U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board

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PERMIT NO. G-113
THE CHAIRMAN

U.S. MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD

1615 M Street, NW

Washington, DC 20419-0001

September 2008

The President

President of the Senate

Speaker of the House of Representatives

Dear Sirs and Madam:

In accordance with the requirements of 5 U.S.C. 1204(a)(3), it is my honor to submit this 

Merit Systems Protection Board report, “The Power of Federal Employee Engagement.” The 

purpose of this report is to emphasize the role that employee engagement plays in improving 

Federal agency outcomes. A focus on strategies to further engage the Federal work force is critical 

as agencies attempt to improve their operations within budget constraints, and as they face 

increasing numbers of retirement-eligible employees in a labor market where there is intense 

competition for top talent.

This report examines what engages Federal employees—that is, what contributes to a 

heightened connection between Federal employees and their work or their organization. We

explore the extent that different groups of employees are engaged and, more importantly, we 

discuss how employee engagement relates to improved Federal agency outcomes. 

Our research indicates that there are variations in the engagement level among different 

groups of Federal employees and that first-level supervisors play an important role in engaging 

employees. We also found differences in the engagement level of employees based on the agency 

in which they work. These differences are important to note because we found a significant 

relationship between the level of employee engagement in an agency and various agency outcomes. 

For example, engaged employees have less intention to leave their current agency, use less sick 

leave, and work in agencies that produce better programmatic results.

By establishing a link between employee engagement and agency outcomes, we hope to 

refocus attention and energy on the recommended management practices that can increase the level 

of employee engagement in Federal agencies. I believe you will find this report useful as you 

consider these and other issues regarding the future of the Federal civil service.

 Respectfully,

 Neil A. G. McPhie 

Enclosure

The Power of 

Federal Employee Engagement

A REPORT TO THE PRESIDENT AND

THE CONGRESS OF THE UNITED STATES 

BY THE U.S. MERIT SYSTEMS PROTECTION BOARD 

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board

Neil A. G. McPhie, Chairman

Mary M. Rose, Vice Chairman

Office of Policy and Evaluation

Director

John Crum, Ph.D.

Project Manager

Doug Nierle

Project Analysts

John M. Ford, Ph.D.

Laura Shugrue

Table of Contents

Executive Summary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i

Engagement Background. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Early Management Theory. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

What is Employee Engagement?. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

Engagement and Business Outcomes. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

Purpose of the Study. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Measuring Federal Employee Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Merit Principles Survey. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

MSPB Engagement Scale. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Scoring Methodology. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?. . . . . . . . . . . . 13

The Federal Work Force. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Level of Organizational Responsibility. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

The Importance of First-Level Supervisors. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Salary. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Level of Education. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19

Race/Ethnicity. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Performance Management. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Agency. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

Other Variables. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement. . . . . . 27

Federal Agency Results. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Intent to Leave. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30

Sick Leave Use. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Equal Employment Opportunity Complainants. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33

Lost Time Case Rate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

Measures Not Correlated to Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

Conclusions and Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Conclusions. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37

Recommendations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board
The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Table of Contents

Appendix A – Study Method. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Engagement Scale Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Agency Engagement Scores. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

External Correlations. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Appendix B – The Merit Principles Survey 2005. . . . . . . . . 51

Appendix C – Other Work Force Characteristics and 

Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Executive Summary

We have found evidence that a heightened connection, or engagement, 

between Federal employees and their organization that surpasses job 

satisfaction is related to better organizational outcomes. As Federal 

agencies face stiff competition for new talent, employee engagement strategies may 

help them to attract the best new employees available and retain the talented 

employees already on board. By fully engaging their employees as recommended, 

agencies can improve their operations despite a highly competitive labor market.

Background

What is employee engagement and why is it important? Employee engagement 

is a heightened connection between employees and their work, their organization, 

or the people they work for or with. Engaged employees find personal meaning in 

their work, take pride in what they do and where they do it, and believe that their 

organization values them. 

Competitive pay and benefits along with a healthy work-life balance all help to 

increase employee satisfaction. But, unless employees feel a special bond with the 

employing organization, they will not be highly engaged and may not put forth 

the extra effort typically needed to improve organization results. 

We have found that Federal agencies with employees who are more engaged 

experience better outcomes than agencies with employees who are less engaged.

Why study employee engagement now? In an atmosphere of continued 

management focus on improving results within tight budgets, increasing numbers 

of retirement-eligible employees, and an increasing struggle to find and attract top 

talent, developing work environments that attract that talent—and engaging it once 

it is in place—is vital to the continued success of agency missions.

To help agencies better meet the challenges that this environment poses, the 

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) conducted this study of employee 

engagement to:

1. Measure the level of employee engagement in the Federal Government to 

determine if different organizations or groups exhibit different levels of 

engagement; 

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board i
ii The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

2. Determine whether increased levels of employee engagement are related to 

better results and outcomes for Federal agencies; and

3. Identify how Federal agencies can improve the engagement level of their 

employees.

Study Method

For the past two decades, the MSPB has conducted periodic Governmentwide 

Merit Principles Surveys of Federal employees to solicit their perceptions of their 

jobs, work environments, supervisors, and agencies. The scale that we developed 

to measure the engagement level of Federal employees is derived from answers that 

Federal employees gave to the 2005 Merit Principles Survey (MPS 2005). Twentyfour Federal agencies participated in the survey and a total of 36,926 employees 

completed it.

We analyzed the results of the MPS 2005 to determine what kinds of issues were 

important for engaging Federal employees. We then developed a scale based on 

16 questions from the MPS 2005 that we used to measure an employee’s level of 

engagement.

Findings

What engages Federal employees? The six themes that we found that are 

important for engaging Federal employees are:

• Pride in one’s work or workplace,

• Satisfaction with leadership, 

• Opportunity to perform well at work, 

• Satisfaction with the recognition received, 

• Prospect for future personal and professional growth, and 

• A positive work environment with some focus on teamwork. 

The Federal work force: Who is engaged and why? According to our engagement 

scale, about one-third of Federal employees are fully engaged, almost one-half are 

somewhat engaged, and the remaining 17 percent are not engaged.

First-level supervisors are an important influence on their subordinates’ level of 

engagement as they have a direct effect on the themes that we found are important 

for engaging Federal employees. We also found that engaged employees have a 

much more positive view of their supervisors’ management skills than do employees 

who are not engaged.

Executive Summary
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board iii

Executive Summary

There are differences in the level of employee engagement in the Federal work force 

based on the following factors:

• Level of organizational responsibility: More members of the Senior Executive 

Service (SES) are engaged than supervisory employees, who are, in turn, more 

likely to be 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 top 

earning Federal employees tend to be more engaged than the lowest earning 

employees.

• Level of education: The more education employees have, the higher their 

engagement level.

• Race/Ethnicity: We found differences in the levels of engagement for 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: In some agencies nearly half of the employees were engaged while in 

others, only about one-quarter were engaged.

There are no sizeable variations among the level of employee engagement across the 

Federal work force based on such other factors as gender, age, length of tenure with 

the civil service or agency, 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.

How do employee engagement levels advance or hinder Federal agency mission 

accomplishment? We found a significant relationship between the average level of 

employee engagement in agencies and the following outcomes:

• Agency results as measured by the Office of Management and Budget’s Program 

Assessment Rating Tool (PART): Higher levels of employee engagement 

correlated to higher scores on the program results/accountability portion of the 

PART.

• An employee’s intent to leave the agency: Employees who reported that they 

were very unlikely to leave their agency were much more engaged than those 

who reported they were very likely to leave. This pattern was the same for both 

retirement-eligible employees and employees not eligible for retirement. This 

suggests that if employees are not engaged, they will start to look for better 

opportunities elsewhere.

An important related finding showed that a majority of employees who were 

very likely to leave their agency and were not engaged had received the highest 

performance rating granted on their most recent rating of record. Federal 
iv The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Executive Summary

agencies may be at risk of losing these high-performing but unengaged 

employees to more engaging employment opportunities elsewhere.

• 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: Higher 

levels of employee engagement correlated to fewer EEO complainants (the 

number of employees filing complaints as a percentage of the total agency 

work force).

• 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.

Recommendations

The Merit Systems Protection Board recommends that agencies take steps to increase 

employee engagement in view of the relationship we found between employee 

engagement and desirable agency outcomes. Specifically, agencies should:

Ensure a good person-to-job fit. To have a good chance at fully engaging an 

employee, a good fit between the person and the job is as necessary as the technical 

competence required to perform the job. Agency human resources staffs and hiring 

managers should use existing tools, as suggested in this report, to recruit candidates 

who are well matched to their organization’s needs and hence more likely to become 

engaged in their agency and its mission.

• Improve their job marketing: The vacancy announcement is very often the first 

place applicants get a glimpse of the open position if not their first look at the 

agency itself. Hiring managers and human resources staffs should use vision and 

creativity to entice job candidates to apply who would not only perform well in 

the job but who would also fit in well with the organization’s culture. 

• Encourage networking: To recruit for engagement, managers should encourage 

current employees to network within their job field to identify high-quality 

candidates who may be cultivated for current or future job openings.

• Assess more intensively: Agencies should use work sample assessments during 

the hiring process so hiring organizations and applicants gain as much insight 

into each other as possible.

• Use rotations: Managers should rotate employees to different teams or 

organizations, where practical, to help improve the chances of a good fit between 

employees and jobs.

Show employees they are valued from their first day on the job. If seemingly 

little things are done correctly during the start of an employee’s tenure, the employee 

will most likely be easier to engage. For example, is there someone to greet the new 
Executive Summary

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board v

employee and show him or her the ropes for the first several days? Does the new 

employee have meaningful work to do on the first day of work? 

Stimulate employee commitment. Supervisors should inspire employee 

commitment by showing employees how important their work is, demonstrating an 

interest in developing their employees, and encouraging them to take ownership of 

their work. 

Manage performance with the attention it deserves. Supervisors must provide 

the appropriate guidance and feedback to employees during each of the different 

performance management phases. 

Establish a clear line of sight from the employee to the larger work unit.

Managers should use their agency’s performance management process to establish 

a clear line of sight from the employee to the larger organization so individual 

employees know the organization’s mission and goals and how they contribute to 

their fulfillment.

Mentor employees. Agencies should put mentoring programs in place to help 

employees define their role in the organization and to better assimilate new 

employees into the organization.

Recruit and select supervisors to supervise. Agencies should recruit and select 

supervisors based on their supervisory-related abilities or potential—part of which 

should be the ability to engage subordinates. 

Use a competency-based approach. Agencies should embrace a competencybased approach to managing employees to ensure that their skills are well-used and 

continually enhanced. 

Communicate vision and commitment. Senior agency leaders should 

communicate a clear vision of how the agency will accomplish its mission and show 

that they are committed to their employees.

Measure engagement. Agencies should periodically measure employee engagement 

and work to increase the level of engagement of their work force to improve agency 

outcomes. 

Managers and human resources professionals should determine how to tailor these 

recommendations to best fit their organization and the individuals within those 

organizations. By establishing a link between employee engagement and Federal 

agency outcomes, we hope to refocus attention and energy on these management 

practices that can increase the level of Federal employee engagement. 

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 1

Engagement Background

At one time workers were considered by most factory owners to be merely 

an element of production—no more or less important than any raw 

materials that were needed to produce an output. At that time, companies 

were valued based on the strength of their financial and tangible assets. Today, 

the elements that drive business value include such things as innovation; customer 

relationships; and employee motivation, loyalty, and intellectual expertise.1 As 

these intangible assets become increasingly important for organizational success, 

the question of how to achieve higher levels of worker productivity becomes 

more important.

Early Management Theory

Over the past century, to increase outputs and profits, organizations have attempted 

to use many of the theories emanating from the systemic study of what motivates 

employees to work harder. Among these theories are those of Maslow, Herzberg, 

and Skinner.

Maslow’s five levels of needs (physiological, safety, love, esteem, and selfactualization) represented an early attempt to explain what motivates people. 

