Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he plans to take with NHS England to address potential gaps in communication between hospital management and frontline staff.

The People Promise provides a single framework for the National Health Service to talk about, understand, measure and improve employee experience across the NHS in England.

There are national tools to support this such as the NHS Staff Survey and the National Quarterly Pulse survey which provide more insights. The NHS Staff Survey includes free text comments and supporting analysis for managers and boards to understand more directly the experiences and perspectives of individuals. Employers also typically arrange listening and engagement events to share the Staff Survey results with their staff, hear their ideas and share progress against measures taken during the year through a ‘You Said, We Did’ cycle.

In 2022 NHS England published Listening Well guidance, supporting a shift to more structured listening. Listening initiatives can include events such as executive briefings with question and answer sessions and champions such as Freedom to Speak Up Guardians.

The Government supports the right of staff working in the NHS to speak up and raise concerns and have put a range of support and protection in place, including strengthened legal protections to prohibit discrimination against workers and job applicants who have spoken up.

We have also established a National Guardian to help drive positive cultural change in the NHS, who oversee a network of Freedom to Speak Up Guardians, covering every trust, whose role is to help and support staff who want to speak up about something in their organisation.