HEALTH and Community Services is vying with the Economy Department as the provider of the least-pleasant workplace environment across the government, according to a staff survey conducted last year.
Detailed information from the Be Heard survey, released following a freedom of information request, showed fewer than half of staff responses from the two departments – to questions measuring how stressed or calm, and how bored or enthusiastic they felt – indicated “pleasant” places to work.
Meanwhile, more than a third of HCS and Economy Department responses – 35% and 34% respectively – fell into the “unpleasant” category.
By contrast, responses from 72% of staff in the Law Officers’ Department and 71% in Customer and Local Services, and in the non-executive departments – which include the Bailiff’s Chambers, States and Judicial Greffes, Probation and the Viscount’s Departments – said their workplaces were “pleasant”.
Across the government as a whole, 60% of staff responses indicated a pleasant working environment, 28% unpleasant and 12% neutral.
In addition to these questions relating feelings to the workplace, the survey probes eight specific areas – so-called “factors of engagement” – to produce an overall Best Companies Index or BCI score from 0 to 1,000 which allows the public sector as a whole to compare itself with other organisations which also use the survey.
Staff are invited to respond to a series of statements relating to the eight areas: leadership, my company, my manager, personal growth, my team, wellbeing, fair deal and giving something back.
Last year’s survey showed a significant improvement across the public sector as a whole with a score of 630.8 compared with 562.7 achieved three years previously. This puts it into the “good – one to watch” category.
The latest data released shows how that figure is arrived at across 11 departments, with the results of four reaching the next tier to achieve “very good” accreditations – the Law Officers’ Department; non-executive departments; Strategic Policy, Planning and Performance; and Customer and Local Services. Scores in the remaining departments fall within the “ones to watch – good” range of 600 to 659, with the exception of Economy and HCS which scored 565.5 and 536.4, respectively.
None of the departments reached the two- or three-star accreditations “outstanding” or “world class” for scores between 696.5 and 738, and above 738.
According to the Best Companies website, the Be Heard staff engagement survey “looks for patterns, connections and correlations between employee responses, taking you beyond just identifying how your employees feel – it uncovers why they feel that way. It’s been tested on millions of UK employees and is continually reviewed.”
“Our Be Heard survey is powered by our academically rigorous methodology, developed alongside academics the University of Plymouth and the Department of Trade and Industry, and is proven to get to the heart of what people want and expect from their working lives,” it says.
Although the government published the survey’s headline figures last summer, they declined to make results available at a departmental level until obliged to do so by a Freedom of Information request, the deadline for which was twice extended.
The survey was carried out over three weeks in June and involved some 3,881 staff.