Maslow proposed that as one need is satisfied, the next need replaces it as the 

primary motivator for the individual.2 Herzberg’s Two Factor Theory proposed that 

people are influenced by motivation factors and hygiene factors. Motivation factors 

such as responsibility, achievement, recognition, advancement, and work itself 

motivate employees to improve their performance. Hygiene factors such as working 

conditions, salary, and job security ensure that employees do not become dissatisfied 

but the factors themselves do not motivate the individual to achieve higher levels of 

performance.3 Skinner’s reinforcement theory states that if there are consequences 

for certain behaviors, those consequences influence that behavior. In other words, 

employees will repeat behaviors that have positive consequences and will avoid those 

behaviors that have negative consequences.4

1 “Measuring the Immeasurable,” Strategic HR Review, 4(5), July/August 2005, p. 7. 

2 A. H. Maslow, “A Theory of Human Motivation,” Psychological Review, 50 (1943), 

pp. 370-396.

3 Frederick Herzberg, Bernard Mausner, and Barbara Bloch Snyderman, The Motivation 

to Work, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., New York, NY, 1959, pp. 113-119.

4 B. F. Skinner, Science and Human Behavior, The Free Press, New York, NY, 1965, 

pp. 182-193 (originally published by The Macmillan Company, New York, NY, 1953).
2 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Employee engagement is rooted in these scientific management theories that explore 

both the intrinsic and extrinsic motivation that propels employees to greater levels of 

performance.5 

What Is Employee Engagement?

Definition. Academicians, management theorists, and organizations themselves 

all seem to have similar definitions of “employee engagement.” Most of these 

definitions center around the idea that employees who are engaged have some type 

of heightened connection to their work, their organization, or the people they work 

for or with that causes them to produce better results for the organization.

The common themes that emerge when researchers discuss engaged employees go 

beyond basic job satisfaction to employees finding personal meaning in their work, 

taking pride in what they do and where they do it, and having the feeling that 

their organization values them. The greater an employee’s engagement, the more 

likely the employee will go above and beyond the minimum required and expend 

discretionary effort to provide excellent performance.6 

Emotional and Rational Commitment. Employees can commit to an organization 

in two ways: rationally and emotionally. Employees commit rationally to 

an organization when they see that they will personally benefit financially, 

developmentally, or professionally from one or a combination of their managers, 

their teammates, or their organization. Employees commit emotionally when 

they believe in, value, or enjoy their work, their managers, their team, and/or their 

organization.7 Rational incentives can create the forceful reasons that employees 

stay with their organizations and why they feel compelled to meet basic performance 

requirements. However, employees who “derive pride, inspiration, and enjoyment 

from their job and organization” are the employees who expend the highest levels of 

discretionary effort.8

Discretionary Effort. Simply put, discretionary effort results when employees put 

forth their very best efforts, instead of the minimum required to keep their bosses 

happy, or, worse yet, just going through the motions at work. Almost every day 

employees make the kinds of decisions that define the level of discretionary effort 

they give: Whether to go to lunch or work through lunch; whether to leave for 

the day on time or stay until the job is finished; whether to help a coworker finish 

a project when it is not part of the one’s normal duties; or to be extra helpful and 

Engagement Background

5 Fredric D. Frank, Richard P. Finnegan, and Craig R. Taylor, “The Race for Talent: Retaining 

and Engaging Workers in the 21st Century,” Human Resource Planning, 27(3), 2004, pp. 15-16.

6 Robert J. Vance, “Employee Engagement and Commitment: A Guide to Understanding, 

Measuring and Increasing Engagement in Your Organization,” Society for Human Resource 

Management, 2006, p. 6.

7 Corporate Leadership Council, Driving Employee Performance and Retention through 

Engagement: A Quantitative Analysis of the Effectiveness of Employee Engagement Strategies, 

Corporate Executive Board, Washington, DC, 2004, p. 4.

8 Corporate Leadership Council, 2004, p. 36.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 3

friendly to an unsatisfied customer.9 The greater employees’ engagement, the more 

likely that they will expend discretionary effort to improve their own and, in turn, 

their organization’s performance.

Job Satisfaction. Many organizations have focused on trying to satisfy their 

employees in the belief that a satisfied employee is a happy, productive employee. 

Satisfaction was generally measured through periodic surveys whose results were 

intended to spur management action to increase employee satisfaction. However, 

studies have shown that employee engagement surpasses satisfaction as an indicator of 

productivity. Competitive pay and benefits along with a healthy work-life balance all 

help to drive employee satisfaction. But unless employees feel a special bond with the 

employing organization they will not be highly engaged and will be reluctant to put 

forth the added discretionary effort upon which improved organizational results rely.10 

This is not to downplay employee satisfaction as an important component of 

employee engagement. If an organization’s pay, benefits, and work environment 

are not able to produce satisfied employees, then it is unlikely that employees will 

form a higher bond with the organization. When employees are engaged they will 

accept periods of low satisfaction and still remain committed. But when employee 

satisfaction is low to begin with, they will be disengaged and soon leave the 

organization—physically, or perhaps mentally, which can be even worse.11 

Engagement and Business Outcomes

Although having satisfied or even happy employees may be a goal of some managers, 

the real importance of employee engagement to organizations lies in the evidence 

from previous studies that highly engaged employees produce better outcomes for 

their organizations.

The 2003 Towers Perrin Talent Report, based on a survey of over 35,000 U.S. 

workers in medium to large organizations that spanned the different economic 

sectors, found that highly engaged employees outperform their less engaged 

counterparts.12 Although the report cautions that there are a number of variables 

that affect business outcomes, Towers Perrin found that there is a clear relationship 

between increased engagement and improved retention of talent and better 

financial performance. Companies whose employees exhibited higher engagement 

outperformed companies that scored lower on employee engagement relative to 

industry benchmarks. “Whether that’s because they attract more engaged people as 

a consequence of their superior performance, or whether their superior performance 

Engagement Background

9 Bill Erickson, “Nature Times Nurture: How Organizations Can Optimize Their People’s 

Contributions,” Journal of Organizational Excellence, 24(1), Winter, 2004, p. 26.

10 Edmond Mellina, “Happy Doesn’t Always Mean Productive,” Canadian HR Reporter, 16(19), 

November 3, 2003, p. 15.

11 Erickson, 2004, p. 25.

12 Towers Perrin, “Working Today: Understanding What Drives Employee Engagement,” The 

2003 Towers Perrin Talent Report, 2003, pp. 2, 20.
4 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

comes from the discretionary effort of their engaged people is, in the end, almost 

moot. What’s clear is that the two are intertwined and together work to create a 

‘virtuous circle’ of enhanced performance.”13

In 2001, the Gallup organization collected employee engagement scores and 

profitability, sales, employee retention, and customer satisfaction data for 7,939 

business units to determine if units with high engagement scores had better 

business outcomes than those with lower engagement scores. They found that the 

“correlation was positive and substantially meaningful to success across different 

businesses: Highly engaged individuals were most often found in the highperformance units.”14 The Gallup results attribute successful business outcomes to 

many different factors. But the large amount of data and the number of different 

industries and work situations involved supported their statement that “this picture 

of the nexus between engagement and economic performance is robust.”15 

In addition to higher organizational productivity, employee engagement has 

also been shown to have an inverse relationship to employee turnover. Towers 

Perrin reports that about a quarter of disengaged employees are actively seeking 

other employment, which is 10 times the rate of highly engaged workers.16 This 

means that there is a very real possibility that an organization will lose disengaged 

employees—a welcome prospect if the employees in question are chronic underachievers, but quite another story entirely when the disengaged are high performers 

or key people in the organization. 

Towers Perrin also reports that half of the disengaged employees are open to other 

opportunities even though they are not actively seeking other employment. This 

means that organizations could have a large group of disaffected and nonproductive 

people who may be “adversely affecting performance by spreading their own negative 

views and behaviors to others.”17 Although high engagement does not necessarily 

guarantee retention (because some highly engaged employees are open to interesting 

opportunities elsewhere), it increases the chances of retaining the very people who 

are going to be the most attractive to other employers.18

Purpose of the Study

So why should we study Federal employee engagement, and why should we study 

it now? In the private sector, a tight economy was a major contributor in focusing 

attention on maximizing employee output and getting the most out of employee 

resources.19 Regardless of how different organizations define engagement, or if they 

Engagement Background

13 Towers Perrin, 2003, pp. 18-20.

14 James K. Harter, “Taking Feedback to the Bottom Line,” Gallup Management Journal, March 

15, 2001, p. 3.

15 Harter, 2001, p. 4.

16 Towers Perrin, 2003, p. 21.

17 Towers Perrin, 2003, p. 21.

18 Towers Perrin, 2003, p. 21.

19 Paul R. Bernthal, Measuring Employee Engagement, Development Dimensions International, 

Inc. White Paper, 2004, p. 1.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 5

specifically refer to employee engagement at all, the goal is the same: Increasing 

discretionary effort. In a tight labor market with virtually all employers dealing 

with cutbacks and financial pressures (i.e., improving organization results with 

fewer resources), a critical mass of employees who are willing to routinely give 

discretionary effort can be of tremendous value to an organization.20

It is no different in the Federal Government. In recent years there has been an everincreasing focus on improving results in Federal agencies. This focus has come from 

management directives in the form of the National Performance Review and the 

President’s Management Agenda, from increasingly tight budgets, and from reduced 

staffing levels. The admonition to “Do more with less” is well-known to Federal 

managers and employees alike. 

In addition to these pressures, Federal managers are also facing a wave of retirements 

as the baby boom generation ages. The Office of Personnel Management estimates 

that 60 percent of the Federal Government’s General Schedule employees, and 90 

percent of the Senior Executive Service, will be eligible to retire by 2016.21 Even if 

the impact of these retirements is mitigated by employees working longer or opting 

to stay employed with their organizations in some other capacity (either part time or 

as reemployed annuitants), the Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that by the year 

2010 there could be as many as 7 to 10 million more jobs than there are employees 

in the United States, and by 2015 a whopping 21 to 40 million more jobs than 

employees.22 These estimates make clear that the fight the Federal Government is 

waging to attract talented new employees has just begun.

Management and budgetary pressures, increasing numbers of retirement-eligible 

employees, and ever-intensifying competition for talent among agencies and with 

the private and not-for-profit sectors are all factors over which Federal agencies have 

little or no direct control. In this atmosphere, work environments that attract top 

talent and engage that talent once it is in place are vital to the continued success of 

agency missions. To help agencies better meet these environmental challenges, the 

U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) conducted this study to:

1. Measure the level of employee engagement in the Federal Government to 

determine if employees of different organizations or demographic groups exhibit 

different levels of engagement; 

2. Determine whether increased levels of employee engagement are related to 

better outcomes for Federal agencies; and

3. Identify how Federal agencies can improve the engagement level of their 

employees.

Engagement Background

20 Towers Perrin, 2003, p. 2.

21 Carl Fillichio, “Getting Ready for the Retirement Tsunami,” The Public Manager, Spring 

2006, p. 4.

22 Jay Jamrog, “The Perfect Storm: The Future of Retention and Engagement,” Human Resource 

Planning, 27(3), 2004, p. 27.
6 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Engagement Background

The MSPB conducted this study in accordance with our mandate to study Federal 

merit systems to determine if the work force is managed in adherence with the 

merit system principles and is free from prohibited personnel practices.23 Our 

recommendations of methods to increase the level of Federal employee engagement 

support the merit system values of using the Federal work force efficiently and 

effectively and ensuring that all employees receive fair and equitable treatment in 

all aspects of human resources management.24

23 5 U.S.C. § 1204(a)(3).

24 5 U.S.C. § 2301(b)(2) and (5).
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 7

Measuring Federal 

Employee Engagement

Merit Principles Survey

For the past two decades, the MSPB has conducted periodic, Governmentwide 

Merit Principles Surveys of Federal employees to solicit their perceptions of 

their jobs, work environment, supervisors, and agencies. The MSPB uses the 

survey results to assist in its statutory responsibility to study the hiring, development, 

and management of civilian employees to ensure that agencies follow the Federal 

merit principles and do not allow prohibited personnel practices to occur. 

