About the NHS Staff Survey for Bank Only Workers
The NHS Staff Survey (NSS) is one of the largest workforce surveys in the world and has been conducted every year since 2003. The survey is a vital component in the NHS approach to employee listening, alongside the National Quarterly Pulse Survey and the monthly People Pulse. In 2022, NHS England extended eligibility to participate to NHS workers who do not have a substantive contract but work for the NHS via an in-house bank.
The NHS Staff Survey for bank only workers (NSSB) provides an opportunity for organisations to continuously survey their bank workers in a consistent and systematic manner. This makes it possible to build up a picture of staff experience, compare and monitor change over time, and to identify variations between different staff groups. Obtaining feedback from bank workers, and taking account of their views and priorities, is vital for driving improvements in the NHS.
The results are primarily intended to be used by organisations to help review and improve staff experience. The Care Quality Commission use the results from the survey to monitor ongoing compliance with essential standards of quality and safety. The survey supports accountability of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care to Parliament for delivery of the NHS Constitution.
More information about the NSSB is included below and can also be found on the NHS Staff Survey website: https://www.nhsstaffsurveys.com/results/bank-worker-results
More information about the survey
Eligibility: In-house bank workers who, in the 6 months between 1 March 2024 and 1 September 2024, had been paid for any work or training were eligible to participate in the survey. Bank workers who are part of a collaborative can participate; the only difference with the collaborative bank model is that a single organisation holds the bank worker data. Staff working on the bank who also had a substantive or fixed term contract at the organisation and externally funded bank or agency workers were excluded.
Sampling: The list of staff eligible to take part in the survey was drawn on 1st September 2024 by each participating organisation.
Fieldwork: Questionnaires and reminders were sent to staff between September and November 2024. Bank workers were sent either an email containing a link to the online survey or a letter with a QR code linking to the online survey. All organisations were required to have a minimum period of 8 weeks during which responses to surveys could be submitted.
Participation: Following the successful extension of the survey to bank workers on a voluntary basis in 2022, all organisations with at least 200 active in-house bank workers were required to invite those workers to participate in the 2024 version. Organisations with fewer than 200 eligible bank only workers could also participate on a voluntary basis. A total of 153 NHS trusts and one additional organisation participated in the survey.
Analysis and reporting: For a brief overview of the survey and the reporting outputs available from the 2024 NSSB, please refer to the Basic Guide. For help with interpreting outputs produced for 2024, please refer to the Technical Guide for bank only workers. Both guides can be found here.
Weighting: Results for the NSSB are weighted to account for organisation size. This weight is calculated for all participating trusts.
Certain survey questions are not weighted or benchmarked in reports because they ask for demographic or factual information, such as age, gender, or how many hours a week a respondent is contracted to work. Unlike the NSS results for staff on substantive contracts, the NSSB results are not weighted by occupation group. When making comparisons against the benchmark group results, it should be noted that the occupation group profile of the bank workforce at the organisation may be different from the average for the benchmark group, and any differences should be considered when interpreting the results.
Note: Prior to release of the results of the 2023 NSSB, a potential problem was discovered with the data for question 18. To note, this affected only a small proportion of respondents (<9% of the total). Detailed analysis also revealed those who missed question 18 were likely to answer question 19 differently.
The issue affected the results for q18a-d, q19a-d, People Promise 4 (We are safe and healthy), two of its sub-scores (Negative experiences and Health and safety climate) and the BWRES indicators and WDES metrics which use the data from questions 18 and 19.
Additional corrective weighting has been applied to the 2023 results for these measures to compensate for this issue. Please see https://www.nhsstaffsurveys.com/survey-documents/ for more details.
For more details regarding the different methods used for weighting data please refer to section 6 of the Technical Guide for bank only workers, which can be found here.
Score calculations: Each People Promise element score and theme score is based on two to four sub-scores (except for ‘We are recognised and rewarded’ which has no sub-scores) with each sub-score calculation dependent on the responses given to between one and nine questions.
The People Promise element scores, theme scores and sub-scores are scored on a 0-10 point scale and reported as average scores, where a higher score always equates to a more positive outcome. To achieve a 0-10 point scale for these measures, all responses for the contributing questions are re-scored to fit this scale, so that each question is on the same scale even if they use different response scales within the questionnaire. Details of how the responses are scored for each of the questions is included in section 3 of the Technical Guide for bank only workers, which is available here.
Benchmarking: Organisations are assigned to a benchmark group based on the services they offer. This means that comparisons are only made between organisations of a similar type and ensures comparisons are fair.
NSSB results are not weighted by occupation group and do not use the same weighting method as the NSS. When comparing an organisation’s results against the results for its benchmark group, note the occupation group profile of the organisation’s bank workforce may be different from the benchmark group average and any differences should be considered when interpreting the results.
Trusts participating in the survey are assigned to one of the below benchmark groups depending on the services they provide:
- Acute and Acute & Community Trusts
- Acute Specialist Trusts
- Mental Health & Learning Disability and Mental Health, Learning Disability & Community Trusts
- Community Trusts
- Ambulance Trusts
Benchmark groups for organisations that participate voluntarily are also detailed in section 5 of the Technical Guide for bank only workers, which can be found here.