NHSScotland Staff Survey 2015 National Report

9 Involved in decisions

Including staff in organisational decision‐making has the potential to obtain valuable new opinions, ideas and solutions. It can also promote employee trust in the organisation and their senses of ownership and responsibility in respect of changes made. In this section of the survey, staff were asked for their views on how well their organisation involves them in decision‐making.

Figure 6 shows that the majority of respondents replied positively to one of the four statements in this section relating to their specific role:

• Q3‐2 I have sufficient opportunities to put forward new ideas or suggestions for improvement in my workplace

Just over half (53%) of respondents agreed that they have sufficient opportunities to put forward new ideas or suggestions for improvement in their workplace; this was a decrease of one percentage point on the 2014 score. Across all Boards positive responses ranged between 25% and 76%; Executive Grades/Senior Managers who responded to the survey were the most likely to respond positively to this statement.

The other three statements in this strand (Q3‐1, Q3‐3 and Q3‐4) appear in the list of the five lowest scoring statements within the whole survey (see Table 2).

• Q3‐3 I am confident my ideas or suggestions would be listened to (41% positive responses)
• Q3‐4 I have a choice in deciding what I do at work (40% positive responses)
• Q3‐1 Staff are always consulted about changes at work (28% positive responses).

Q3‐1 Staff are always consulted about changes at work recorded the lowest percentage positive response of all the attitudinal statements in the 2015 survey. Across all Boards positive responses ranged between 13% and 62%; Executive Grades/Senior Managers were the most likely to respond positively to this statement.

For all questions in this section, there was a range in the percentage of positive responses across NHS Boards (see details in Appendix C) and across Staff Groups (see details in Appendix D). Executive Grades/Senior Managers who responded to the survey were the most likely to respond positively to each of the four statements. Ambulance Staff who responded to the survey were the least likely to give a positive response.

Overall, of the five strands of the Staff Governance Standard, 'Involved in decisions' was the strand where staff who responded to the survey replied in the least positive manner. Three of the four statements in this section had a percentage positive response below 50% and were amongst the five lowest scoring statements within the survey as a whole. Within this section, respondents were most positive about the opportunities they had to put forward ideas or suggestions for improvement in their workplace. However, they were less positive with regard to their confidence that these ideas or suggestions would be listened to, that they would always be consulted about changes at work and that they had a choice in deciding what they did at work.

Figure 6 ‐ Involved in Decisions

[Note: There may be variation up to 1% when compared to the Frequency Data due to rounding.]