ORC Research provides a "Perspective" on Employee Opinion in the NHS 28/06/00 The benchmarking study - Perspectives - is based on the opinions of approximately 1.25 million UK employees within some of the country's leading companies. These range from retailers such as Tesco, BT, McDonald's Restaurants, Boots and Sainsbury's, to public sector organisations such as The Home Office, Health and Safety Executive, Benefits Agency and Merseyside Police. One of the main areas highlighted by the report is the contrasting opinions of employees working in the NHS and employees working in commercial market sectors. For instance, while a large proportion of NHS employees enjoy their work and feel that it makes good use of their skills, the majority do not believe they are paid enough for the responsibilities they are taking. Examples from the survey include: When asked whether they like the kind of work they do 93% of NHS employees say they do, compared with 73% of those working within the Retail sector. More than two thirds (69%) of NHS employees feel that their job makes good use of their skills and abilities, as opposed to just over half (57%) of those employed by FMCG companies. Just over a quarter (27%) of NHS employees believe that their earnings relate to their duties and responsibilities, whereas nearly half (48%) of those working within Retail organisations believe this to be true. When it comes to being treated with fairness and respect by their organisation, just 28% of NHS employees believe they are, compared with 60% of those working in the Financial Services sector. And 43% of those working in the NHS say they are proud to work for their organisation, compared with 68% in the Financial Services sector. According to ORC International director, Rory MacNeill, "The Perspectives data gives our clients the opportunity to find out how their results compare with data from both other organisations in their field and from other market sectors. Using Perspectives data as a benchmarking tool can provide a more realistic assessment of the results and allow managers to set achievable goals for improvement." ORC International currently hosts six industry sector Benchmarking groups: NHS, IT, Financial Services, Public Sector, Retail and fmcg. Members of these groups regularly submit current survey data, which is entered into the Perspectives database. In addition, other organisations, which are not involved in the groups, but wish to benchmark their data, are included in Perspectives. The questions asked in the survey are based on 57 of the most commonly used Employee Opinion questions, which are designed to ensure that comparisons can be made.