For this study we measured the engagement level of Federal employees using a scale 

derived from answers that Federal employees gave to the 2005 Merit Principles 

Survey (MPS 2005). The MPS 2005 was administered to full-time, permanent, 

nonseasonal Federal employees during the summer and fall of 2005. Twentyfour Federal agencies participated in the survey, and a total of 36,926 employees 

completed the survey, for a response rate of just over 50 percent.25

MSPB Engagement Scale

We analyzed the results of the MPS 2005 to determine what kinds of issues were 

important for engaging Federal employees.26 We also reviewed studies of employee 

engagement in the private sector and note that while they may focus on slightly 

different aspects of employee work experiences, most also touch on the same major 

issues that we found are important for fostering employee engagement. These are: 

1. Pride in one’s work or workplace,

2. Satisfaction with leadership, 

3. Opportunity to perform well at work, 

25 For more information about the MPS 2005 see, U. S. Merit Systems Protection Board, 

Accomplishing Our Mission: Results of the Merit Principles Survey 2005, Washington, DC, 

February 2007.

26 See Appendix A for detailed information about how we developed our engagement scale and 

Appendix B for a copy of the MPS 2005.
8 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

4. Satisfaction with the 

recognition received, 

5. Prospect for future personal 

and professional growth, and 

6. A positive work environment 

with some focus on 

teamwork. 

We then identified a series of 16 

questions from the MPS 2005 

that we used to measure employee 

attitudes toward these six themes. 

The sum of the scores on these 16 

questions form the scale that we 

used to represent an employee’s 

level of engagement. 

The six themes we found that 

influence employee engagement are 

each discussed below, along with 

the survey questions that we used 

to gauge employee attitudes toward 

each theme. The six themes and 

related 16 questions also appear in 

the side-bar.

Pride in one’s work or 

workplace. The first theme 

that emerged on our employee 

engagement scale is the pride that 

employees have in their work and/

or in their organization. In order 

to develop a higher emotional 

connection to the organization, an 

employee must have some degree 

of pride in his or her work or 

the mission of the organization. 

It is difficult to conceive that 

employees who do not possess a 

certain amount of pride in their 

work and their organization will 

be fully engaged in the work that 

they do. In our analysis, these 

four MPS 2005 questions best 

measured the level of employees’ 

pride in what they do every day 

and where they do it:

Measuring Federal Employee Engagement

MSPB Employee Engagement 

Scale Questions

Pride in one’s work or workplace

1. My agency is successful at 

accomplishing its mission.

2. My work unit produces high-quality 

products and services.

3. The work I do is meaningful to me.

4. I would recommend my agency as a 

place to work.

Satisfaction with leadership

5. Overall, I am satisfied with my 

supervisor.

6. Overall, I am satisfied with managers 

above my immediate supervisor.

Opportunity to perform well at work

7. I know what is expected of me on 

the job.

8. My job makes good use of my skills 

and abilities.

9. I have the resources to do my job 

well.

10. I have sufficient opportunities (such 

as challenging assignments or 

projects) to earn a high performance 

rating.

Satisfaction with the recognition received

11. Recognition and rewards are based 

on performance in my work unit.

12. I am satisfied with the recognition 

and rewards I receive for my work.

Prospect for future personal and 

professional growth

13. I am given a real opportunity to 

improve my skills in my organization.

Positive work environment with some 

focus on teamwork

14. I am treated with respect at work.

15. My opinions count at work.

16. A spirit of cooperation and teamwork 

exists in my work unit.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 9

1. My agency is successful at accomplishing its mission.

2. My work unit produces high-quality products and services.

3. The work I do is meaningful to me.

4. I would recommend my agency as a place to work.

Satisfaction with leadership. The second theme that contributed to employee 

engagement for Federal employees was satisfaction with supervision and leadership. 

First-line supervisors play a critical role in the daily lives of employees, from 

assigning work to evaluating performance, so it should not be surprising that they 

have an important effect on employee engagement. Likewise, managers at higher 

levels, tasked with developing the vision toward which the agency strives, can also 

affect employee engagement. If there is no organizational vision, if employees have 

a difficult time seeing the vision or their role in bringing about the vision, or if 

employees perceive that the agency is headed in a direction that seems inconsistent 

with the stated vision, it is likely that the employees will be less engaged. The MPS 

2005 questions that most closely measured participants’ attitudes toward their 

managers and supervisors were: 

5. Overall, I am satisfied with my supervisor.

6. Overall, I am satisfied with managers above my immediate supervisor.

Opportunity to perform well at work. The opportunity to perform well is another 

important contributor to employee engagement in the Federal Government. This 

opportunity encompasses a wide range of job features best captured by the following 

MPS 2005 questions: 

7. I know what is expected of me on the job.

8. My job makes good use of my skills and abilities.

9. I have the resources to do my job well.

10. I have sufficient opportunities (such as challenging assignments or projects) to 

earn a high performance rating.

Satisfaction with the recognition received. Recognition is central to any 

discussion of employee engagement. Recognition may take the form of monetary 

or nonmonetary awards, or a simple acknowledgement of a job well done. 

Whatever the method, recognition systems encompass a number of variables that 

are all important for maintaining high levels of employee engagement, including 

communication and respect. When an organization or a supervisor rewards or 

recognizes an employee or team, they are communicating in a powerful way what 

types of activities and accomplishments the organization values. By granting this 

recognition, the organization is reinforcing what kind of effort and what types of 

behaviors it would like to see repeated by other employees. Recognition and rewards 

are also a method organizations use to make employees feel respected and valued. 

Measuring Federal Employee Engagement
10 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

When employees are rarely recognized for a job well done, or when recognition is 

given inappropriately, engagement will suffer. The two MPS 2005 questions we used 

to gauge employee attitudes about their organization’s recognition systems were:

11. Recognition and rewards are based on performance in my work unit.

12. I am satisfied with the recognition and rewards I receive for my work.

Prospect for future personal and professional growth. The prospect for future 

growth within the organization also has a role to play in employee engagement. 

Of course not everyone can be promoted every year, and the continuing focus on 

flatter organizations with wider spans of control means that the opportunities for 

promotions in many organizations may be dwindling. However, growth need not 

be limited solely to advancing to the next grade level. Growth can occur when 

employees are given the opportunity to learn new skill sets, or improve current ones; 

participate in different types of assignments; exercise leadership roles within teams; 

or rotate to different parts of the organization. The following MPS 2005 question 

gauged employee beliefs about their future prospects with their organization:

13. I am given a real opportunity to improve my skills in my organization.

Positive work environment with some focus on teamwork. The general work 

environment has an important influence on employee engagement as it may or may 

not foster cooperative attitudes and respectful treatment. The MPS 2005 questions 

that best measured employee attitudes toward their work environment were:

14. I am treated with respect at work.

15. My opinions count at work.

16. A spirit of cooperation and teamwork exists in my work unit.

As discussed in the previous chapter, employees can commit to an organization in 

two ways—rationally and emotionally. Both types of commitment are necessary 

for engaging employees. Incentives that drive rational commitment include pay 

and benefits and form the basis of why employees are attracted to, and stay with, an 

organization. Typically, this rational foundation is necessary in order for emotional 

incentives, such as enjoyment of the work or a belief in an organization’s mission, 

to spur higher levels of engagement. So it is appropriate that we found elements 

of both rational and emotional commitment in our analysis of what engages 

Federal employees.

Scoring Methodology

The engagement scale we developed using the 16 MPS 2005 questions discussed 

allowed us to determine what percentage of the Federal work force is engaged, 

somewhat engaged, or not engaged. Each of the 16 questions had a five-level 

response scale: Strongly Disagree, Disagree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Agree, 

and Strongly Agree. We assigned a point value ranging from 1 to 5 to each of these 

Measuring Federal Employee Engagement
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 11

possible responses, with Strongly Disagree equating to a value of 1 and Strongly 

Agree equating to a value of 5.

If a survey respondent answered “Strongly Agree” to all 16 engagement questions, 

that respondent would have an engagement score of 80 (the Strongly Agree point 

value of 5 times the 16 engagement questions equals 80). Similarly, if a survey 

respondent answered “Strongly Disagree” to all 16 engagement questions that 

respondent would have an engagement score of 16 (the Strongly Disagree point 

value of 1 times the 16 engagement questions equals 16). MPS 2005 respondents 

who did not answer one or more of our scale questions were not included in 

our analysis.

We classified an employee as “engaged” if the employee achieved a score as if he 

or she agreed with each of our 16 engagement questions. In other words, since 

the response of “Agree” had a point value of 4, employees who agreed with all 16 

questions would have an engagement score of 64. Not every respondent who 

achieved an engagement score of 64 agreed with every single question—he or she 

could very well have disagreed with some and strongly agreed with others. The 

cutoff of 64 is simply the breakpoint we used to denote an engaged employee based 

on the belief that to be labeled “engaged,” an employee’s score should average out to 

show agreement with each of the 16 questions.

We classified employees who scored between our engaged cutoff of 64 and pure 

neutrality as “somewhat engaged.” In other words, the low cutoff for our somewhat 

engaged category was 48—as if the employee had answered Neither Agree nor 

Disagree for each of the 16 questions.

We classified employees who scored less than 48 (that is, they achieved less than 

neutrality for each question) as “not engaged.” (See Figure 1 for a graphic depiction 

of our scoring methodology.)

Measuring Federal Employee Engagement

 

1 2 3 4 5 

 

 

 

1 6 3 2 4 8 6 4 80

Figure 1: Employee Engagement 

Scoring Methodology

Strongly Disagree Disagree Neither Agree nor Disagree Agree Strongly Agree

16 question scale

value for each response

Not Engaged Somewhat

Engaged

Engaged

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 13

The Federal Work Force: 

Who Is Engaged?

Our findings based on the application of our employee engagement scale 

are presented in the next two chapters. In this chapter, we look at the 

engagement level of the Federal work force as a whole, as well as different 

segments of the Federal work force.

The Federal Work Force

Figure 2 shows the frequency distribution of the engagement scores across the 

Federal Government based on our scale of the 16 MPS 2005 questions.

Figure 2: Frequency of Engagement Scores

16 18 20 24 3028 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 5456 58 60 62 64 66 68 70 72 74 76 78 80 2622

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

900

1000

1100

1200

1300

1400

1500

1600

Engagement Score

Not Engaged

Somewhat 

Engaged Engaged

Number of Respondents

The first thing that we notice about Figure 2 is that the engagement scores for Federal 

employees seem to trend toward the higher side of the engagement scale. This is good 

news for the Government in general in that more employees seem to fall toward the 

top of the range than would be expected from a chance distribution of scores. 
14 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Figure 3 breaks out these data in a different way—showing the percentage of 

employees that fall into each of our engagement categories. 

Figure 3: Percentage of Federal Employees

in Each Engagement Category 

35.3

17.5

47.2

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Just over one-third (35.3 percent) of Federal employees fall into the engaged 

category, twice as many as fall into the not engaged category (17.5 percent). 

However, the greatest numbers of Federal employees fall into the somewhat engaged 

category—47.2 percent. Figure 3 gives a good picture of why the issue of employee 

engagement should be important to Federal managers and decision-makers—

almost half (47.2 percent) of Federal employees are basically up for grabs as far as 

engagement goes. With the bulk of the work force on the “engagement fence,” 

Federal agencies should be proactive in putting strategies in place that will help 

further engage as much of this population as possible.

Level of Organizational Responsibility

Figure 4 contrasts the engagement level of Federal employees based on their 

differing levels of organizational responsibility. As the responsibility level increases in 

Federal organizations, we see that higher levels of employee engagement are realized. 

Members of the Senior Executive Service (SES) are the management leaders 

who serve in the key positions in Federal agencies just below the top Presidential 

appointees. SES members are the major link between these political appointees and 

the rest of the career Federal work force.27

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

27 U.S. Office of Personnel Management, About the Senior Executive Service, downloaded from 

http://www.opm.gov/ses/about_ses/index.asp on July 18, 2008.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 15

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

As we might expect, the senior leaders in Federal agencies are more highly engaged 

than other Federal employees. Members of the SES have generally exhibited more 

favorable attitudes toward their work and their employing organization than other 

Federal employees.28 It is hardly surprising that the senior leaders who are setting 

the course for Federal agencies are more engaged in the very organizations which 

they lead. In fact, over twice as many members of the SES reported being engaged 

as did nonsupervisors.

