS England took ownership of the NHS Staff Survey from the Department of Health in April 2013. Previously, from 2003 to 2009, the Care Quality Commission and its predecessor the Healthcare Commission owned the survey.

The NHS Staff Survey offers a snapshot in time of how people experience their working lives, gathered at the same time each year. Its strength is in capturing a national picture alongside local detail, enabling NHS England to explore staff experience across different parts of the NHS and work to bring about the necessary improvements.

The NHS Staff Survey results are predominantly aimed at NHS organisations, to inform local improvements in staff experience and well-being.

The results are also used by NHS England to support national assessments of quality and safety. The Care Quality Commission uses the results to inform their Intelligent Monitoring work to help to decide who, where and what to inspect.

2023 NHS Staff Survey results publication

The 2023 NHS Staff Survey results published at 9:30am on Thursday 7 March 2024 on the Staff Survey Coordination Centre website.

This is the third year the NHS Staff Survey results have been aligned with the seven elements of the People Promise, which sets out in the words of our NHS people what would make the NHS the best place to work. This means most of the 2023 results can be compared to previous years, whilst many of the questions and the two themes (engagement and morale) have longer trend data.

Further to receiving local data, each organisation received its benchmark report under embargo on Tuesday 20 February 2024. These reports are now also published on the Staff Survey Coordination Centre website.

The 24 hour pre-release access list for the 2023 survey can be found here: National NHS Staff Survey 2023 Pre-release access list.

The views of bank-only staff were again collected in a separate tailored survey. For 2023, organisations with more than 200 bank-only staff were mandated to take part. Other organisations were able to participate on a voluntary basis. As such, findings are not directly comparable with the main NHS Staff Survey results.

The results for the 2023 NHS Staff Survey for bank only workers (NSSB) will be released on the same website in April. The results for the voluntary 2023 General Practice Staff Survey (GPSS) are being released directly to participating organisations and will not be published by NHS England.

If you have any questions, please contact the Staff Survey Coordination Centre: nhsstaffsurvey@surveycoordination.com

Update on technical issue affecting 2023 NHS Staff Survey results

Close to the publication date of the 2023 survey, a problem was identified with the quality of the data. Further investigation determined that, for respondents at some organisations working with one of the main providers of survey services who completed the questionnaire using an iPhone, questions 13 a to d were not always presented as expected. Results for q13a-d have not been released.

Following publication, further investigations have concluded that respondents who were not presented with the option to complete question 13 are likely to have answered question 14 differently. (Question 14 deals with experience of harassment, bullying or abuse.) This has created a statistical bias in the published results for question 14 which needs to be compensated for.

This is the first time an issue of this nature has arisen and affects only a minority of respondents (roughly 20,000 of the 707,460 respondents).

Detailed statistical testing has concluded that no other questions have been affected by the problems with the data.

For further information, please see the note on the NHS Staff Survey website.

Contact us

For further information, please contact: england.feedback-data@nhs.net