Making changes | UK&I healthcare has an employee experience problem that needs addressing

By Will Owen - Director of Healthcare, Local Government, and Higher Education, ServiceNow

Naturally, an organisation as big and complex as the NHS faces multiple challenges across all its departments. In dealing with these challenges, however, one thing is universal; it all comes back to patient care.

Whether you’re navigating budgets constrictions, medical innovations, or behind-the-scenes planning, every decision or investment ultimately comes down to how it will impact the patient at the very end of the process. And the employee experience is no different. Healthcare staff must be provided with everything they need to do their jobs to the very best of their ability in order to best serve the patient, and yet, ServiceNow and ThoughtLab research shows just 18% of healthcare executives in the UK and Ireland consider employee experience to be a strategic priority.

The healthcare landscape today

What this actually means is simple; across the UK and Ireland, the healthcare industry has a people problem. The facts speak for themselves; a recent NHS staff survey shows approximately a third of employees didn’t feel enthusiastic about their job in 2022. In addition to this, around a third of NHS trust employees regularly think about leaving the organisation altogether.