Measuring Employee Engagement

Last updated - 24th September 2010

How do we measure employee engagement across the Civil Service?

The Cabinet Office based Employee Engagement Team successfully delivered the first ever Civil Service People Survey in October 2009. The survey was delivered in partnership with 96 government organisations and was open to over half a million Civil Servants. The 2009 survey was the largest of its kind ever carried out in the UK, achieving an excellent 64% response rate (almost 344,000 responses). 

The 2009 survey resulted in direct savings of 35% through economies of scale by replacing a large number of uncoordinated surveys run by individual organisations. It allowed a consistent measure of employee engagement throughout the Civil Service for the first time, provided an unprecedented amount of comparable data on our staff’s attitudes and allowed us to benchmark our performance with both the wider public sector and private sector.

The results of the survey give our leaders high quality information on the key drivers of engagement in their teams, so that they can build upon their strengths and tackle their weaknesses. In 2009, results reports were delivered to over 8,500 units across the 96 participating organisations, leading to widespread action planning to address the issues that staff had voiced in their local teams.

The 2010 survey will be run from September to October across 104 organisations – covering 99% of the entire Civil Service.