Figure 4: Engagement by

Responsibility Level

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

4.5 7.5 11.2 16.8 19.4

25.7

37.1

45.1

45.0

49.1

69.8

55.4

43.7 38.3 31.5

Executive/

SES

Manager Supervisor Team

Leader

NonSupervisor

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

In our report outlining the results of the Merit Principles Survey 2005, we noted 

that more supervisors than nonsupervisors generally believe that their agency treats 

them fairly, that supervisors have a higher level of satisfaction with their immediate 

and upper level supervisors than nonsupervisors have, and that supervisors have 

a higher level of satisfaction with the recognition and rewards they receive than 

nonsupervisors.29 Given these findings we would expect more supervisors to be 

engaged than nonsupervisors, as Figure 4 shows.30

28 For instance, see U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Accomplishing Our Mission: Results 

of the Merit Principles Survey 2005, and the demographic results of the Office of Personnel 

Management’s Federal Human Capital Survey 2006 downloaded from www.fhcs2006.opm.gov/

Reports on July 18, 2008. 

29 U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Accomplishing Our Mission: Results of the Merit 

Principles Survey 2005, February 2007, pp. 41-42.

30 The source of Figure 4 is MPS 2005 question 44, What is your supervisory status?, which 

defines “Nonsupervisor” as one who does not supervise other employees; “Team Leader” as one 

who does not have official supervisory responsibilities nor conducts performance appraisals, but 

provides employees with day-to-day guidance in work projects; “Supervisor” as one responsible 

for employee performance appraisals and approval of their leave, but does not supervise other 

supervisors; “Manager” as one in a management position who supervises one or more supervisors; 

and “Executive” as SES or equivalent.
16 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

There could be different reasons for higher levels of engagement among supervisors 

than nonsupervisors. Perhaps employees who are the most engaged are more likely 

to be promoted into the supervisory ranks than their counterparts who are less 

engaged. More highly engaged employees entering supervisory ranks could account 

for those ranks outpacing the nonsupervisory population in engagement. Or, 

perhaps, as members of management, supervisors simply identify more closely with 

their organization and are more cognizant of what, and how, the organization is 

doing—resulting in higher levels of engagement.

The Importance of First-Level Supervisors

Supervision affects the engagement equation in different ways. As we have seen, 

supervisors in the Federal Government are likely to be more highly engaged than 

their nonsupervisory counterparts. Also, as one might expect, supervisors have 

an important effect on the level of engagement of their subordinates. Finally, 

employees with differing levels of engagement also have widely differing opinions 

of the management and technical skills of their supervisors.

Even a cursory review of the 16 questions that we used to measure employee 

engagement reveals how important supervisors are to their subordinates’ level of 

engagement. Most of the questions in our engagement scale relate to areas over 

which supervisors have a major influence, including: 

• Communicating job expectations,

• Making good use of employees’ skills and abilities,

• Ensuring that employees have the resources to do their jobs well, 

• Providing employees with challenging assignments,

• Rewarding and recognizing employees appropriately,

• Giving employees an opportunity to improve their skills,

• Treating employees with respect,

• Valuing employee opinions, and

• Fostering an environment of cooperation and teamwork.

It is clear that, given the importance of a supervisor’s role in each of these tasks, 

supervisors who are successful in accomplishing them (supervisors who are, in fact, 

more effective managers) will lead a work force that is more highly engaged.

Underscoring the idea that it is important for supervisors to possess good 

management skills in order to foster engagement, many more employees who are 

engaged perceived their supervisors to have good management skills than employees 

who were not engaged. Of the employees who were engaged, 87 percent agreed that 

their supervisors had good management skills (see Figure 5). Conversely, of the 

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 17

employees who were not engaged, a mere 13.7 percent agreed that their supervisors 

had good management skills (see Figure 6).

A somewhat different picture emerged when we looked at employee attitudes about 

their supervisors’ technical skills. Of the employees who were engaged, 90 percent 

agreed that their supervisors had good technical skills (see Figure 7). However, there 

was more of a split in attitudes among the employees who were not engaged. As 

Figure 8 shows, of the employees who were not engaged, 32.9 percent agreed that 

their supervisors had good technical skills, 40.7 percent disagreed, and 26.4 percent 

neither agreed nor disagreed. 

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 5: My Supervisor Has Good 

Management Skills - Engaged Employees

Source: MPS 2005 question 35m.

Agree, 87.0%

Neither, 9.3%

Disagree, 3.7%

Figure 6: My Supervisor Has Good 

Management Skills - Employees Not Engaged

Source: MPS 2005 question 35m.

Agree, 13.7%

Neither, 21.9%

Disagree, 64.4%
18 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

The difference in employee attitudes about their supervisors’ management and 

technical skills suggests that perhaps a supervisor’s technical skills are not as 

important for employee engagement as his or her management skills. Given the 

focus on sound management skills that can be found in our employee engagement 

scale, this finding is not unexpected. However, it does have implications for agencies 

as they recruit and hire supervisory employees.

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 7: My Supervisor Has Good 

Technical Skills - Engaged Employees 

Source: MPS 2005 question 35l.

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Agree, 90.0%

Neither, 8.0%

Disagree, 2.1%

Figure 8: My Supervisor Has Good 

Technical Skills - Employees Not Engaged

Source: MPS 2005 question 35l.

Agree, 32.9%

Neither, 26.4%

Disagree, 40.7%
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 19

Salary

Figure 9 displays the engagement level of Federal employees based on different total 

salary ranges. About 11 percent more of the employees in the highest salary range 

fell into the engaged category than those in the lowest salary range.

Given the large variation in engagement based on organizational responsibility 

level (Figure 4), we would expect to see similar variation based on differing pay 

levels, since executives, managers, and supervisors are generally paid more than 

nonsupervisors. While we did find differences in the level of engagement among the 

differing pay ranges, they were not as pronounced as those based on organizational 

responsibility level. It would appear that responsibility level has a greater 

relationship to employee engagement than salary alone.

Level of Education

There are some differences in the level of engagement based on the level of education 

that employees have attained. The higher an employee’s level of education the 

more likely that the employee will fall into the engaged category (see Figure 10). 

For example, 34 percent of employees with a high school diploma reported being 

engaged, compared to 43.3 percent of employees with a doctorate.

Assuming many employees further their education in a job-related field, or are 

more likely to take a job in the field in which they received an advanced degree, this 

pattern is understandable. We would expect employees to be more engaged in a job 

when they have sought more formal education in that job field.

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 9: Engagement by

Total Salary

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

$120+ $120-$90 $90-$60 $60-$30 $30 & Less

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Additional source: OPM, Central Personnel Data File.

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

16.0 14.2 16.2 19.9 23.2

41.4 44.0

49.2 47.6 45.0

42.6 41.8 34.7 32.5 31.8

$ in 000’s
20 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Race/Ethnicity

There was some variation in the level of engagement of different racial/ethnic groups 

across the Federal Government, with the greatest difference occurring between 

people of Asian origin and Native Americans. Over 43 percent of the MPS 2005 

respondents who were Asian reported being engaged, while we could classify only 

about 27 percent of Native American respondents as engaged (see Figure 11). To a 

lesser degree, engagement levels varied among the other racial/ethnic groups as also 

shown in Figure 11. 

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 10: Engagement by 

Education Level

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

H.S. Some Col. Bach. Prof. Deg. Master’s

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Additional source: OPM, Central Personnel Data File.

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

16.0 14.0 18.1 12.5

48.7 46.3 48.9 47.1 43.0

44.2

34.0 34.1 35.0 38.9 38.9 43.3

17.3 19.6

Doctorate

Figure 11: Engagement by

Race/Ethnicity

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Asian White Total Hispanic AfricanAmerican

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Additional source: OPM, Central Personnel Data File.

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Native

American

10.0

17.3 17.5 17.7 19.0 22.5

46.8

46.4 47.2 49.4 51.0

50.8

43.2

36.3 35.3 32.8 30.0 26.7
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 21

It is important to note that there were certain trends among the respondents 

within each of the five groups that may be related to the differences in each group’s 

engagement level.

For example, we have shown that the higher an employee’s level of education the 

more likely the employee will be engaged. Of the MPS 2005 respondents who 

were Asian, 36.2 percent had not attained a bachelor’s degree and 20.7 percent had 

attained more than a bachelor’s degree. In contrast, 69.2 percent of the Native 

American respondents had not attained a bachelor’s degree, and only 5.1 percent 

had attained more than a bachelor’s degree.

We have also shown that the higher an employee’s salary, the more likely the 

employee will be engaged. About one-third of the Asian and White respondents 

earned $60,000 or less (34.1 percent and 35.8 percent, respectively), while over 

one-fifth earned $90,000 or more (21.5 percent and 24.4 percent, respectively). In 

contrast, over one-half of the African-Americans and Native American respondents 

earned $60,000 or less (53 percent and 57.9 percent, respectively), while only about 

one-tenth earned $90,000 or more (11.8 percent and 11.5 percent, respectively).

These and other factors that may influence the attitudes of members of the various 

racial/ethnic groups toward their jobs and work environment will be explored in 

depth in an upcoming MSPB report.

Performance Management

Performance management processes are very important in engaging employees. As 

was discussed in the previous chapter, performance management activities such as 

ensuring that employees know what is expected of them on the job, making good 

use of employees’ skills and abilities, giving employees the opportunity to earn a 

high performance rating, appropriately awarding employees, and giving employees 

the opportunity to improve their skills are all part of what we found to engage 

employees.

What does not seem as clear is the effect that the formal agency performance 

management structure has on employee engagement. For example, we found 

virtually no difference in the number of employees who were engaged, somewhat 

engaged, or not engaged based on which rating pattern their agency employed. 

Employees who were rated under the Government’s traditional five-tiered rating 

pattern were just as engaged as those rated under a pass-fail (two-tiered) rating 

pattern (see Figure 12).

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?
22 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

In contrast, we found that in the rating pattern where we would expect the most 

differentiation to occur among levels of performance—i.e., a five-tiered pattern—

engagement level differences did occur based on the rating of record. We would 

typically expect employees who are more engaged to receive higher performance 

ratings and our data generally support this expectation. Of the employees rated 

under a five-tiered pattern who received the highest rating (Outstanding or 

equivalent), 39.7 percent were engaged, compared to 29.4 percent of those rated 

Fully Successful or the equivalent (see Figure 13).

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 12: Engagement by

Rating Pattern

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Additional source: OPM, Central Personnel Data File.

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

Five-Tiered Pass/Fail

16.1

47.5 47.3

36.3 36.0

16.7

Figure 13: Engagement by

Rating of Record

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Data are for employees covered by performance management systems with a five-tiered 

rating pattern only. The number of ratings below Fully Successful in our sample was too 

small to report. Additional source: OPM, Central Personnel Data File. Percentages may 

not equal 100 due to rounding.

13.3

46.9

48.0 49.7

39.7

32.9 29.4

19.1 20.8

Outstanding Between O/FS Fully Successful
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 23

About 13 percent of the employees whom Federal agencies deem their top performers 

were not engaged. Agencies should know that they may be at risk of losing these high 

performing employees to more engaging opportunities either in other agencies or in 

other sectors of the economy. See the next chapter, The Importance of Federal Employee 

Engagement, for a discussion of employee engagement, performance ratings, and an 

employee’s intent to leave his or her agency.

Agency

The final variable responsible for substantial differences in the level of employee 

engagement was the agency where an employee worked (see Figure 14). For 

instance, about half of the employees in the agency with the highest level of 

employee engagement were engaged, while only about one-quarter of the employees 

in other agencies were engaged. 

Given this disparity in the engagement level of employees among the different 

agencies, we can infer that the influence that an organization exerts on its employees 

is an important factor in their engagement. The nature of an organization’s work 

and its management practices, culture, mission, and other agency factors may all 

influence the issues that we have identified as engaging Federal employees. In fact, 

an upcoming MSPB report that examines data from all previous Merit Principles 

Surveys finds that an organization’s culture is a major driver of employee attitudes.

