Here you can find the results of our most recent staff engagement survey.
Download the PDF of the survey.
The survey ran in September 2016 and was designed to measure how staff feel about working at the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman. It covered a range of topics such as management and leadership, learning and development, working environment and overall engagement.
A total of 396 staff took part in the survey, that’s 82 percent of our workforce. While our overall staff engagement score remains low at 52%, it is up slightly from 49.6% last year.
We have started to see the impact of some of the things we are doing differently: 19% more staff than in last year’s survey said that our organisation-wide communications were good, and 42% more staff thought that different parts of the organisation worked well together. These improvements reflect work we have undertaken to improve how we communicate and work collaboratively across the organisation.
But we recognise there's still a long way to go. The results of the staff survey show low scores in a number of areas. In other areas scores have improved but often from low baselines.
We know our staff want to be involved and consulted in decisions that affect their work, and we need to get better at harnessing that input. We are working with staff across the organisation to make sure the changes we make have a positive impact and make a difference.
Members of the Executive Team are taking ownership for making changes in their areas in response to the issues raised in the survey. An immediate priority for us is to improve the visibility of senior managers and to engage in real dialogue with staff at all levels about the changes we are making.
We have introduced a number of initiatives to improve in this area and give staff a greater voice, including:
- Embedding a new ‘you said, we did’ approach across the organisation – a commitment from senior management to seek, listen and respond to staff feedback
- A new weekly email update from the Executive Team explaining the rationale behind decisions, and a new weekly email update from the Chief Executive reflecting on her working week.
- Strengthening the Engagement Champions Network to provide input into how decisions are communicated and play a lead role in the follow up to the staff survey by making sure the Executive Team are focusing on the right things and understand what’s behind the results
- Executive Team members hosting regular roundtable discussions to hear first-hand from staff about issues that concern them.
Whilst we are moving in the right direction, we know that we need to do much more. We recognise that it will take time to get everything right but our commitment remains firm.