Staff at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust have spoken up about their experiences at work through a national survey that aims to make improvements across the NHS.

The annual NHS Staff Survey asked staff how they feel about their work and included questions about safety, speaking up and learning and development.

The results highlight a number of key areas that require improvement and show that:

• 59% of staff would recommended the organisation as a place to work.
• 61% of staff would recommend the standard of care provided if their friend or relative needed treatment
• 61% feel safe to speak up about anything that concerns them
• 84% of staff enjoying working with the colleagues in their team
• 89% of staff feel their role is making a difference to patients and service users

When speaking to colleagues Fiona Noden, Chief Executive at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, thanked staff for completing the survey and said:

I know just what it would have taken for you to give up your precious time to complete the survey and our commitment in return is to make sure that we act on what you have told us.

“Some of the results confirm to us that we have more work to do when it comes to things like fair career progression, feeling safe to raise concerns and people feeling burnout or emotionally exhausted.

“We want our organisation to be the one where every single person has a good experience and are working through the results line by line to help guide what we do next.

Dr. Niruban Ratnarajah, Chair at Bolton NHS Foundation Trust, said:

Our results reflect a decrease in the number of staff who would recommend this as a place to work or receive treatment and we are giving this our urgent attention to understand more and address this as a priority.

“The immeasurable sense of teamwork we see and feel in Bolton every single day is reflected in some of the feedback. In particular, the strong personal attachment our staff feel to their team and the support they get from their line managers.

“Feedback like this will continue to help us understand what’s making a difference and support others to do more of this in their teams.

“We will continue to encourage our staff to speak up if there’s something that could be done to improve their working lives.

Next steps and taking action

A full review of the Trust’s 2023 results is underway and actions will be developed to address them at every level across the organisation.

Some areas of key focus have already been identified and they include:

• The scores for people recommending the Trust as a place to work or receive treatment
• Improving culture and making sure all staff understand what is expected when it comes to values and behaviours
• Making further improvements to the processes in place for speaking up
• Accelerating the trust’s equality, diversity and inclusion programme

This year the Trust’s response rate was 41.5% which equates to 2,518 members of staff and is 6% increase on the Trust’s 2022 response rate.

The Trust’s full results can be found here.