1.What is the NHS Wales Staff Survey?
The NHS Wales Staff Survey is a questionnaire capturing the experiences of NHS Wales staff.
2.What is the purpose of the NHS Wales Staff Survey?
The purpose of the staff survey is to collect feedback from employees working in NHS Wales. It aims to understand their experiences, perspectives, and insights related to their work environment, job satisfaction and overall well-being.
The data collected from the surveys will provide a national picture to help shape organisational transformation in NHS Wales so that staff receive high quality, continually improving and compassionate support and can effectively deliver high quality, continuously improving and compassionate care for the communities they serve across Wales.
3.Who has commissioned the survey?
Welsh Government and Welsh Partnership Forum have commissioned Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW) on behalf of NHS Wales to design, deliver and manage the NHS Wales Staff Survey.
4.Who can take part in the survey?
The staff survey is for contracted staff and bank staff. Welsh Government will continually assess and review the scope of the survey.
5.When does the survey launch each year?
The survey will be carried out during the autumn on an annual basis. The results will be published in the spring, of the following year. This ensures results remain comparable and avoid the busy summer and winter periods.
The survey will launch at the same time to all NHS Wales organisations. The NHS Wales Staff Survey will help NHS organisations identify key themes and potential areas for improvement, which they can further explore through an internal pulse survey, which can be hosted on the same platform.
6.When does the staff survey go live? The Staff Survey will be live on Tuesday 01 October, 9.00am. When live, the links to the survey will be available on our NHS Wales Staff Survey page, which can be found at https://heiw.nhs.wales/our-work/nhs-wales-staff-survey/. The survey will remain open until Friday 29 November, 5.00pm.
7.Who will host this year’s NHS Wales Staff Survey?
IQVIA has been awarded the contract to host the NHS Wales Staff Survey for the next two years. IQVIA are a recognised supplier and have experience of working with complex NHS organisations. IQVIA will treat your completed questionnaires in strict confidence, according to UK General Data Protection Regulation (UK GDPR) and the Data Protection Act 2018. You can view their privacy policy at https://www.iqvia.com/about-us/privacy/privacy-policy .
8.How am I sure that the completion is anonymous?
The NHS Wales Staff Survey can be accessed online, from any device with internet access, and does not require anyone to log in. As it does not ask for any identifiable data and is not linked to ESR data, it is anonymous. In the free text fields, names and locations will be redacted by IQVIA to ensure responses remain anonymous to NHS Wales organisations.
Feedback from previous NHS Wales Staff Surveys has highlighted a lack of anonymity being the underlying reason for low completion rates. For this reason, we are not asking staff to log in when completing the survey. In addition to being able to complete the survey online, you can call IQVIA’s support team, should you wish to complete the survey over the telephone. They will not ask you for your name or email. We also have physical paper copies (locations differ per NHS organisation), with pre-paid envelopes so responses can be returned directly to IQVIA.
9.Where can I find the questionnaire and other survey documents?
The staff survey will be live on Tuesday 1 October, 9.00am. When live, the links to the survey will be available on our NHS Wales Staff Survey page, which can be found at https://heiw.nhs.wales/our-work/nhs-wales-staff-survey/. All survey related documents can be found on these page.
10.Can the NHS Wales Staff Survey be completed online?
Yes, the staff survey can be completed online by clicking the link at https://heiw.nhs.wales/nhs-wales-staff-survey/ , or by scanning the QR code found on NHS Wales Staff Survey dotted around your working environment.
11.Which staff groups are eligible to complete the Survey?
|
Staff group |
Yes |
No |
|
Substantiative staff |
x |
|
|
Fixed term contract staff |
x |
|
|
Staff on secondment between NHS Wales organisations |
x |
|
|
Primary care staff (employed by NHS Wales organisations) |
x |
|
|
Primary care staff (non-contracted staff) |
|
x |
|
|
|
|
|
Leave |
|
|
|
Parental leave |
x |
|
|
Maternity leave |
x |
|
|
Sickness leave (for staff who are absent for less than 12 months) |
x |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Bank only workers |
|
|
|
Paid in the last 6 months (up to 1 September) for work or training by NHS organisation directly and do not have a substantiative contract with the same organisation |
x |
|
|
Paid by an external company e.g. NHS professionals, Bank partners or agency |
|
x |
12.If an individual with a substantive contract has recently changed to a different job within the organisation, should the answers be in relation to their current or old role?
Staff should answer the questions in relation to the job they are currently working in.
13.If an individual has recently joined the organisation, should they complete the questionnaire?
New staff should answer the questions as best they can in relation to their current job with this organisation.
14.What is a ‘good’ response rate?
Previously in 2023, the NHS Wales Staff Survey had a 20% completion rate. This year, we hope to hear from more of our NHS Wales colleagues. Raising awareness of the purpose of the survey is paramount, whilst demonstrating what we do locally, as a result of the survey results.
15.What is the value in taking part in the NHS Staff Survey?