In addition to these organizational influences, an organization’s stability may play 

a part in engagement as well. For example, 39.8 percent of all employees from the 

top five engaged agencies in Figure 14 strongly agreed or agreed when asked if their 

organizational structure had been stable during the last 2 years. Of the bottom five 

agencies in Figure 14, only 21.6 percent of all employees either strongly agreed or 

agreed that their organizational structure had been stable during the last 2 years.

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?
24 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

Figure 14: Engagement by Agency

NASA

State

Air Force

Army

EPA

Commerce

Justice

VA

GSA

Navy

HHS

Labor

Other DOD

SSA

Treasury

Interior

HUD

OPM

Agriculture

Energy

Education

Transportation

FDIC

Homeland Security

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 25

Other Variables

We found no noteworthy difference in the engagement level of employees based on 

six other variables we examined—gender, age, white-collar occupational category, 

length of tenure with the Federal civil service, length of tenure with an agency, and 

work location. The charts in Appendix C show employee engagement levels for each 

of these variables.

This chapter of the report has examined the engagement level of different 

populations across the Government with the aim of providing managers and agency 

human resources professionals some insight into where to focus efforts to increase 

engagement. 

We also looked at engagement levels by agency, an important examination that 

allowed us to compare differing agency outcomes to the differing engagement 

levels of their work forces. If better outcomes can be correlated to higher levels of 

engagement, a strong business case can be made for increased management and 

human resources attention to increasing the level of employee engagement. The 

importance of Federal employee engagement to agency outcomes is discussed in 

the next chapter.

The Federal Work Force: Who is Engaged?

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 27

The Importance of Federal 

Employee Engagement

Our first set of findings, presented in the previous chapter, were based on 

engagement data from the results of the MPS 2005. In contrast, our 

second set of findings, presented below, show how different engagement 

levels correlate with various Federal agency outcomes. As discussed earlier, 

previous studies across the different economic sectors have found a link between an 

organization’s level of employee engagement and better organization results. This 

chapter addresses whether a similar relationship exists in the Federal Government.

A note about the following discussion: The outcome measures that we have 

employed are aggregate measures at the agency level. In most instances, standard 

Governmentwide outcome measures simply do not exist for more discreet 

organization units. Likewise, the engagement levels that are presented are calculated 

at the agency level because the structure of the MPS 2005 data precludes us from a 

more detailed analysis.

Federal Agency Results

Pinning down whether Federal agencies are producing successful outcomes is not easy—

there is no profit margin, cost of goods sold, stock price, or other distinct financial 

measure to examine. Federal agencies do track whether they are fulfilling their missions 

by monitoring goal attainment through the Performance and Accountability Report or 

other processes, however. Most agencies also measure and track the level and quality 

of services they provide through customer satisfaction surveys or similar methods. 

Unfortunately, these methods do not result in the consistent Governmentwide 

measurement of results that is needed to determine whether the level of employee 

engagement in agencies is related to the results they produce.

However, one way that the results of Federal programs are somewhat consistently 

assessed is through the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) administered 

by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The PART is an effort to get 

agencies to consistently report their goals and results and to improve performance 

measurement. It is used by OMB to inform funding decisions. The PART is one 

way that information about program performance may be linked to budgeting 
28 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

decisions (called “performance 

budgeting”).31 

The PART process requires that 

agencies submit an assessment 

of their performance to OMB 

which then computes PART 

ratings based on program manager 

responses to a series of questions. 

The questionnaire includes four 

sections dealing with different 

aspects of program performance: 

purpose and design (20 percent 

of the total PART score), strategic 

planning (10 percent of the 

total PART score), program 

management (20 percent of the 

total PART score), and results/

accountability (50 percent of the 

total PART score).32

The results/accountability section 

of the PART is designed to 

determine if the agency’s programs 

are meeting their long-term and 

annual performance goals. It also 

assesses how well the program 

compares to other similar 

programs and how effective the 

program is based on independent 

evaluations.33 It is this results/

accountability section of the PART 

that we examined to determine 

if higher levels of employee 

engagement were related to better programmatic results. 

The February 2006 release of the President’s fiscal year 2007 budget completed 

the fourth year of the PART process to evaluate Federal programs. The programs 

assessed by 2006 accounted for 64 percent of the budget, or $1.47 trillion.34 The 

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement

PART Questions Measuring 

Program Results/Accountability

1. Has the program demonstrated 

adequate progress in achieving its 

long-term performance goals?

2. Does the program (including 

program partners) achieve its annual 

performance goals?

3. Does the program demonstrate 

improved efficiencies or cost 

effectiveness in achieving program 

goals each year?

4. Does the performance of this 

program compare favorably to other 

programs, including government, 

private, etc., with similar purpose and 

goals?

5. Do independent evaluations of 

sufficient scope and quality indicate 

that the program is effective and 

achieving results?

6. Were programmatic goals (and 

benefits) achieved at the least 

incremental societal cost and did the 

program maximize net benefits?*

7. Were program goals achieved within 

budgeted costs and established 

schedules?*

* Questions only asked for specific types of programs

31 Eileen Norcross and Kyle McKenzie, An Analysis of the Office of Management and Budget’s 

Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) for Fiscal Year 2007, George Mason University Mercatus 

Center’s Government Accountability Project, May 2006, p. 3, downloaded from http://www.

mercatus.org/repository/docLib/20060831_20060605_mc_gap_partpaper07.pdf on July 18, 2008.

32 Norcross and McKenzie, 2006, p. 3. 

33 U.S. Office of Management and Budget, Guide to the Program Assessment Rating Tool, March 

2006, p. 54, downloaded from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/part/fy2006/2006_guidance_

final.pdf on July 18, 2008.

34 Norcross and McKenzie, 2006, p. 1.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 29

MPS 2005 was administered over the summer and through the fall of 2005, so we 

selected the PART assessments made available shortly after (in February 2006) the 

MPS administration to analyze with respect to agency engagement and outcomes.35

We found a statistically significant positive correlation between the average levels of 

employee engagement in agencies and agencies’ programmatic results as measured 

by the PART process.36 Specifically, the higher an agency’s average employee 

engagement score, the better it scored on the results/accountability portion of the 

PART. Figure 15 shows what this correlation means in real terms. The agencies 

with the five highest average engagement scores scored an average of 65 (out of 

100) on the results/accountability section of the PART, while the agencies with 

the five lowest average engagement scores scored an average of 37 on the results/

accountability section of the PART.37

Figure 15: Average PART Results/

Accountability Score by Engagement

Level, February 2006

Most Engaged Agencies Least Engaged Agencies

65

37

70

60

50

40

30

20

10

0

Score

This correlation means that there is a relationship between the two variables of 

employee engagement and agency results as measured by the PART process. The 

existence of the correlation by itself does not tell us if one of these variables caused 

the other or if there is some other, unknown, variable that causes both higher 

engagement and higher results/accountability scores on the PART. But, since this 

correlation is statistically significant, we can expect that, in the future, if an agency’s 

engagement level were to increase, then its scores on the results/accountability 

portion of the PART (and presumably the results themselves) would also likely 

improve. We would also expect that if one of these variables were to decrease then 

the other variable would be likely to decrease as well.

35 For more information on the PART see: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/part/.

36 r=.519, p=.007. See Appendix A for average agency engagement scores, and further 

information on correlations and the study method.

37 PART scores downloaded from http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/fy2007/sheets/part.

pdf on July 18, 2008.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
30 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Intent to Leave

As discussed in the Engagement Background chapter at the beginning of this report, 

previous employee engagement studies have found that many more disengaged 

employees seek other employment than their engaged counterparts. We found that 

the same dynamic also holds true for the Federal Government.

Among those not eligible to retire in the next 12 months, over twice the percentage 

of employees (43.9 percent to 17.1 percent) who said they were very unlikely to leave 

their agencies were engaged than those who said they were very likely to leave their 

agency (see Figure 16). In addition, more than four times as many employees (46.6 

percent to 10.9 percent) who were very likely to leave their agencies were not engaged 

than those who were very unlikely to leave their agency. These dramatic differences 

illustrate that if employees are not engaged in their work they will start looking for 

better, more engaging, opportunities elsewhere.

Figure 16: Among those not eligible to

retire: How likely is it that you will leave your 

agency in the next 12 months?

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Source: MPS 2005 question 40 (How likely is it that you will leave your 

agency in the next 12 months?) and question 42 (Are you or will you 

become eligible to retire within the next 12 months?). Percentages may 

not equal 100 due to rounding.

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

46.6

36.3

45.3

17.1

43.9

10.9

Very Likely Very Unlikely

Perhaps agencies can withstand this turnover if the 46.6 percent are populated with 

chronic low performers, but what if the top-rated employees in an agency don’t feel 

engaged by their work? In fact, of the 46.6 percent of not engaged employees who 

were very likely to leave their agency, 59.1 percent received the highest performance 

rating (Outstanding or equivalent) on their most recent rating of record.38 It only 

makes sense that agencies should take steps to engage these top performers who are 

currently less than engaged before they act on their intention to leave the agency for 

more engaging employment opportunities elsewhere. 

38 Percentages represent employees rated under a five-tiered performance appraisal system.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 31

One may wonder exactly how many of the disengaged employees cited in Figure 

16 actually act on their desire to leave their agency. However, in some ways, if the 

organization makes no attempt to engage these employees, the only thing worse than 

their leaving may be that they stay. A group of disengaged employees who dream of 

leaving their jobs may have a negative effect on an organization’s work environment and 

culture, which may in turn have a negative effect on other, higher engaged employees. 

To get a more accurate picture of employee attitudes, in Figure 16 we looked only at 

the likelihood of employees who are not eligible to retire leaving their agencies. When 

we looked at employees who are eligible to retire and whether it is likely that they will 

be leaving their agencies in the next 12 months, an interesting picture emerged.

Figure 16 showed that only 17.1 percent of employees not eligible for retirement 

who said they were very likely to leave their agency in the next 12 months were 

engaged. In contrast, Figure 17 shows that 30.1 percent of retirement-eligible 

employees who said they were very likely to leave in the next 12 months were 

engaged. These are employees who have worked long careers and may be ready 

to retire—and they have earned it. 

Figure 17: Among those eligible to retire: 

How likely is it that you will leave your 

agency in the next 12 months?

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Source: MPS 2005 question 40 (How likely is it that you will leave your 

agency in the next 12 months?) and question 42 (Are you or will you 

become eligible to retire within the next 12 months?).

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

29.1

40.8

39.6

30.1

51.7

8.7

Very Likely Very Unlikely

The next finding from Figure 17 is even more noteworthy, showing that over half 

(51.7 percent) of retirement-eligibles who said they were very unlikely to leave their 

agency were engaged. Many factors go into making the decision to retire, not the least 

of which are financial considerations and how much one enjoys one’s job. We may 

hypothesize that if employees are bound to their jobs after they are eligible to retire by 

purely economic considerations (that is, they can not yet afford to retire), their level of 

engagement may be diminished somewhat. It appears, though, that employees who 

are eligible to retire but plan on remaining at work have high levels of engagement 

that may play a factor in keeping them on the job. This is a particularly timely finding 

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
32 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

given that the Federal Government is facing a wave of baby boomer retirements. The 

lesson here is a simple one: If agencies want to hold onto their older workers for a 

longer period, they should figure out how to engage them.

Sick Leave Use

Full-time Federal employees earn 4 hours of sick leave for each biweekly pay period 

they work, which amounts to 13 days of sick leave a year. There are no limits on 

the amount of sick leave that Federal employees can accumulate. Employees may 

use sick leave for personal medical needs, care of a family member, or adoptionrelated purposes.39

We wondered if there was a correlation between the levels of employee engagement 

in agencies and employee sick leave use. Our hypothesis was that perhaps in 

agencies where employees are less engaged, employees may take sick leave more often 

possibly for reasons other than those listed above—for example, to simply avoid 

going to work or perhaps because the stress of a disengaging work place actually 

makes some employees ill.

