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.

More information about the survey

Eligibility: In-house bank workers who, in the 6 months between 1 March 2025 and 1 September 2025, 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.

For more details on the eligibility criteria please refer to the relevant information in the Sampling Handbook, which can be found on the Survey Documents page of the NHS Staff Survey website.

Sampling: The list of staff eligible to take part in the survey was drawn on 1 September 2025 by each participating organisation.

Fieldwork: Questionnaires and reminders were sent to staff between September and November 2025. 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 2025 version. Organisations with fewer than 200 eligible bank only workers could also participate on a voluntary basis. A total of 145 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 2025 NSSB, please refer to the Guide to Understanding and Using Results. For help with interpreting outputs produced for 2025, please refer to the Technical Guide for bank only workers. Both guides can be found on the Survey Documents page of the NHS Staff Survey website.

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.

For more details regarding the different methods used for weighting data please refer to section 6 of the Technical Guide for bank only workers.

Score calculations: The survey questions are aligned with the NHS People Promise and two main themes of Staff Engagement and Morale. 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.

Benchmarking: 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 detailed in section 5 of the Technical Guide for bank only workers.

Please note:

• 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, 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.