NHS Orkney 2025 staff survey results signal further progress
Last week we received our latest annual staff survey results, which show that people’s experience of working at NHS Orkney continues to improve year-on-year.
The annual, national staff survey (called iMatter) takes place across all Health Boards.
The latest results show further progress in most areas, suggesting that we are doing the right things to make NHS Orkney a great place to work.
There are 30 questions in the iMatter survey and NHS Orkney improved in 20 of them. The scores were the same as last year for the remaining nine questions and only one decreased by just one point. There is a lot to celebrate about these results, especially given the busy year we’ve had.
69% of staff responded to the survey this year and had their say which is the same response rate as last year.
Our Employee Engagement Index score (scale of 0-100) has improved for the fourth consecutive year and is 76 (75 last year) and the overall experience of working here score (scale of 0-10) is 6.7 (up from 6.5 last year).
These results tell us we are continuing to improve year-on-year and consistently make positive changes to people’s experience of working at NHS Orkney. Among the positive movements we have seen are:
- I would be happy for a friend or relative to access services within my organisation (+2)
- I feel appreciated for the work I do (+2)
- I am confident my ideas and suggestions are acted upon (+2)
- I am confident that my concerns will be followed up and responded to (+2)
- I feel involved in decisions relating to my team (+2)
- I get enough helpful feedback on how well I do my work (+2)
- I feel my organisation cares about my health and wellbeing (+1)
- I would recommend my organisation as a good place to work (+1)
There are areas we need to give greater focus as we look to the year ahead – and these include:
- I feel sufficiently involved in decisions relating to my organisation (-1 and our lowest score)
- I feel that Board members who are responsible for my organisation are sufficiently visible (no change from last year)
- I am confident that I can safely raise concerns about issues in my workplace (no change from last year)
- I am confident performance is managed well in my organisation (+1 but still one of our lowest scores)
- I have confidence and trust in Board members who are responsible for my organisation (+1)
Our organisational priorities for this year, which are included in our new staff experience programme, remain:
- Staff health and wellbeing
- Valuing and recognising staff
- Better involving staff in decision-making
- Listening to and acting on staff feedback and closing the
- Living our values of open and honest, respect and kindness and working with staff to develop new underpinning behavioural standards
- Making sure everyone feels safe to raise concerns.
Laura Skaife-Knight, Chief Executive at NHS Orkney said: “We remain absolutely committed to putting people first in all we do and to further improving people’s experience of working here. Whilst these results indicate progress which we should rightly recognise and indicate we are focusing on the right things in response to staff feedback, we will take on board the feedback about the areas we need to continue to focus on to make the improvements based on what matters to staff most to ensure continuous improvement.”
The full report is available here.