NHS Staff Survey coming soon – but is it confidential?

September 27, 2021

A common issue that arises about the staff survey is concern over confidentiality – often colleagues are under the misconception that their individual responses will be identifiable to the Trust.

Please be assured that SWB use Quality Health, an independent external contractor to ensure that individual responses are not visible to the organisation.

If you receive a paper copy of the survey you will notice it has a barcode – a random number generated by Quality Health’s systems and is used as a way of ensuring that no personal information has to be printed on the document. This means that responses can be logged against the right organisation and staff member, ensuring that reminders are only sent to those who do not respond.

If you were to scan your questionnaire barcode using a smartphone, you would see for yourself that it does not contain any information about you. The number is totally meaningless unless it is entered into Quality Health’s secure system.

Similarly, if you are completing your questionnaire online, you will have a unique link or log in details for the online survey, which is only useful if it is entered into Quality Health’s secure system. These references are redundant for any other purpose and could not be used within the Trust as a means to track responses.

Quality Health have developed some information and a short video that explains more.

Keep an eye out for your survey this week.