MSPB Study Strongly Recommends Employee Engagement
By Bob Gilson
Tuesday, January 13, 2009
The MSPB's Office of Policy and Evaluation recently issued a study that should be carefully read by line managers and supervisors throughout government. The study, titled The Power of Federal Employee Engagement, found "a significant relationship between the level of employee engagement in an agency and various agency outcomes such as greater retention, reduced sick leave use, and better programmatic results. The Board staff also discovered that first line supervisors play a critical role in engaging employees.
- Measure the level of employee engagement in the Federal Government to determine if different organizations or groups exhibit different levels of engagement;
- Determine whether increased levels of employee engagement are related to better results and outcomes for Federal agencies; and
- Identify how Federal agencies can improve the engagement level of their employees.
- Pride in one's work or workplace,
- Satisfaction with leadership,
- Satisfaction with the recognition received,
- Prospect for future personal and professional growth, and
- A positive work environment with some focus on teamwork.
Second, the Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged and Why?
- Level of responsibility: More Senior Executive Service members are engaged than supervisory employees, who are, in turn, more engaged than nonsupervisory employees.
- Salary: Differences in employee engagement based on salary are not as pronounced as those based on level of organizational responsibility, but thev more you make the more you're likely to be engaged.
- Level of education: The more education, the higher the engagement level.
- Race/Ethnicity: The Board found differences among employees of different racial/ethnic groups. While varying levels of education and average salaries within our respondent population may account for some of these engagement differences, it is important to note that they do exist.
- Agency: According to the survey, NASA, State Dept, Air Force and Army had the highest levels of engagement, Homeland Security, FDIC and Dept. of Transportation had the least.
- There are no sizable variations in engagement based on factors such as gender, age, tenure, location of the employee in a headquarters or field setting, or whether the employee is rated under a pass/fail or more traditional five-tiered performance management system.
- Agency results as measured by the Office of Management and Budget's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART): Higher levels of engagement correlated to higher scores on the program results/accountability portion of the PART.
- An employee's intent to leave the agency: Employees who said they were very unlikely to leave their agency were much more engaged than those who said they were very likely to leave. The pattern was the same those employees who were retirement-eligible those not. The study group says this suggests that if employees are not engaged, they will start looking elsewhere. In a most interesting note, most of those very likely to leave who were not engaged got the highest ratings.
- An agency's average sick leave use: Higher levels of employee engagement correlated to fewer average days of sick leave used.
- Level of equal employment opportunity (EEO) complaint activity: In another very interesting finding, higher levels of employee engagement correlated to fewer EEO complainants.
- The rate at which employees miss work time because of work-related injury or illness: Higher levels of employee engagement correlated to a lower rate of lost time cases. Pay attention to this.
Recommendations – A Ten Step Program
- Ensure a good person-to-job fit.
- Show employees they are valued from their first day on the job.
- Stimulate employee commitment.
- Manage performance with the attention it deserves.
- Establish a clear line of sight from the employee to the larger work unit.
- Mentor employees.
- Recruit and select supervisors to supervise.
- Use a competency-based approach.
- Communicate vision and commitment.
- Measure engagement.
© 2010 Robert J. Gilson. All rights reserved. This article may not be reproduced without express written consent from Robert J. Gilson.
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