‘Have Your Say’ workforce survey 2025: Summary of responses from managers
This is a summary of responses to our 2025 Have Your Say workforce survey, which asked social care workers about things like their health and well-being, pay and conditions, and what they like about working in the sector.
The full report splits the findings into three job groupings – care workers, social workers, and managers.
This summary gives an overview of some of the main findings about the managers group.
This group of respondents is made up of adult care home managers (37 per cent), domiciliary care managers (37 per cent), residential childcare managers (eight per cent) and other social care managers (17 per cent).
You can find out more about the research and access the full report here.
You can also download this summary as a Microsoft Word document.
Demographics
We found that:
- the most common age group was between 55 and 59 years old
- 82 per cent were female, and 17 per cent male
- 90 per cent were straight/heterosexual
- 93 per cent were White
- 24 per cent said they had a long-term condition which lasted 12 months or more. Of those who had a long-term condition, 56 per cent said it affected their day-to-day functioning
- 36 per cent suggested they were a carer outside of work
- 10 per cent said they were neurodivergent
- 56 per cent said they could speak at least some Welsh
- 96 per cent were employed by an organisation which provides social care, such as a local authority, third sector body or private company
- 41 per cent said they were members of a trade union, with most a member of UNISON (25 per cent) or the GMB (eight per cent).
Recruitment and retention
We found that:
- 48 per cent started working in social care because they wanted a job that would make a difference to people’s lives. Meanwhile, 13 per cent felt they'd enjoy it, eight per cent that it would suit their skills, and seven per cent went into their role owing to personal experience of caring for someone. Respondents could choose more than one reason
- 51 per cent found out about working in social care through friends and family working in the sector and 21 per cent through a job advertised online.
Leadership, training and development
We found that:
- 60 per cent wanted a leadership role in the future
- 80 per cent believed it was possible for them to become a leader
- 39 per cent had sought a progression opportunity in the past year
- 89 per cent believed they have sufficient training to do their jobs well and 90 per cent said that they have enough training to fulfil CPD requirements
- 32 per cent needed more training to progress their career
- 70 per cent said there were no issues to accessing work-related training in their workplace.
Bullying, discrimination and harassment
Here we present the percentage of managers who said they’d experienced bullying, harassment or discrimination from different sources in the past 12 months.
- From managers: Bullying (seven per cent); too few responded to the question about discrimination or harassment to be able to report here.
- From colleagues: Bullying (seven per cent); too few responded to the question about discrimination or harassment to be able to report here. Of those who said they’d experienced any of these from a colleague, 61 per cent said that this was reported by themselves or a colleague.
- From people they support or their families: Too few responded to the question about bullying, discrimination or harassment to be able to report here.
We also found that 90 per cent felt their employer acted fairly in decisions about career progression and promotion, in relation to protected characteristics.
Pay, terms and conditions
We found that:
- 80 per cent were satisfied with their terms and conditions
- 56 per cent suggested they were ‘living comfortably’ or ‘doing alright’ financially, 29 per cent ‘just about getting by’, and 14 per cent finding it ‘quite’ or ‘very’ difficult to get by
- 55 per cent said they were finding it either ‘a lot’ or ‘slightly’ more difficult to manage financially compared to last year, and nine per cent either ‘slightly’ or ‘much’ easier
- 32 per cent were dissatisfied with their pay.
Health and well-being
We assessed the well-being of the workforce using the ONS4. These are four measures used by the Office for National Statistics to capture different types of personal well-being on a scale of 0 to 10. We compared the average response from this survey with the UK average for each measure. Each of the findings below is higher than the UK average:
- Satisfaction with life: 7.58 (UK average: 7.45)
- Life is worthwhile: 7.97 (UK average: 7.73)
- Happiness yesterday: 7.41 (UK average: 7.39)
- Anxiety: 5.11 (UK average: 3.23)
We also asked other questions about well-being. We found that:
- 70 per cent said that they feel safe in their role
- 72 per cent said they struggled to switch off when they leave work
- 50 per cent suggested they had enough support to deal with stress
- the main causes of stress reported were workload (50 per cent), paperwork or administrative load (41 per cent), and worrying about things outside of work (26 per cent)
- 51 per cent suggested they'd attended work at least twice in the past year despite being so ill they should have stayed at home.
Working conditions
We found that:
- 84 per cent said they felt helped and supported by their manager
- 86 per cent said they felt helped and supported by their colleagues
- 73 per cent suggested they had the right staff to deliver services
- 84 per cent felt able to meet the needs of the people they care for and support.
We also asked how much people felt valued by different groups they interact with. We found that:
- 79 per cent felt valued by their manager
- 83 per cent felt valued by their colleagues
- 86 per cent felt valued by the people they support
- 63 per cent felt valued by partner agencies
- 44 per cent felt valued by the general public.
This survey was carried out on our behalf by researchers at Buckinghamshire New University, Bath Spa University and colleagues from the British Association of Social Workers (BASW). The final report was produced by the researchers.