NHS Staff Survey 2024: health and wellbeing overview
The general picture of health and wellbeing in the NHS Staff Survey 2024 is stable compared to 2023, but challenges remain.
The we are safe and healthy score has shown slight movement but not enough to represent a notable increase.
The overall indicator for safe and healthy workplaces includes questions about health, wellbeing and violence.
Organisations are encouraged to look at trends in individual questions to benchmark their progress, celebrate success and identify areas of improvement.
Stress and sickness
Scores relating to staff feeling stressed and burnt out remained broadly steady. While this can be seen as positive, as levels are at their lowest since 2021, they remain unacceptably high. The percentage of staff who are unwell as result of work related stress was 41 per cent.
Presenteeism
The percentage of staff who have gone into work in the last three months despite not feeling well enough to perform their duties increased to nearly 56 per cent. Presenteeism remains a big challenge for the service and improvements need to be made to reduce this.
Feeling supported
The indicator in the survey is called health and safety climate, which focuses on whether staff feel supported. Most questions around staff feeling supported sustained similar results from the previous year.
The percentage of staff that felt their organisation takes positive action on health and wellbeing remained stable. However, staff reported a small increase in support from their line manager on health and wellbeing to nearly 71.5 per cent.
Further information
The comparative data on health and wellbeing, including data on violence, can be accessed via the interactive tool on the NHS England Staff Survey website.
The website can also show trends and data by demographic group to help understand the experience of all staff groups.
More details on the health and wellbeing scores in the NHS Staff Survey will be shared in the upcoming meeting of the NHS Employers Health and Wellbeing Network, open to all NHS health and wellbeing leads.
To learn more about the staff survey findings, read this blog from Steven Weeks, policy lead at NHS Employers, Keep on (keeping on): 2024 Staff Survey staff engagement scores.
For more on the 2024 survey findings, see our analysis of all the key themes.
View the full results and data on the NHS Staff Survey website.
Health and wellbeing resources
We offer a wide range of health and wellbeing guidance and support on our website. You might find the following particularly useful:
- Beating burnout in the NHS - Guidance on staff burnout in the NHS and how and why trusts must take action to address it.
- Sickness Absence Toolkit - Guidance for NHS managers to have supportive conversations around sickness absence.
- Health and wellbeing top tips for supporting line managers - Advice for supporting line managers at work and keeping them well.
