Sometimes, data doesn’t tell the whole story.

Increasingly as leaders, we look to data to provide meaningful insights as we make decisions that will impact the future of our organizations. But this year’s results from the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint survey failed to reveal a decisive splashy headline, and that in itself offers some valuable leadership guidance.

The Office of Management and Budget, which produces this data every year, released the topline agency results to the public. The headlines are generally positive — if measured. In the big areas officials and leaders review, trends have been creeping upward.

• Overall employee engagement is up a point over last year to 73% positive responses.
• Global job satisfaction is also rising 1% from 2023’s numbers to 65%.
• In the increasingly politicized conversation of diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, the index of all four areas ticked up 1% to 72% positive.
• The employee experience index, which explores how closely aligned workers personally feel to the mission of their agencies, remains remarkably high at 92%.

All indications are trending in the right direction to be sure, and reflective of a steady and generally stable workforce. But if you’re a “data driven” leader these numbers are unlikely to lead to the kind of insights that point you to your next strategic initiative. It does, however, point to a valuable lesson the best leaders learn over and over again: If you want to know what is happening in your organization, nothing beats meaningful conversations with your team.

How to use your FEVS data to talk to your employees

In our work with federal agencies, we’ve observed that the most successful leaders not only leverage the FEVS data for its insights, but also see it as an annual opportunity to generate meaningful workplace conversations between employees, managers and executives. This follow-on is critical, as employees can experience survey fatigue if they feel that their input is not followed up by tangible action. It is a process that any leader, with personal presence and awareness, can employ without breaking the budget, creating a committee or hiring additional staff.

Creating a virtuous cycle

An annual engagement process — that includes the survey, release of data, analysis, listening sessions and implementation of lessons learned — creates a virtuous cycle.

Using what you learn from analyzing these annual reports, and comparing the data year-over-year, is a great way to build an agenda for employee-centered listening sessions. These listening sessions can take any number of forms, depending on your organizational culture.

Some organizations opt for more formal focus or feedback groups. In this scenario you might set up a series of small groups, asking follow up questions that help reveal the narrative stories at work in your organization. Survey software tools like Menti, Survey Monkey or MS Teams Forms can help craft follow up questions that get deeper into what employees and teams are experiencing as they go about doing their work.

Other leaders prefer informal one on one conversations to suss things out. This works best in organizations where psychological safety is high and leaders have put in the time to build trust. In these settings simple questions reveal the deepest responses:

• What do you love about your work?
• What is most challenging about your work?
• What are you learning right now?
• What, as a leader, can I do to help make work better?

Why it matters

We know from surveys by Gallup, Google and online placement companies like Indeed that strong employee engagement boosts productivity and retention rates, enhances innovation, is a marker of higher trust with leaders, improves employee health and safety, and leads to improved customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, disengaged employees are expensive. They negatively impact team and individual performance and are more likely to cause your star performers to seek greener pastures. A recent study by the Society for Human Resources Management found that it costs nine months of an employee’s salary to replace them. For federal bosses, replacing a disenchanted worker is even harder than in the private sector given clearances and other requirements.

Meaningful feedback sessions give employees an opportunity to voice their thoughts and feel heard by their managers and leaders. Leaders have an opportunity to act on what they hear and can begin to make noticeable and tangible improvements to pain points.

In one organization FEVS scores indicated the lag time in approval processes was having a serious impact on the team’s ability to deliver on the mission in the field. As we asked questions and learned more about the challenges, we discovered there were tactical improvements in processes that could be undertaken to help streamline the response.

Sometimes we uncover simple tactics that can improve morale, like “meeting-free Fridays” or establishing ground rules for better meeting management.

Over time we see organizations developing a more productive sense of transparency, building trust and resulting in happier, more productive employees.

Loretta Cooper is a senior workforce and team specialist at Cadmus Group. She is an ICF Certified Executive and Team Coach (PCC). Loretta comes to consulting after nearly two decades in network broadcasting. As an award-winning, Washington-based, national affairs correspondent for ABC News, Loretta (aka Lauren Rogers) had the opportunity to observe leaders in every sphere of influence – political, government, corporate, activist – and learn from their strategy successes and failures.

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