Improving Employee Engagement: A Public Sector Leadership Imperative
Written by Bob Lavigna
The Gallup organization, known best for its public opinion polling, has also done extensive and groundbreaking work on employee engagement around the world. Gallup research shows that high-engagement organizations outperform low-engagement organizations in key performance indicators that include profitability, productivity, customer satisfaction, retention and absenteeism. In government, a 2014 survey of state and local government conducted by the International Public Management Association for Human Resources revealed that engaged public sector employees are:
- Four times as likely to stay in their current jobs;
- Five times more likely to recommend their workplaces to others; and, \
- Five times as likely to report being “very satisfied” in their jobs.
As one public sector official put it, “If you don’t start with the workforce, how can you reach the public? 18,000 ambassadors are better than 18,000 assassins.” Research conducted by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) on federal government employees showed that high-engagement federal agencies are almost twice as effective in achieving their strategic goals as low-engagement agencies. High-engagement agencies also have better employee retention and attendance.
Research on employee engagement in Canada also shows that engagement drives outcomes that are critical to government. Heightened employee engagement is one of the three building blocks in the ‘public-sector service value chain.’ According to this model, employee engagement in government leads to citizen/client satisfaction, which then leads to citizen trust and confidence in public institutions – an outcome that is increasingly rare but critically important to the health of the public service. The government of British Columbia found that work units with high levels of employee engagement scored higher in customer satisfaction than low-engagement units.
There is also research showing that employees in health-care organizations who are highly-engaged deliver better patient outcomes. Research conducted in both the U.K. and the U.S. revealed that high levels of employee engagement in hospitals (many of which are operated by public sector entities) are linked to:
- Better patient outcomes;
- Lower mortality rates;
- Higher patient satisfaction;
- Higher service quality;
- Better financial performance;
- Improved employee health and well-being; and,
- Lower absenteeism.
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This article was written by Bob Lavigna, author of Engaging Government Employees: Motivate and Inspire Your People to Achieve Superior Performance
