The government “still significantly underperforms the private sector when it comes to employee engagement,” despite some gains in recent years, a witness from the Partnership for Public Service told a recent House hearing.
The government-wide engagement score in the 2016 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey was 60 percent positive, compared with the private sector average of 77 percent, he said, and only 12 of 305 agencies and sub-agencies exceeded the private sector average.
“Government tends to struggle the most compared to the private sector in the critical areas of leadership, merit-based awards, and performance management,” he said.
The survey is a basis for the Partnership’s best places to work in government rankings. In the FEVS, the lowest positive responses consistently involve questions asking whether pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs, whether steps are taken to deal with poor performers, and whether differences in performance are recognized in a meaningful way.
“Employee views that hard work is not properly rewarded or recognized in the federal workplace demonstrate the negative impact of an inflexible and outdated federal pay system . . . more performance-sensitive performance management systems can unlock incredible benefits in the form of higher engagement, improved performance, and better services for citizens,” he said.
The FEVS also consistently shows that opinions of leadership decline with each successively higher level of leader.