Hospitals in Mid and South Essex must open up and start talking if they are going to turn around “abysmal” staff satisfaction levels, UNISON warns today.
The official 2021 NHS Staff Survey revealed that the Mid and South Essex NHS Foundation Trust (MSEFT) was below average in every single category of workforce satisfaction.
Just 24% of MSEFT staff said they were satisfied with their pay, the lowest level among 126 acute and community trusts in the country and down 5% on the 2020 survey.
But while pay is an issue across the NHS, UNISON warns that management culture at MSEFT is making matters worse.
In a UNISON-commissioned report last summer, health expert John Lister highlighted fears that MSEFT could become “another Mid Staffordshire,” seeing a repeat of the scandal where hundreds of patients died due to poor care in the mid 2000s. The subsequent public inquiry made clear that teamwork and partnership were needed to maintain standards of care.
The report included a smaller UNISON survey of members at the trust revealing concerns with human resources and not feeling listened to during consultations related to the merger of the three previous trusts in 2020, creating the third-largest trust in the NHS, or in the time since.
But when presented with the report, managers shrugged off concerns, said the union.
UNISON Eastern head of health Sasha Savage said: “The scale of staff disillusionment and concerns about care should set alarm bells ringing in Westminster, but while morale is going through the floor across the NHS, satisfaction levels at MSEFT are truly abysmal.
“It confirms what unions have been saying for years: NHS staff urgently need an inflation-busting pay rise. The alternative is more and more experienced staff drifting out of the health service and the quality of patient care plummeting further.
“But falling pay only compounds other issues for health workers. Staff are feeling less valued, their work is increasingly unrecognised and they’re not allowed to progress in their jobs.
“Staff have been through major upheaval in the past few years, not just Covid but the merger too.
“Through it all, workers just don’t feel managers have listened to them. MSEFT must urgently start talking to unions and work with us to make the trust a desirable place to work.”
UNISON is calling for a package of improvements to make MSEFT a genuine employer of choice, including:
- Real and transparent engagement to work in partnership with the unions,
- An acknowledgement of the real issues that MSEFT faces by active listening to the staff and clear communication accessible for all,
- True leadership by acting as clear role models to aid embedding of the Trust Values and Behaviours by demonstration
- Becoming an accredited living wage employer,
- Scrapping parking charges for staff,
- Making additional work pay by offering overtime rates rather than bank shifts for staff working more than their contractual hours,
- Improving career development opportunities,
- Investing in staff by offering more training.
NHS survey results
The full NHS Staff Survey for MSEFT can be read here. It shows that 43% said the were satisfied with the recognition they get for their work against an average of 51%, down from 51% in 2020 (average 56%).
Only 47% would recommend MSEFT as a place to work, down from 58% in 2020 (average 58% in 2021 and 67% in 2020).
Just 20% say there are enough staff in the organisation for them to do their job properly compared with 34% in 2020, the average has gone from 37% to 26%.
MSEFT has among the worst staff scores for morale, with 20% saying they will leave as soon as they can find another job (average 16%) and 36% saying they often think about leaving (average 31%).
Partnership or Bust
In UNISON’s survey just 15% of those who had needed human resources support — including through grievances, sickness absence and reorganisations — were satisfied with the support received
82% of those who had been through a consultation felt it had been handled poorly or very poorly.
UNISON is the UK’s largest union with more than 1.3 million members providing public services in education, local government, the NHS, police service and energy. They are employed in the public, voluntary and private sectors.