We did find a statistically significant negative correlation between the average level 

of employee engagement in an agency and the amount of sick leave that agency 

employees used in 2005.40 This means that the higher an agency’s average employee 

engagement score, the less sick leave its employees used. For example, as shown in 

Figure 18, employees in the agencies with the five highest average engagement scores 

used an average of about 9 sick days during 2005, while employees in the agencies 

Figure 18: Average 2005 Sick Leave

Days Used by Engagement Level,

Leave Year 2005

The average years of service with the Federal Government for survey 

respondents in the most engaged agencies was about 18 years, while 

for the least engaged agencies it was about 17 years. Survey respondents 

from both groups of agencies averaged about 48 years of age.

14

12

10

8

6

4

2

0

Most Engaged Agencies Least Engaged Agencies

8.91

11.73

Days

39 For more information on the Federal Government’s sick leave program, see: http://opm.gov/

oca/leave/html/sicklv.asp. 

40 r=-.609, p=.002.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 33

with the five lowest average engagement scores used an average of about 12 sick 

days during 2005.41 

There is a strong relationship between employee engagement and sick leave use but 

this relationship does not necessarily mean that one of these variables causes the 

other. What is important for our analysis of employee engagement is that since 

this correlation is statistically significant, we can expect that, in the future, if an 

agency’s engagement level was to increase, then the number of sick leave days used 

by employees would decrease, and vice versa. 

Equal Employment Opportunity Complainants

Another variable that we expected to find related to employee engagement was the 

percentage of agency employees who file equal employment opportunity (EEO) 

discrimination complaints. Our hypothesis was that in agencies where there are 

more employees filing complaints, there may not be the same level of employee 

engagement as is fostered in agencies where fewer employees file complaints.42

We found a statistically significant negative correlation between the number of 

employees who file EEO complaints in an agency and the agency’s average level of 

employee engagement.43 This means that the higher an agency’s average employee 

engagement score, the fewer number of employees file EEO complaints. 

For example, an average of .47 percent of the total work force of the agencies with 

the four highest average engagement scores filed EEO complaints, while an average 

of 1.04 percent of the total work force of the agencies with the four lowest average 

engagement scores filed EEO complaints (see Figure 19).44 

Figure 19: Average Number of EEO

Complainants, Fiscal Year 2005

0.47%

1.04%

1.20%

1.0%

0.80%

0.60%

0.40%

0.20%

0.00%

Percentage of Total Work Force

Most Engaged Agencies Least Engaged Agencies

41 Sick leave use data source: Office of Personnel Management.

42 Visit the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission website for more information 

on EEO complaints at www.eeoc.gov.

43 r=-.487, p=.016.

44 EEO complainant data source: Annual Report on the Federal Work Force Fiscal Year 2005, 

U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Table B-1, downloaded from http://www.

eeoc.gov/federal/fsp2005/fsp2005.pdf on July 18, 2008.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
34 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Again, a correlation between these two variables doesn’t necessarily mean that one 

variable causes the other. Whether employees file fewer complaints because they are 

engaged, or people are more engaged because there are fewer complaints filed, is not 

clear from the correlation data alone. 

It is surprising that given the comparatively low numbers of complainants with 

respect to the overall work force, that we were able to detect a relationship between 

the number of complainants and employee engagement. For instance, in even the 

lowest engaged agency work force, less than 1 percent, at most, of employees filed 

EEO complaints in fiscal year 2005.

Of course, it certainly is reasonable to assume that this type of incident would, 

in fact, be a cause of disengagement among those who experience it. However, 

the mere existence of a complaint may also negatively affect the engagement 

level of others in the work place. In addition, an organization culture that allows 

discriminatory practices, or even one that fosters employee perceptions that 

discriminatory practices could occur, may not be one that is likely to foster the 

highest level of employee engagement in the first place. 

Lost Time Case Rate

The lost time case rate that is reported annually by the Occupational Safety and 

Health Administration is the number of instances (per 100 employees) during 

the year when employees lost time at work due to work related injury or illness.45 

Similar to sick leave use and the level of EEO complaint activity, we hypothesized 

that an agency’s lost time case rate would have a negative correlation to the agency’s 

level of engagement. That is, we expected agencies with high levels of engagement 

to have a lower rate of cases where employees missed work due to work related 

injury or illness. 

In fact, we found a statistically significant negative correlation between an agency’s 

average level of employee engagement and the agency’s lost time case rate.46 This 

means in real terms that for every 100 employees in the agencies with the four 

highest average engagement scores there were 0.73 lost time cases, while there were 

almost three times as many (2.15) lost time cases in the agencies with the four lowest 

average engagement scores (see Figure 20).47 This correlation is significant even 

though we would expect the most highly engaged employees in certain occupations 

(those that are more physically demanding or dangerous) to have a higher lost time 

case rate.

45 29 CFR 1960.2.(l)(4).

46 r=-.498, p=.013.

47 Lost time case rate source: Federal Injury and Illness Statistics for Fiscal Year 2005 downloaded 

from www.osha.gov/dep/fap/statistics/fedprgms_stats05_final.html on July 18, 2008.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 35

Figure 20: OSHA Average Lost Time

Case Rate, Fiscal Year 2005

2.5

2

1.5

1

0.5

0

Most Engaged Agencies Least Engaged Agencies

0.73

2.15

Case Rate (per 100 employees)

From the correlation alone we are unable to ascertain whether the mere fact that 

an organization has higher engaged employees causes less work place injuries 

and illnesses, or if more injuries and illnesses cause employees to be less engaged. 

Perhaps the same organization culture that fosters fewer injuries and illnesses also 

fosters higher engagement. What we do know, is that given the correlation, there 

is a relationship between engagement and the average lost time case rate, and if an 

organization’s level of engagement were to improve we would expect that the rate of 

work place injuries and illnesses would decrease.

Measures Not Correlated to Engagement

It is important to note that we tested a number of other measures for which we 

could not establish a significant correlation to an agency’s average level of employee 

engagement. Among these were:

• Three other portions of the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART): Purpose 

and design, strategic planning, and program management.

• The percentage of agency goals met in fiscal year 2005 as reported in agency 

Performance and Accountability Reports.

• Award spending at the agency level.

• Amount or rate of Senior Executive Service pay adjustments or awards.

• The composition of the agency work force based on racial groups, gender, or age 

groupings.

• The percentage change in average agency salary for the years 2001–2005.

• The percentage change in total agency employment for the years 2001–2005.

As stated earlier, the aggregate agency measures of employee engagement and 

outcomes may have precluded us from establishing that a relationship exists 

between these outcomes and employee engagement. However, further study of 

both engagement and of outcomes in discreet organizations may establish such a 

relationship, and provide further, important insight into the value and significance 

of employee engagement in the Federal Government.

The Importance of Federal Employee Engagement

A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 37

Conclusions and Recommendations

Conclusions

Employee engagement is important for the Federal work force because higher 

engagement levels are related to better Federal agency outcomes and to 

employees who have a greater intention of staying with their current 

Federal agency. 

The components of Federal employee engagement include:

• Pride in one’s work or work place,

• Satisfaction with leadership, 

• Opportunity to perform well at work, 

• Satisfaction with the recognition received, 

• Prospect for future personal and professional growth, and 

• A positive work environment with some focus on teamwork. 

By our definition of engagement, about one-third of Federal employees are engaged 

(35.3 percent), just under half (47.2 percent) are somewhat engaged, and 17.5 

percent are not engaged.

First-level supervisors are an important influence on their subordinates’ level of 

engagement in at least two ways. First, supervisors have a direct effect on the 

substance of many of the questions in our scale that measure employee engagement. 

For instance, supervisors who are successful in communicating job expectations, 

making good use of their employees’ skills and abilities, appropriately rewarding 

and recognizing employees, and treating employees with respect while valuing their 

opinions will lead a work force that is more highly engaged. 

Second, employees who perceive that their supervisors possess good management 

skills are more engaged than those who do not. Of those employees who are 

engaged, 87 percent agreed or strongly agreed that their supervisors had good 

management skills. Conversely, of the employees who are not engaged, only 13.7 

percent agreed or strongly agreed that their supervisors had good management skills. 

Also, the perception that supervisors possess good management skills appears to 
38 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

be more important for fostering engagement than the perception that supervisors 

possess good technical skills.

There are differences in the level of employee engagement in the Federal work force 

based on the following factors:

• Level of organizational responsibility: Members of the SES are more engaged 

than supervisors, who, in turn, are more engaged than nonsupervisors (by our 

definition of engagement, 69.8 percent of SES members are engaged, 43.7 

percent of supervisors are engaged, and 31.5 percent of nonsupervisors are 

engaged).

• Salary: Differences in employee engagement based on salary are not as 

pronounced as those based on organizational responsibility level. About 43 

percent of employees who earn more than $120,000 are engaged, while about 

32 percent who earn less than $30,000 are engaged.

• Level of education: The more education employees have, the higher their 

engagement level. For example, just over one-third of employees who have 

earned a high school diploma, have attended some college, or have earned a 

bachelor’s degree are engaged, while 43.3 percent of employees who have earned 

a doctorate are engaged.

• Race/Ethnicity: The engagement level of different racial/ethnic groups ranged 

from 43.2 percent of respondents of Asian origin being engaged to 26.7 percent 

of Native Americans being engaged. While differing education levels and 

average salaries of our respondent populations may account for some of this 

variation, it is important to note that differences among the groups remain after 

accounting for these variables. 

• Agency: There are marked differences in engagement by agency. At the high 

end of the spectrum, about half of agency employees are engaged while only 

around one-quarter of employees at other agencies are engaged.

No sizeable variation was found in employee engagement levels across the Federal 

work force based on other variables, including gender, age, length of tenure with 

the civil service, length of tenure with an agency, whether the employee works in a 

headquarters or field location, or whether the employee is rated under a pass/fail or 

a more traditional five-tiered performance management system.

The differences in the average level of employee engagement across agencies is 

important to note because we found a significant relationship between it and the 

following outcomes:

• Agency program results as measured by the Office of Management and 

Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART): Higher levels of employee 

engagement correlated to higher scores on the results/accountability portion 

of the PART.

Conclusions and Recommendations
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 39

• An agency’s average sick leave use: Higher levels of employee engagement 

correlated to fewer average days of sick leave used. These results suggest that we 

should not be surprised if employees who have a heightened connection to their 

work, or to those they work for or with, miss less work days due to sickness than 

those who have not developed this connection.

• Level of EEO complaint activity: Higher levels of employee engagement 

correlated to fewer EEO complainants (as a percentage of the total agency 

work force).

• The rate at which agency employees miss work time because of work related 

injury or illness: Higher levels of employee engagement correlated to fewer lost 

time cases. 

• An employee’s intent to leave the agency: Almost 44 percent of employees 

not eligible to retire who said they are very unlikely to leave their agency were 

engaged, while only 17 percent who said they are very likely to leave their agency 

were engaged.

Over half of the retirement-eligible employees who said it was very unlikely they 

will leave their agency reported being engaged—a timely finding as the Federal 

Government is facing the baby boomer retirement wave.

A majority (59.1 percent) of employees who were very likely to leave their 

agency and were not engaged received the highest rating (“Outstanding” or 

equivalent) on their most recent rating of record. Federal agencies may be 

at risk of losing these high performing, but unengaged, employees to more 

engaging opportunities in other agencies or in other sectors of the economy.

Recommendations

In any organization, a clear focus on good daily management practices may become 

lost among ever-shifting priorities and increasing pressures for improved results. 

The danger of this happening may be more acute in the Federal work place, where 

reliable measures of an organization’s outcomes may be more elusive than in the 

private sector. In organizations where outcomes are easily measured and where 

managers can see the effect of their efforts on those outcomes, a focus on good daily 

management practice may be easier to maintain. 

By establishing a link between employee engagement and Federal agency outcomes, 

we hope to refocus attention and energy on management practices that can increase 

the level of employee engagement. It is important to remember that different 

approaches will increase the level of engagement of different employees, and that 

not every recommendation may be a good fit with every organizational culture. 

Managers and human resources professionals should determine how to tailor the 

following recommendations to best fit their organization and the individuals within 

those organizations.

