iMatter Health & Social Care Staff Experience Survey 2025

Raising Concerns

Two additional questions were first included in the 2023 questionnaire covering how staff feel about raising concerns. These questions are not included within the EEI calculation of the Staff Governance Strand Scores.

The questions were not compulsory within the questionnaire, however in line with the two previous years, 98% of staff completing the iMatter questionnaire answered these questions in 2025.

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The scores have been calculated using the same method as used for iMatter score calculations. Both measures for Health and Social Care are unchanged from last year.

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It remains concerning that 14% of all Heath and Social Care staff are not confident in raising concerns and 21% are not confident that their concerns will be followed up and responded to.

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Boards

There is variation in scores across the Boards. NHS Education for Scotland has the highest scores for both measures and Scottish Ambulance Service the lowest.

The largest improvement is in Healthcare Improvement Scotland where both scores have increased by 4 points from last year, leading to a partial recovery from the drops seen last year. NHS 24 has also improved both scores with ‘confidence to safely raise concerns’ up 2 pts and ‘confident that concerns with be followed up on’ is up 2 pts. Again, this builds on improvements of 2 and 3 pts respectively seen from 2023 to 2024.

NHS 24 has seen improvements again this year having seen the two measures increase by 2 pts from 2024.

The State Hospital has a reported drop of 4 pts in feeling safe raising concerns and a 2 pts drop in confidence that concerns will be followed up.

Across the Geographic Boards, there is little movement with only two reporting a decrease of 2 pts:

• NHS Western Isles: I am confident that I can safely raise concerns about issues in my workplace
• NHS Shetland: I am confident that my concerns will be followed up and responded to.

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Staff Groupings

There are considerable differences across staff groupings, ranging from 69 to 84 for confidence in raising concerns and from 60 to 81 for confidence that concerns will be followed up and responded to.

Senior Managers in NHSScotland and Local Authorities score highest for both measures, though the score for confidence to raise concerns has dropped by 3 pts and confidence that concerns will be followed up by 2 pts, among Local Authority Senior Managers.

To view this table in its original format please see the PDF.