Federal Manager's Daily Report

PPS: Employees in the 30-39 age range in particular need attention. Image: fizkes/Shutterstock.com

A posting by the Partnership for Public Service offers tips for building federal employee engagement with their work in light of its recent report on the best—and worst—places to work in the federal government that showed a drop of 4.5 points to 64.5 in the government-wide employee engagement and satisfaction score over 2020-2021.

“While the government-wide decline represents a clear warning sign, the Best Places to Work rankings also demonstrate that a number of agencies can and already benefit substantially from concerted employee engagement programs, and that leadership can make a huge difference,” it says. Recommendations included:

* “Keep employees informed about future workplace plans”—While federal employees “are largely positive about how agency leaders and supervisors handled concerns regarding their well-being . . . a separate COVID-19 category dealing with the possible long-term return to the physical office stood at just 63 across agencies, demonstrating an opportunity for improved communications about future workplace strategies.”

* “Provide continued support for supervisors and increase accountability for senior leaders to improve”—While supervisors received a score of 79.8 on their leadership, continued training for them is needed “particularly through skill building and training them to lead teams in varied work settings.” Meanwhile, senior leaders received a score of just 56.1, “a signal that agencies’ engagement strategies need to start at the top.”

* “Employees in the 30-39 age range need attention”—That was the lowest-scoring of the age bands but “retaining and developing this cohort is critical to building long-term talent pipelines.” Suggestions include “offering more flexibility around the experiences needed to advance through the ranks and by making use of mobility and job rotations among teams.”

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