Conclusions and Recommendations
40 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Ensure a good person-job fit. One of the major themes we identified as important 

for fostering employee engagement was the employee’s opportunity to perform well 

at work. Such an opportunity begins with ensuring that a good fit exists between 

the requirements of a job and the person selected to fill that job. Agency human 

resources staffs and hiring managers should keep a clear focus on person-job fit 

throughout the hiring process—not only by carefully matching a job candidate’s 

skills and abilities to the job requirements, but also by clearly communicating what 

will be expected of the employee once on the job. Methods to improve person-job 

fit should include the following: 

Vacancy announcements. MSPB has previously offered recommendations on 

how to improve the quality of Federal vacancy announcements.48 The vacancy 

announcement is very often the first place an applicant gets a glimpse of the open 

position and possibly of the agency itself. Agencies should seize this opportunity 

to entice those job candidates to apply who would not only perform well in the job 

but who would also fit in well with the organization’s culture. The announcement 

should sell the position and the agency. Providing this information in the 

announcement can help to attract those candidates who may have the potential to 

become more engaged within the existing organization culture. 

Recruiting. One way to recruit for engagement is to encourage current employees to 

network within their job field by participating in interagency meetings, conferences, 

or associations to identify candidates who may be cultivated for current or future job 

openings. Using this proactive approach to augment other methods of recruiting 

can identify those job candidates who can be a good fit with the duties of the 

position as well as with the organization’s culture.49 Federal agencies should foster 

this word of mouth recruiting because it is an important way that many applicants 

receive information about job openings.50 In addition, previous research suggests 

that recruiting practitioners rated employee referrals as the top source of applicants 

both in terms of quantity and quality.51 

Job preview. One way to present a clear, realistic preview of the job is to have 

current employees take part in structured interviews of job candidates where they 

can explain what it is like to work in the organization, or have them made available 

informally to answer questions from job applicants. Either way, the organization’s 

current employees would begin to develop a rapport with the candidates which 

would help both parties to determine whether there is an appropriate fit. 

48 For more information, see: U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Help Wanted: A Review of 

Federal Vacancy Announcements, Washington, DC, April 2003.

49 U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, “Tools of the Trade,” Issues of Merit, September 2007, 

p. 7.

50 For instance, see (a) U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Competing for Federal Jobs: Job 

Search Experiences of New Hires, Washington, DC, February 2000, p. 7; (b) U.S. Merit Systems 

Protection Board, Attracting the Next Generation: A Look at Federal Entry-Level New Hires, 

Washington, DC, January 2008, p. 44; and (c) U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, In Search 

of Highly Skilled Workers: A Study on the Hiring of Upper Level Employees from Outside the Federal 

Government, Washington, DC, February 2008, p. 27.

51 Booz Allen Hamilton, 2006 DirectEmployers Association Recruiting Trends Survey, February 

2006, pp. 6, 8, downloaded from http://www.jobcentral.com/desurvey.pdf on July 18, 2008.

Conclusions and Recommendations
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 41

Another tool that can be used to assess technical competence as well as person-job 

fit is the work sample test. There is no better way to give applicants insight into the 

job for which they are applying than to have them complete a sample work product. 

The hiring organization also receives the benefit of the sample work product that can 

be assessed along with those of other candidates. 

Rotational assignments. Managers may find that using rotational assignments, where 

practical, may help in effectively matching employees with jobs. Rotating employees 

to different teams or organizations can be an effective way not only to assess which 

job best fits an employee’s skill set, but also to develop employees to improve the 

chances of a good fit. 

Rotating employees to other parts of the organization has other benefits as well. 

For instance, employees will be exposed to other parts of the organization which 

may increase their understanding of the larger organization. Employees may view 

this as an opportunity to learn new things and work with different people, and 

managers will signal that they have an interest in the careers of their employees 

as they help them to gain a better understanding of the organization and acquire 

new competencies.

Manage performance. Communicating with employees about their performance 

is woven through several of the themes we identified as important for fostering 

employee engagement. This communication process should begin as soon as an 

employee enters on duty and continue throughout the performance management 

cycle thereafter. Methods to improve this communication with employees include 

the following:

Show employees they are valued from their first day on the job. Setting the stage for 

future engagement by showing that a new employee is valued from the outset is 

important. If seemingly “little things” are done correctly during the start of an 

employee’s tenure the employee will most likely be easier to engage, for example:

• Is there someone at the office to greet the new employee and show him or her 

the ropes for the first several days?

• Does the new employee have an appropriately equipped work space?

• Does the new employee have meaningful work to do on the first day of work?

• Is the new employee introduced to coworkers and other officials higher up in the 

chain of command? 

Stimulate employee commitment. Federal agencies will not achieve high levels of 

employee engagement unless their employees are emotionally committed to their 

work. Supervisors should strive to engender this emotional commitment by: 

• Continually highlighting the importance of their employees’ work. Supervisors 

should sell employees on how their work is important, not merely tell them 

what to do. 

Conclusions and Recommendations
42 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

• Facilitating the accomplishment of their employees’ work. Supervisors should 

take an active interest in developing their employees and breaking down 

organization barriers that may keep them from being successful. 

• Empowering their employees. Supervisors should encourage employees to take 

ownership of their work by trusting them with appropriate decision-making 

authority and holding them accountable for the results, whether good and bad. 

Use effective performance management techniques. To engage employees, agencies 

must have robust systems in place to plan work and set expectations, monitor 

employee performance, determine what training and development employees 

require, assess employee performance, and reward outstanding performance. 

Agencies should ensure that managers are properly trained to provide the 

appropriate guidance and feedback to employees during these different performance 

management phases. 

An organization’s performance management program can be an effective 

communication tool that is also important for engagement to flourish. In fact, 

each step in the performance management cycle is communicating something very 

important to employees: 

• Planning work and setting expectations communicates exactly what is expected 

of employees during the rating period; 

• Monitoring performance communicates that employees will be held 

accountable, that the employee’s work is important, and that the manager 

is interested in the employee succeeding; 

• Determining what training the employee needs and providing for that training 

again communicates the importance of the employee in meeting organization 

goals, as well as management interest in furthering the employee’s career; 

• Appropriately rating performance communicates how well employees are 

meeting expectations as well as what additional steps they should take to 

improve their performance; and 

• Rewarding performance communicates what types of actions or behaviors an 

organization values that should be emulated by others in the organization.

Managers should carefully consider what messages they are sending to employees as 

they administer each of these performance management phases, and whether these 

messages will help engage or disengage employees.

Establish a clear line of employee-to-agency sight. Managers should use their agency’s 

performance management processes to establish a clear line of sight from the 

employee and his or her role and performance to the larger organization and its 

mission and success. As we have seen, employees will be more engaged if they 

find more meaning in their work. One way this may occur is if employees are 

clearly shown how they personally contribute to the larger agency mission. In 

addition, showing employees how they and their coworkers contribute to the larger 

Conclusions and Recommendations
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 43

Conclusions and Recommendations

organization may enforce a spirit of cooperation and teamwork in the work unit that 

we also found is necessary for engagement to flourish.

Mentor employees. Mentoring can be an effective way to create opportunities for 

open communication between senior members of an organization and more junior 

employees as well as for assimilating newcomers into an organization’s culture. 

Mentors can serve as coaches who can foster positive visibility for their protégés and 

sponsor them for advancement.52 Among other benefits, mentored employees are 

able to discover their role in the organization more clearly and “to find congruence 

between self-evaluation and organizational evaluation of their work performance 

more accurately.”53

Recruit and select supervisors to supervise. Employee satisfaction with their firstlevel supervisor, as well as positive employee perception of the management skills of 

their supervisors, are important for the engagement of employees. 

Agencies should recruit and select supervisors based on their supervisory-related 

abilities or potential—part of which should be the ability to engage subordinates. 

As has been noted in previous research,54 agencies too often fill supervisory positions 

with the best technical specialists available regardless of that person’s supervisory 

capability. For most supervisory positions, it is necessary to have a certain level of 

proficiency over the technical aspects of the work supervised, but these positions 

should be staffed by employees who have also shown the proficiency or potential 

to effectively manage subordinates.

Use a competency-based approach to managing employees. Organizations should 

embrace a competency-based approach to managing employees. Not all employees 

can progress to the top of their respective pay scale. One way managers can help 

employees advance in their careers is to offer them opportunities to further develop 

their existing skills and master new ones that will enhance their job performance.

Part of this approach focuses on determining which competencies are needed to 

perform well in a position and then matching these competencies to those of job 

applicants. As we have seen, placing employees in jobs that make good use of their 

skills and abilities is necessary to engage employees. 

We also found that giving employees the opportunity to improve their skills is 

important in fostering high levels of employee engagement. As a result of acquiring 

new competencies, new, and more engaging challenges may be provided for 

employees. Such challenges include the opportunity to lead teams, participate 

52 Golnaz Sadri and Hoa Tran, “Managing Your Diverse Work Force Through Improved 

Communication,” The Journal of Management Development, 21(3), 2002, pp. 231-232.

53 Sadri and Tran, 2002, pp. 232-233.

54 For instance, see National Academy of Public Administration, First-Line Supervisors in the 

Federal Service: Their Selection, Development, and Management, February 2003, p. 20; and U.S. 

Merit Systems Protection Board, Designing an Effective Pay for Performance Compensation System, 

Washington, DC, January 2006, p. 29.
44 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

on special projects, or (as discussed above) rotate for short periods to other 

organizations. In addition to employees actually receiving opportunities for 

professional development, this approach can increase employee engagement by 

demonstrating that the organization cares about its employees and their professional 

growth.

Communicate vision and commitment. To fully engage the work force, senior 

leaders should communicate a clear vision of how the agency will accomplish its 

mission and show that they are committed to their employees. As we have found, 

employee perception that the agency is accomplishing its mission and satisfaction 

with senior leaders will foster higher levels of employee engagement. 

Measure engagement. Agencies should periodically measure employee engagement 

and work to increase the level of engagement of their work force. Given the nature 

of the work of many Federal organizations, developing concrete measures that 

accurately track their effectiveness can be challenging. Although nothing takes 

the place of tracking results over time, measuring employee engagement can be an 

effective addition to existing organizational performance measures. As we have 

shown, increasing employee engagement should have beneficial results in a number 

of areas important to most organizations.

Conclusions and Recommendations
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 45

Appendix A – Study Method

Engagement Scale Development

Factor analysis. The method we used to develop a scale to measure employee 

engagement involved both a factor analysis of the MPS 2005 survey data and a 

review of the professional literature regarding employee engagement. Factor analysis 

is commonly used to determine how many latent variables underlie a set of questions 

such as the responses to the MPS 2005. It is also used to explain the variation 

among many original variables (all of the items in the MPS 2005, for example) using 

fewer newly created variables (the factors). In this way, the factor analysis process 

condenses large numbers of questions into a smaller, more manageable set of factors. 

Factor analysis is also used to define the substantive content or meaning of each of 

the factors or latent variables. This is done by identifying groups of items that are 

related to one another that appear to define the latent variables.55

Correlations. Typically, scales are developed to measure a single phenomenon, in 

our case employee engagement. Measurement theory suggests that the relationships 

between scale items are logically connected to the relationships of the items to the 

phenomenon being measured. For example, if the items in our scale did in fact have 

a strong relationship to employee engagement, then they would also have a strong 

relationship to one another. A scale is deemed internally consistent to the extent 

that its questions are highly intercorrelated, and this high intercorrelation suggests 

that the items are all measuring the same thing.56

One way that researchers measure the relation between two variables is by using 

correlation statistics. Our factor analysis process measured the strength of the 

relationship between the various questions on the MPS 2005 and, based on these 

relationships, revealed that there was a group of factors that sufficiently explained the 

pattern of responses that we received. (For a further discussion of correlations, see 

the external correlation discussion later in this appendix.)

A review of the employee engagement literature including previously developed 

measures convinced us that one of these factors could best be labeled as an employee 

engagement factor. We then isolated different groups of questions within the 

55 Robert F. DeVellis, Scale Development Theory and Applications (2nd ed.), Sage Publications, 

Thousand Oaks, CA, 2003, pp. 103-104.

