Hold survey when staff 'more optimistic', CHS boss Dave Peffer says

The organisation's chief executive, Dave Peffer, suggested the health service should wait until late Spring to conduct a workplace culture survey as people would be a "bit more optimistic", documents released under freedom of information have shown.

The organisation has denied the comment about waiting for warmer weather was to get more favourable result, saying it wanted to avoid conducting the survey during a busy period for health workers.

The territory government organisation had initially planned to conduct a workplace culture survey earlier this year but the decision was made to postpone this until later in the year.

The reason given for the delay was that it was too close to a "pulse survey" conducted in November 2022 and Canberra Health Services had planned to implement a range of wellbeing initiatives starting in March which the organisation's director of workplace culture and leadership wanted measured in survey results.

"I recommend a later census period - say around late August/early September," an email from the director said.

Mr Peffer was asked in a text message when the full survey should take place and September was suggested as a possible time. But Mr Peffer suggested November could be a better time to undertake the survey.

"Possibly. Let's pencil it in and see how we're looking mid year," he said in the text.

"Sep is back end of winter surge. November is when folks are feeling bit more optimistic as the weather warms up."

The workplace culture and leadership director responded: "Yes ok good plan".

Canberra Health Services has yet to determine when it will hold this year's survey.

The documents were released to opposition health spokeswoman Leanne Castley, who said the text message showed how the territory government was desperate to obtain better workplace culture survey results.

"CHS' hardworking staff deserve better than this," Ms Castley said.

"The Health Minister should say whether she thinks this is a good plan."

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But Canberra Health Services said they wanted to ensure they received the highest level of engagement with the survey.

"Our aim is for the highest levels of engagement (participation) in surveys so we get the best handle on how we're tracking," a spokesman said.

"This is why we try to avoid conducting surveys in periods of time with heightened levels of workload, such as during the winter illness surge (where demand for services is greatest, and we have the highest levels of sick leave with team members absent from the workplace)."

The spokesman said surveys had been conducted at various times of the year and results had improved, "irrespective of timing".

Canberra Health Services conducts yearly surveys of staff to measure workplace culture as issues have plagued the organisation for years. A damning review into the ACT's public health system almost four years ago found troubling levels of mistrust and bullying.

The most recent survey was conducted in November 2022 and results showed there had been an improvement in workplace culture.

However, there have been questions raised about the validity of the results from that survey due to a low response rate. Only 35 per cent of staff responded to the survey, which was much lower than previous years.

Officials were told survey results were not definitive unless more than 40 per cent of the organisation responded.

But Canberra Health Services has maintained the results from this survey were reliable because the firm which conducted the survey applied a "response validation test", which found "a greater response rate would not have had a significant impact on the overall result".

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