Findings for reward and recognition in the NHS Staff Survey

Feeling recognised and valued

There has been an improvement in staff feeling recognised and valued. There is a 2 per cent increase this year, in staff feeling satisfied with recognition for good work and feeling their organisation values their work.

Despite being lower than pre-pandemic levels, it is important to note that the scores are going in a positive direction. This is reflective of the work organisations are doing to support the recognition and experience of their staff. 

The role of line managers is crucial in terms of ensuring staff feel recognised and valued. Line managers are responsible for providing feedback, motivating their team members, and recognising them for the valuable contribution they have made. 

72.69 per cent of staff were satisfied with how their manager values their work. This is an increase of over 1 per cent and back in line with the scores from 2020. 

Satisfaction with pay

There has been a 6 per cent (31.23 per cent) improvement around satisfaction with pay.

This comes after a steep decline between 2021 and 2022 but remains around 7 percentage points below the pre-pandemic level (2019). 

It is not clear why there has been a significant increase in the score this year but may represent the point in time when the agenda for change pay dispute was settled in 2023. 

It is reassuring to see from the results that across a number of staff groups, satisfaction with pay recovered to levels similar to 2021.

However, satisfaction continues to decline among medical and dental staff (32.05 per cent), which is 23 percentage points lower than in 2020. 

Employers are encouraged to take an in-depth look at their individual results to look at local trends and highlight areas of success and improvement. You can do this by accessing NHS England’s interactive staff survey tool.

Background

‘We are recognised and rewarded’ is one element of the NHS People Promise and features as a summary indicator in the staff survey to support the overall picture of staff experience across the NHS.

There are five questions within the survey that contribute to the overall indicator around reward and recognition:

• satisfaction with the recognition for good work
• satisfaction with the extend to which the organisations values work
• satisfaction with levels of pay
• feeling valued and appreciated by staff
• feeling valued by their manager.

Further resources to support employers

We offer a range of support in terms of rewarding and recognising staff on our website, which you may find useful:

• Advice on how organisations can successfully recognise staff with long service awards.
• Why organisations should recognise their staff and the different approaches they can take to employee recognition.
• Information on how employers can measure the impact of their recognition offer
• Reward strategy toolkit, , aimed at supporting employers develop a successful reward strategy within their organisations. 
• The role of line managers and total reward.