56 DeVellis, 2003, pp. 27-28.
46 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix A - Study Method

employee engagement factor (informed by our literature review) and measured their 

resulting reliability and validity to determine which group of questions could best be 

used to measure the level of employee engagement of the MPS 2005 respondents.

Reliability. A widely used measure of reliability is Cronbach’s coefficient alpha (α). 

All of the variability in our employee engagement scale scores can be due to one of 

two things: Either the actual variation across respondents (this is the true variation 

in our latent variable employee engagement), or error. Computing Cronbach’s α

partitions the total variance among the scale into true variation (the degree to which 

the question actually reflects what we intend to measure) and error (score differences 

caused by everything but true variation). The proportion of the total variation that 

is true variation is α. Another way to describe α is that it equals 1 – error variance.57 

For our employee engagement scale Cronbach’s α = .926, which means that we can 

interpret our scale as being over 92 percent reliable. An acceptable reliability of 

instruments that are used in basic research is generally considered to be .70 or better.58

Validity. Determining that our scale was reliable does not guarantee that 

the items actually measure employee engagement—this is an issue of validity. 

Conventionally, the validity of a scale is “inferred from the manner in which a 

scale was constructed, its ability to predict specific events, or its relationship to 

measures of other constructs.”59 Our literature review helped us determine whether 

the items contained in our employee engagement factor were in fact appropriate 

to include in a scale designed to measure that phenomenon. It also gave us the 

information to choose the items within that factor that were the most appropriate to 

the measurement of employee engagement. By constructing the scale in this manner 

we hoped to achieve an acceptable level of content validity (that is, that the items we 

have included in the scale are appropriate to the measure of employee engagement).

Construct validity is the extent to which a measure behaves in the way we would 

expect it to with regard to other established measures.60 To ensure an acceptable 

level of construct validity, we tested the direction and degree of the relationships 

between our scale and other questions on the MPS 2005. In a positive correlation, 

scores on two different variables increase and decrease together (e.g., there is a 

positive correlation between grade point averages in high school and the first year of 

college). In a negative correlation as scores for one variable decrease, they increase 

for the other variable (e.g., there is a negative correlation between the number of 

classes a student misses and the student’s performance in that class).61 

To test the construct validity of our engagement scale, we tested the direction of 

the relationship between the scale and other questions on the MPS 2005. As we 

expected, our engagement scale variable was: 

57 DeVellis, 2003, pp. 28-29.

58 J.C. Nunnally, Psychometric Theory (2nd ed.), McGraw Hill, New York, 1978, p. 245.

59 DeVellis, 2003, p. 49.

60 DeVellis, 2003, p. 53.

61 McGraw-Hill Higher Education website Statistical Primer for Psychology Students downloaded 

from http://www.mhhe.com/socscience/intro/cafe/common/stat/correlate.htm on July 18, 2008.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 47

Appendix A - Study Method

• Positively correlated to respondents believing they were appropriately paid and 

rewarded (MPS 2005 question 20a), 

• Negatively correlated to respondents who believed they needed more training to 

perform their job effectively (MPS 2005 question 2f), and

• Not correlated to whether respondents provide guidance to or oversee the work 

of contractors (MPS 2005 question 3).

To further test the construct validity of our scale, we tested the direction of the 

relationship between our scale with certain external markers. As discussed in this 

report, our engagement scale variable was: 

• Positively correlated to Federal agency results as measured by the Office of 

Management and Budget’s Program Assessment Rating Tool,

• Negatively correlated to an agency’s average employee sick leave use, 

• Negatively correlated to the level of an agency’s EEO complaint activity, and

• Negatively correlated to the rate which agency employees miss work time due to 

work related injury or illness.

Scale questions. The MSPB employee engagement scale consists of 16 questions 

from the Merit Principles Survey 2005. The following table lists these 16 

questions—their numbering refers to their MPS 2005 question number. The entire 

MPS 2005 instrument can be found in Appendix B.

1e. I am given a real opportunity to 

improve my skills in my organization.

1i. My agency is successful at accomplishing its mission.

1j. I would recommend my agency as a 

place to work.

2a. I am treated with respect at work.

2c. My opinions count at work.

2d. I know what is expected of me on the 

job.

2g. My job makes good use of my skills 

and abilities.

2j. I have the resources to do my job 

well.

2k. The work I do is meaningful to me.

5c. A spirit of cooperation and teamwork 

exists in my work unit.

5f. My work unit produces high quality 

products and services.

5h. Recognition and rewards are based 

on performance in my work unit.

12e. I have sufficient opportunities (such 

as challenging assignments or 

projects) to earn a high performance 

rating.

20c. I am satisfied with the recognition 

and rewards I receive for my work.

35n. Overall, I am satisfied with my 

supervisor.

35o. Overall, I am satisfied with managers 

above my immediate supervisor.

MSPB Employee Engagement Scale Questions

Each of the 16 scale questions contained a five-level response scale: Strongly 

Disagree, Disagree, Neither Agree nor Disagree, Agree, and Strongly Agree. We 

assigned a point value ranging from 1 to 5 to each of these possible responses with 

Strongly Disagree equating to a value of 1, and Strongly Agree equating to a value of 

5. This means that our employee engagement scale ranged from 16 to 80. 
48 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix A - Study Method

This study only included results from MPS 2005 respondents who actually provided 

an answer for each of our 16 engagement scale questions. 

Agency Engagement Scores

The engagement levels of the agencies who participated in the Merit Principles 

Survey 2005 are given below in more detail than was possible in Figure 14. 

Engagement by Agency

Department of Agriculture 29.9 54.2 15.9 58.06

Department of Commerce 38.9 45.1 16.0 59.16

Department of Defense – Total 38.9 46.7 14.4 59.53

 Air Force 41.0 43.4 15.6 59.92

 Army 40.5 46.8 12.8 59.95

 Navy 36.7 49.1 14.2 59.04

 DoD – Other 35.8 47.3 16.9 58.79

Department of Education 27.7 49.5 22.8 55.45

Department of Energy 29.2 51.2 19.7 57.19

Environmental Protection Agency 39.6 43.3 17.1 58.98

Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation 25.4 54.9 19.7 56.96

General Services Administration 36.9 43.6 19.5 58.34

Department of Health and Human Services 36.6 45.7 17.7 58.24

Department of Homeland Security 20.2 47.2 32.6 52.79

Department of Housing and Urban Development 30.9 44.4 24.7 56.24

Department of the Interior 32.1 49.3 18.6 57.52

Department of Justice 38.1 43.2 18.7 58.81

Department of Labor 36.3 46.2 17.5 58.28

National Aeronautics and Space Administration 49.3 40.6 10.1 61.78

Office of Personnel Management 30.1 48.2 21.7 56.82

Social Security Administration 33.1 51.3 15.6 58.21

Department of State 44.7 39.5 15.9 59.75

Department of Transportation 26.0 51.9 22.1 55.95

Department of the Treasury 32.9 48.6 18.5 58.18

Department of Veterans Affairs 38.0 45.7 16.3 59.07

Agency

Percent

Engaged

Percent

Somewhat

Engaged

Percent

Not

Engaged

Average 

Score

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 49

Appendix A - Study Method

External Correlations

One way that researchers measure the relation between two variables is by using 

correlation statistics. Correlation statistics yield a number called the coefficient of 

correlation which may vary from -1.00 to 1.00. As discussed in the main text of 

this report, in a positive correlation, scores on two different variables increase and 

decrease together. For example, there is a positive correlation between grade point 

averages in high school and the first year of college. In a negative correlation as 

scores for one variable decrease, they increase for the other variable. For example, 

there is a negative correlation between the number of classes a student misses and 

the student’s performance in that class.62

The strength of a correlation depends on its absolute size, not whether it is positive 

or negative. A correlation of -.72 is stronger than a correlation of +.53. So 

correlation statistics not only allow us to determine the direction of the relationship 

between variables (either positive or negative), they also allow us to determine 

the strength of the relationship and to predict one score from the other. If the 

correlation between two variables were a perfect 1.00, we could predict one score 

from the other with complete accuracy. However, since correlations are usually less 

than perfect, we can predict one score from another only with a certain probability 

of being correct: The higher the correlation, the higher the probability that the 

prediction is correct.63 

The statistical significance, or p-value, is the probability that the relationship we 

observe (the correlation) in a sample occurred by pure chance; that there is, in fact, 

no relationship between the variables. The higher the p-value the less we can believe 

the relationship we have observed between the variables is a reliable indicator of the 

relation between those variables in the population.64

Specifically, the p-value represents the probability of error that is involved if we 

accept our observed relationship as valid. For example, a p-value of .05 indicates 

that there is a 5% probability that the relationship we found between the variables 

in our population is due to random chance. In many areas of research, a p-value of 

.05 is customarily treated as a determination that it is likely that the result observed 

is real and not the product of chance. A p-value of less than or equal to .01 is 

customarily treated as highly statistically significant.

62 McGraw-Hill Higher Education website Statistical Primer for Psychology Students.

63 McGraw-Hill Higher Education website Statistical Primer for Psychology Students.

64 StatSoft Electronic Statistics Textbook, downloaded from http://www.statsoft.com/textbook/

esc.html on July 18, 2008.
50 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix A - Study Method

The correlations we found based on our engagement scale and discussed in this 

report are:

PART Results/ 

Accountability Score

Average Sick

Leave Days Used

EEO Complainants as

% of Total Work Force

Lost Time Case Rate

Pearson Correlation (r)

p-value

Pearson Correlation (r)

p-value

Pearson Correlation (r)

p-value

Pearson Correlation (r)

p-value

 .519**

 .007

-.609**

 .002

-.487*

 .016

-.498*

 .013

MSPB 

Engagement 

Scale

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level

* Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 51

Appendix B – The Merit Principles 

Survey 2005
52 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 53

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
54 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 55

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
56 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 57

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
58 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 59

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
60 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 61

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
62 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 63

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
64 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix B: The Merit Principles Survey 2005
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 65

Appendix C – Other Work Force 

Characteristics and Engagement

We found no noteworthy difference in the engagement level of employees 

based on the following variables:

Figure 21: Engagement by Gender

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Source: MPS 2005 question 63.

18.0

46.9 47.5

35.1 35.7

16.8

Male Female

 

Gender
66 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix C - Other Work Force Characteristics and Engagement

Figure 22: Engagement by Age

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Source: MPS 2005 question 64. 

Percentages may not equal 100 due to rounding.

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

-34 35-44

19.5 17.6 16.5

46.1 47.4 48.8 45.2

34.5 35.3 33.6 38.4

17.3

45-54 55+

Figure 23: Engagement by WhiteCollar Occupational Category

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Federal jobs are classified into six broad occupational categories, five 

of which are in white-collar occupations professional, administrative, 

technical, clerical, and other white-collar positions. The sixth category 

captures all blue-collar occupations. Additional source: OPM Central 

Personnel Data File.

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Prof.

14.7 20.0 15.6

46.9 47.4 46.2 50.2

38.4 35.9 33.8 34.2

16.7

Admin. Tech. Clerical

 

Age

 

White-collar

occupational

category
A Report by the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board 67

Appendix C - Other Work Force Characteristics and Engagement

Figure 24: Engagement by Civil

Service Tenure

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

The percentage of employees who reported they were engaged based 

on tenure with the civil service ranged from 32.8 percent for those 

employees with 11 to 15 years of service, to 38.8 percent for employees 

with over 30 years of service. Source: MPS 2005 question 57.

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0

0-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 30+

Figure 25: Engagement by Tenure

with Agency

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

The percentage of employees who reported they were engaged based 

on tenure with their current agency ranged from 32.8 percent for those 

employees with 6 to 10 years of service, to 39.6 percent for employees 

with over 30 years of service. Source: MPS 2005 question 58.

0-5 6-10 11-15 16-20 21-25 26-30 30+

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0

 

Length of tenure 

with the civil 

service

 

Length of tenure 

with an agency
68 The Power of Federal Employee Engagement

Appendix C - Other Work Force Characteristics and Engagement

Figure 26: Engagement by 

Work Location

Not Engaged Somewhat Engaged Engaged 

Source: MPS 2005 question 56.

16.9

45.8 47.4

37.3 34.9

17.7

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Headquarters Field

Work 

location