The data from the staff survey will support and ensure significant and sustained improvements in work environments and experiences such that staff thrive and are able to deliver high quality, continually improving and compassionate care.
Effective improvement interventions will be shared, disseminated and implemented (with appropriate local adaptations) to ensure continued and sustained improvements on all dimensions of staff experience that are assessed in the surveys.
The more our NHS people know their organisations are listening to them and acting on their feedback, the better the outcomes for us and our patients.
16.Why take part in the NHS Staff Survey when other listening tools are also available (e.g. internal/pulse surveys)?
The NHS Wales Staff Survey provides a detailed annual picture of staff experience across Wales and will support long-term actions for the service. It is an official statistic, with a robust and evidence-based set of questions. The national survey will allow pulse internal surveys to be better targeted at some of the key issues within NHS Wales, allowing individuals the space to speak and ensure their voices are heard.
17.Is there any information to support local communication?
Each organisation has a local NHS Wales Staff Survey lead, and they are responsible for local arrangements with the NHS Wales Staff Survey. If you have any queries, please get in touch with your lead (listed in table below).
|
Organisation |
Staff Survey Partnership Lead |
|
ABUHB |
Daniel Madge |
|
BCUHB |
Gillian Cooper |
|
CAVUHB |
Emily Hughes |
|
CAVUHB |
Angela Voyle-Smith |
|
CTMUHB |
Rebecca Watkins |
|
DHCW |
Bernadette Sesay |
|
HDUHB |
Robert Blake |
|
HEIW |
Charlotte Morris |
| NHSE | Phillipa Ioannides |
|
NHSE |
Sam Morgan |
|
NWSSP |
Elena Morris |
|
NWSSP |
Nada Tinsley |
|
PHW |
Brett Wrightbrook |
|
PTHB |
Rhys Brown |
|
PTHB |
Sam Powell |
|
SBUHB |
Dan Blyth |
| SHUHB | Sara Skre-Kelly |
|
VUNHST |
Claire Budgen |
|
WAST |
Sarah Davies |
18.Can bank staff complete the survey?
Yes, bank staff can complete the survey.
19.Can the staff survey questionnaire be completed in the workplace in work time?
We recommend that organisations or managers allow staff allocated time to complete the NHS Wales Staff Survey however, it is the responsibility of the organisation to make this decision.
20.Is the NHS Wales staff survey bilingual?
The NHS Wales staff survey is available in Welsh and English as well as other formats.
21.Do staff have to complete the survey?
Participation is not compulsory, but strongly encouraged to give their opinions and views about the organisation in which they work by completing the questionnaire. This gives every member of staff equal opportunity to have their voice heard. It is important that as many people as possible complete the questionnaire to maximise staff voice.
22.Is there an app which can be used to complete the NHS Wales Staff Survey?
The NHS Staff Survey is mobile friendly; however, it isn’t available as an app.
23.How is the NHS Wales Staff Survey different to pulse surveys?
NHS Wales Staff Survey provides a detailed picture of staff experience, with a commitment to surveying annually to provide longitudinal analysis. It is an official statistic, backed up by robust and evidence-based data. It will provide data to channel internal pulse surveys for NHS organisations across Wales.
24.How are the Survey questions chosen and developed?
The questions in the NHS Wales Staff Survey have been developed through robust and validated research and indexes. This is to ensure sound understanding of working experience of our staff.
25.What are the key changes with this year’s NHS Wales Staff Survey?
Amongst others, the key changes are we have reduced the number of monitoring questions; the survey is open for a longer period (8 weeks in comparison to 6 weeks previously) and the survey is more user-friendly, both online and paper surveys. We are committed to running the National staff survey across Wales annually going forward, which will supply longitudinal data for NHS Wales organisations. This is the first year we will have comparative data for the national survey, which has been completed at a similar time, two consecutive years (2024 and 2023).
26.I want to complete the survey over the telephone, how do I do it?
For the helpline (0808 169 9961), the caller will ring and ask for language assistance in their chosen language. Operator will call them back at an agreed time (possibly straightway) with the translator on the line and facilitate a three-way conversation and ultimately complete questionnaire over the phone if required.
They can also email the team at helpline-QH@IQVIA.com and arrange a call back.
If you have any queries about accessibility, you can contact the IQVIA support team
- Email helpline-QH@IQVIA.com or
- Call 0808 169 9961 (lines open 9am-5pm, Monday to Friday).
27.When will the results be available?
The NHS Wales Staff Survey results will be available in the spring. Due to our commitments in ensuring the data remains confidential for our staff, the data will be redacted and suppressed with our supplier before receiving and publishing the data from the survey.
28.What happens with the information collected?
Once submitted online, IQVIA will collect and check responses, paper copies will be sent to IQVIA using prepaid envelopes.
29.Can people fill in the survey multiple times?
Whilst the survey design does not prevent multiple submissions, colleagues should only complete the survey once, unless they work for multiple NHS Wales organisations.
Any further Questions please contact the team at NHSWalesStaffSurvey@wales.nhs.uk