Results of UK's biggest-ever engagement survey published

EMPLOYEE ENGAGEMENT

Results of UK’s biggest-ever engagement survey published

Results from the People Survey, the first cross-civil service attitude survey, are now available on the civil service web site.

By publishing the figures in this way, departments will be able to judge themselves against a benchmark – and it will give them a more effective way of measuring engagement levels in their teams.

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Survey details

The survey, which is the largest of its kind in Britain, involved over 340,000 staff from 96 organisations across the civil service. All government departments asked their staff the same questions, giving civil service leaders the chance to get the best possible picture of what is working and what isn’t working across the entire organisation. By sharing the same system, it’s estimated that the costs of staff surveys were cut by a third.

Civil Servants were asked to comment on a range of issues, including:

  • development needs

  • training

  • strength of management

  • pay and benefits.

But there was a particular focus on trying to measure the degree to which staff feel engaged in their work and organisation.

Survey results

Some departments scored highly in the survey, but there was a mixed picture in terms of staff satisfaction and engagement across the civil service as a whole. In a number of areas, including line management and my work, results were “better than those from similar surveys in the wider public and private sectors”.

High scoring benchmarks include:

  • 90% of staff say they are interested in their work

  • 85% say they are treated with respect by the people they work with

  • 83% of respondents feel they can rely on their team when things get tough

  • 79% said they believed everyone in their team worked together to improve the service they provide

  • 78% of staff agreed their manager was open to their ideas.

The survey showed that the benchmark engagement index for the civil service was 58%. The Employee Engagement Index is a measure of how engaged employees are with their work.

Pay and benefits results

The results also show that, in some departments, there is much room for improvement, in particular, on pay and benefits:

  • I feel that my pay adequately reflects my performance: 36%

  • I am satisfied with the total benefits package: 44%

  • Compared to people doing a similar job in other organisations I feel my pay is reasonable: 33%.

A final word

“By establishing this survey, the civil service has shown that it is taking its responsibility to ensure staff are properly engaged very seriously. It gives us the evidence we need to build on our strengths and tackle our weaknesses.

“This is not going to be an easy or quick task, but it is at the heart of raising productivity. Strong employee engagement has a strong connection with productivity and improved employee health and wellbeing. Improving engagement is crucial to delivering better quality public services and better value to the taxpayer and will be one of the key leadership challenges the civil service faces in the next decade.” - Sir Gus O’Donnell, Head of the Home Civil Service.

Want to know more?

To find out more about the People Survey:
www.civilservice.gov.uk/about/improving/engagement/index.aspx.

Download result from the People Survey in PDF format:
www.civilservice.gov.uk/news/2010/february/people-survey.aspx.