Posted on October 6, 2026
RateMyShift is a digital platform, founded by nurses Olivia Crossing and Annie Taylor, designed to capture how staff are feeling at the end of each shift. Created in response to the everyday challenges of managing large, fast-paced teams, the platform aims to give staff a simple, confidential way to share their experiences and provide organisations with a sustainable way to capture real-time workforce data.
Early data collection highlights that the innovation supports real-time staff wellbeing insights, strengthens communication and leadership, enables proactive support and smarter check-ins, improves organisational culture and retention, supports audit-ready governance, and reduces costs through lower staff turnover, agency use, and recruitment needs. RateMyShift are currently working in partnership with Bristol Foundation NHS Trust and Swansea Bay University Health Board.
Since 2024, Health Innovation West of England have provided support to Olivia and Annie via the Commercialisation Academy and Innovator Support Service which provided unique opportunities for mentorship, strategic guidance, networking and collaborating with other innovators. The Health Innovation West of England Evaluation and Insights team have provided support with evidence reviews and continues to provide support with real world evaluations.
Challenge
As pressures on the health and social care workforce continue to grow, understanding and responding to staff experience in real time has become increasingly important for delivering safe, sustainable care. Workforce turnover in the NHS remains approximately 10% annually (NHS England, 2024). There are significant limitations with the current feedback mechanisms such as 1:1s, open-door policies, managers noticing shifts in mood, or staff feeling able to speak up. It is important to acknowledge that it is not always a failure of intention; managers and leaders want to do the right thing, but when those conditions are not met, pressure builds silently, and an employee who needed support weeks ago ends up leaving.
The NHS largely relies on retrospective workforce surveys to understand staff experience which don’t capture the shift level data. These often highlight that it is common in teams for small stresses to go unheard resulting in confidence and engagement dips and reactive responses from managers. On an organisational level, insights often come too late when staff are already burned out or leaving. There is currently no mechanism that catches real-time feedback consistently, equitably, and in a way that prompts a timely response, closing the loop between how staff feel and what happens because of it.
The founders of RateMyShift, Annie and Olivia, who are clinicians by background, therefore developed the innovation to meet this challenge and capture real time workforce data.
Approach
Health Innovation West of England have heavily supported the journey of innovators Olivia and Annie. They attended our Commercialisation Academy in 2024 and 2025 – which provides mentorship, strategic guidance and opportunities for networking and collaborating with other innovators. They also met their current tech partner for the innovation at the Commercialisation Academy. Additional ongoing support and guidance along the journey has been provided via the Innovator Support Service with grant applications (including funding a grant writer), refining their value proposition and a successful NIA application. The NIA, along with the Clinical Entrepreneur Scheme which Olivia is a member of, have also provided valuable opportunities to refine their offer and gain valuable advice and guidance. The Health Innovation West of England Evaluation and Insights team has provided support with evidence reviews and continues to provide support with real world evaluations and data collection.
“Our innovation journey has been heavily supported by the West of England Health Innovation Network, through our selection for the Commercialisation Academy (2024). This provided vital mentorship, (business development), strategic guidance about how to scale, incredible opportunities to network and collaborate with other innovators, and to gain access to conversations with some of the people who make purchasing decisions.”
Olivia Crossing, Founder, RateMyShift
Result
RateMyShift has completed an early pilot phase data collection across 2023-2024 which highlighted the following impacts:
Sirona OOH Teams:
- Reduced isolation: provided a “consistent voice” for remote staff
- Responsiveness: 99% follow-up completion (99/100 prompts) ensured staff felt valued
- Visibility: resolved 100 previously “unseen” shift issues
- Culture: addressed 2023 survey concerns regarding feeling unsupported
- Data integration: sentiment data strengthened quality assurance reporting
- Retention: fostered a proactive leadership and learning culture
- Sentiment: captured 733 ratings (65%+ positive)
Mid Yorkshire NHS Foundation Trust, University Hospitals Plymouth, & Sirona Care and Health:
- Efficiency: real-time “workflow friction” data optimized operations
- Insights: transformed anecdotes into measurable, actionable data
- Proactive: prevented issues from escalating into service risks
- Governance: enabled long-term trend analysis over reactive management
- Financials: laid foundations for reduced turnover and improved service quality
A 12-month independently evaluated real world evaluation at Bristol Foundation Trust is currently in the data collection phase, with co-designed outcome measures. The evaluation is structured around three co-designed questions: whether staff and managers engage with the tool, whether staff report improvements in wellbeing and confidence at work, and whether staff perceive a benefit to patient care. Data collection spans quantitative platform engagement data and qualitative staff experience surveys at baseline and months 10–11, with a final evaluation report due in 2027.
References:
- Rate your shift new way for nurses to give real-time feedback, RCNI article
- Turning staff feedback into real-time action: a workforce innovation, Nursing Times article
- From retrospective data to real-time safety: how nurse-led innovation is delivering cultural transparency, British Journal of Nursing article
- RateMyShift: findings from early NHS and community pilots, Fab NHS stuff article
“RateMyShift has helped me as a line manager enormously. In the early stages, we identified several things that we would not have picked up without it. This allowed us to support the right places and focus on the things that really impacted colleagues at work. It meant that frontline voices were heard, and action taken. I use RateMyShift data as part of my monthly Quality Assurance report- the data gleaned is really useful as comparative data too as it helps to understand increased workloads impact and where they don’t. This helps us understand root cause issues better”
Senior Leader in healthcare
Next steps
A real-world evaluation is in the early phases in Wales with Health Education and Improvement Wales (HEIW). The pilot tests a broader intervention model, combining RateMyShift with structured coaching support for managers and workforce intelligence feeding into HEIW’s national learning to examine whether the conditions for high-performing teams can be strengthened through real-time feedback loops. The evaluation framework is built around three questions: whether managers use the platform and coaching to respond consistently to staff, whether staff feel heard and see improvement in their working conditions, and whether engagement and trust are sustained over time. The evaluation at Swansea Bay site involves approximately 350 maternity staff across six months.
There is also additional interest for further site adoption within Bristol Foundation Trust and broad national interest in publications of findings.
The innovators continue to be interested in speaking to people who might be keen to improve real time staff experience and find a sustainable solution within their Trust.
“We are delighted for Annie – achieving a place as an NIA fellow is richly deserved. We have supported RateMyShift extensively since they started, including: being part of our first Commercialisation Academy, providing support to refine their value proposition, plus support to plan and evaluate RateMyShift in a trial at University Hospitals Bristol and Weston. We have also helped with applications for funding and to the NIA. We’ve been proud to support Annie, Olivia, and the wider RateMyShift team on their journey.”
Alex Leach, Deputy Director of Programmes, Health Innovation West of England
Find out more
Find out more about RateMyShift on their website.
Health Innovation West of England first connected with Annie and Olivia in September 2024. Ongoing support is currently being provided via the Evaluation and Insights team and through our Innovator Support Service when required.
