Results from the People Survey, the first cross-Civil Service attitude survey, are being shared with departments and teams from today. The overall results from the survey, which is the largest of is kind in Britain and involved over 340,000 staff from 96 organisations across the Civil Service, are also being published on the Civil Service website. 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.
For this survey, 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. And, by sharing the same system, it is estimated that the costs of staff surveys were cut by 35 per cent.
Civil Servants were asked to comment on a range of issues, including their development needs, training and the strength of management, but there was a particular focus on trying to measure the degree to which staff feel engaged in their work and organisation.
Some departments score highly in the engagement survey, but there is 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:
The results also show that, in some departments, improvements need to be focused, in particular, on engagement and leadership and change management. The survey showed that the benchmark engagement index for the Civil Service was 58 per cent. The Employee Engagement Index is a measure of how engaged employees are with their work.
Sir Gus O’Donnell, Head of the Home Civil Service said:
“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.”
