Agencies have their results in hand for the 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) — and on the whole, feedback from employees is trending positively. The 2024 FEVS marked an all-time high of 73% on the survey’s employee engagement index.

But as agencies start to look deeper into the results of the survey, they’ll likely want to consider the intersection between two key indices on the 2024 FEVS: employee engagement, and employee experience.

The difference between those two measurements of the federal workforce is subtle but important to understand for creating a better federal workplace in the long run.

Workplace conditions that yield better engagement

Employee engagement, by OPM’s definition, measures how effectively a federal workplace is meeting the conditions that make employees feel connected and committed to their jobs. Those conditions include things like effective leadership, meaningful work and career development opportunities.

According to OPM, managers can use the FEVS employee engagement index results to understand where they should look to either maintain — or improve — those various workplace conditions.

The employee engagement index on FEVS is a calculation based on the combined results of employees’ views on senior leadership, direct supervisors and their intrinsic work experience. The 2024 FEVS employee engagement index score increased by 1% since last year, setting a record high of 73% for the index since its creation in 2010.

Looking more closely at the results, each subindex of employee engagement has shown modest improvements over the last few years. The largest increase was in the “leaders lead” category, which measures how federal employees view the actions of their agencies’ senior leadership. Between 2023 and 2024, that subindex increased from 61% to 63%.

Governmentwide, the highest-scoring question on the “leaders lead” section was a 68% score on the question of whether managers communicate the goals of the organization. The lowest-scoring question — with a 52% score — asked employees if senior leaders generate high levels of motivation and commitment in the workforce. Both of those questions showed 2% increases since 2023.

At the end of the day, the more engaged employees feel, the more likely they are to put effort into their work and perform well in their jobs.

“I just hope that what we can keep the conversation centered around is how great of a need it is to invest in your workers at every level of experience,” Traci DiMartini, human capital officer at the IRS, said in an Oct. 24 event hosted by GovExec. “Employees that have 25 or 30 years of experience are just as important as those we are hiring. Because the minute people feel like you’re not investing in them, they just don’t feel like they are engaged, and they’re not going to give you your best work.”

As a result of better work performance, high employee engagement can also lead to better customer experience.

“Employee engagement, of course, is a way that many agencies look to measure organizational health,” Colleen Heller-Stein, executive director of the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council, said earlier this month at an event hosted by Cornerstone.

What employee experience means in 2024 FEVS

Based on employee engagement results, agency leaders may decide to make changes in a work environment to try to make it more conducive to engaged workers.

After making those changes, the 2024 FEVS employee experience index then asks: Are the adjustments actually making employees feel more engaged?

The employee experience index is a culmination of how employees responded to the following five questions:

• My job inspires me.
• The work I do gives me a sense of accomplishment.
• I feel a strong personal attachment to my organization.
• I identify with the mission of my organization.
• It is important to me that my work contribute to the common good.

Between 2023 and 2024, employees’ scores on all but one of the survey questions increased. The last question — “it is important to me that my work contribute to the common good” — maintained the same 92% score, making it the highest-scoring question on all of FEVS.

Overall, the index received a 74% score in the 2024 FEVS, which is a 1% increase over the 2023 survey result. The separate employee experience measurement is a newer feature of FEVS, which OPM first added to the survey in 2022.

Agency-specific FEVS results aren’t yet out for the 2024 FEVS, but the Social Security Administration shared preliminary findings with Federal News Network earlier this month. SSA employees who took the survey showed upward trending results in both employee engagement and employee experience. SSA’s engagement score increased by 3%, and its experience score went up by 2%.

Though the two indices — engagement and experience — are separate measurements, they’re also inherently intertwined.

“The feedback that we’re getting in those two complementary indices is really telling us that what we’re doing is reinforcing the environment in SSA and making it more conducive to employee engagement,” Kristen Medley-Proctor, SSA’s Acting deputy commissioner for human resources, said in a recent interview. “We see that in particular in our frontline components — our operational components that are serving the public every day — which is really important, because there’s that connection between employee engagement and customer experience as well.”

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