Government-Wide Findings By Category

Government-Wide Findings By Category

Government-Wide Workplace Category Findings

As part of the Best Places to Work analysis, the Partnership and BCG measure views on 12 aspects of the employee experience and provide a government-wide score and individual agency scores for those specific issues.  

In 2022, federal employees expressed highly positive views of supervisors, but long-standing leadership shortcomings were evident regarding senior leaders and the issue of employee empowerment.  

The overall effective leadership category score is 67.3 out of 100, a slight drop of 0.7 from 2021. Within the effective leadership category, the stark difference between views of supervisors (79.7 out of 100) versus senior leaders (55.3) is consistent with past Best Places to Work findings. This differential, and the fact that employees gave higher scores for effective leadership at the small and midsize agencies than they did for those at the large agencies, may also signal the importance of leadership communication and interpersonal trust. 

Two categories assess agency and work unit performance, which were developed to measure employees’ perception of how effectively their organizations are achieving their mission. These are joined by three new or reorganized categories measuring employee perceptions on their organization’s quality of customer service, internal transparency related to goals and performance, and how motivated or inspired they are by their organization’s mission. It is important that employees understand the connection between their work and the larger goals of the agency, especially given the alarmingly low levels of public trust in government

While employees continue to have overwhelmingly positive views of the performance of their work unit (83.6 out of 100) and nearly as positive of views of the performance of their agencies (78.0), employees do not feel this view is reciprocated. Overall scores assessing whether employees believe agencies recognize their good work through awards and advancement stood at just 56.5 and their sense of empowerment in the workplace at 50.0, both experiencing a notable decline from 2021. Employees also assessed transparency in communicating their performance at 76.1 points and their organization’s customer service satisfaction at 75.5 points, while overall mission match was rated at 71.8. 

Also new this year was a set of measurements where employees could indicate their organization and team’s policies and responsiveness in the areas of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility. The overall DEIA category government-wide score was at 70.0 out of 100 points. Inclusion was the most highly rated subcategory with a score of 74.8 followed by diversity (70.2), accessibility (66.9) and equity (65.2). 

On other work-related issues, federal agencies posted a score of 72.3 for work-life balance; 68.9 for teamwork; 63.8 for agency efforts to be innovative; and 55.9 for satisfaction with pay. Scores in all of these areas have gone down for two consecutive years. 

Government-wide Scores by Category

*Due to changes in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey participation and calculation methodology, some workplace category scores should not be compared to one another. Workplace scores from 2022 can only be compared to 2021 and 2020 with the exception of Effective Leadership and its Supervisors subcategory that can only be compared between 2022 and 2021. Workplace scores from 2019 can only be compared to 2018, and scores can be compared from 2003 to 2017.  

*Because the Department of Veterans Affairs and several other agencies did not participate in the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and instead decided to administer their own internal surveys, they are not included in federal government-wide workplace category scores, but are part of the agency rankings.