Step 3: Evaluate the risks – Explore problems and develop solutions - Further information

"Peer support showed as a problem on the staff survey but not in focus groups!"
NHS Trust

The quotation above highlights a potential issue that is worth discussing here. A survey such as the HSE Indicator Tool [PDF, 129KB] questionnaires and its analysis will provide data to indicate possible issues (see note below on the HSE Indicator and Analysis Tools).

In the current example ‘peer support’ was indicated as a possible issue for discussion at the focus group. However, the focus group did not agree that this was an issue. This situation is not uncommon and demonstrates that the Management Standards approach is working, in that, one of the functions of running focus groups is to validate the data analysis carried out in the previous step. The reason behind this apparent error could be simply that for the employees attending the focus groups ‘peer support’ was not the primary issue. This situation also reinforces the need to use more than one source of data, only a survey was used in this example.

HSE Indicator Tool

The Indicator Tool is a 35 item questionnaire developed by HSE specifically for use with the Management Standards approach. The 35 questions used map across to the six areas contained within the Management Standards namely demand, control, support, role, relationships and change. It should be remembered that the Indicator Tool, as its name suggests, provides a broad indication of your organisation's performance on the six areas of the Management Standards. The Indicator Tool, or other survey devices, should not be used as the only data source but should be used with other relevant data to provide a more accurate and holistic picture of your organisation’s performance.

The 'Indicator Tool User Manual [PDF, 66KB] ' provides advice and guidance on how to use the Indicator Tool as a stand alone measuring device or as part of an existing staff survey device.

Analysis Tool

The Analysis Tool was developed by HSE/HSL specifically to process completed Indicator Tool questionnaires. The analysis tool was first launched in 2004 and has continued to develop in response to feedback from users.

Questions to the HSE Infoline (0845 345 0055) about the Analysis Tool suggest there are a few common errors made when using the tool:

• Trying to run the Analysis Tool from the HSE website
• Failing to set the Macro security level within Excel to ‘medium’;
• When importing data from a third party survey users fail to ensure the scoring of questions within the HSE Indicator Tool is correct. They assume that all questions are scored in the same direction. Some questions are asked in the negative and therefore are reverse scored. This error can lead to some very strange results!

A full guide to the use and functionality of the tool is provided in the 'Analysis Tool User Manual [PDF, 884KB] '.