Federal employees are showing further improvements in how engaged they feel at work, according to the 2024 results of the government’s flagship federal workforce survey.

The 2024 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results, which the Office of Personnel Management published Thursday afternoon, marked an all-time high of 73% on the survey’s employee engagement index, which measures how federal employees feel about agency leadership, supervisors and their overall experience on the job.

Federal employees’ engagement scores have climbed steadily for the last couple of years. In the 2024 FEVS, the 73% result on the engagement index is a 1% increase over the 2023 score, and now the highest score for the index since it was added to the annual workforce survey in 2010.

OPM Acting Director Rob Shriver credited the improving results in the survey to administrative efforts over the past several years to improve pay regulations, clarify federal job protections and otherwise develop the federal workforce.

“Leaders across the Biden-Harris administration — and managers and supervisors across government — have prioritized rebuilding their workforces and engaging them on the issues most important to them,” Shriver said in a statement Thursday. “And now we are seeing the results, with the highest ever score on the employee engagement index, and strong results across the board.”

In addition to the increasing engagement score, the 2024 FEVS also showed improvements for how satisfied federal employees feel about their jobs, agencies and pay rates. The global satisfaction index for FEVS increased by one percentage point, rising from 64% to 65% between 2023 and 2024.

More federal employees also appear willing to recommend their agency as a good place to work. Over the last two years, that measure on FEVS has increased by 4%, OPM said.

Federal employees held steady in their views on their agencies’ ability to be productive and achieve work goals. The FEVS index on performance confidence for the 2024 survey once again showed 84% of employees posting positive scores, the same result that the index has had since 2021.

In the survey’s measure of employee experience — or how much employees feel that their agencies’ efforts to improve engagement have actually made a difference — the index resulted in a score of 74%, which is a 1% increase over the 2023 FEVS score.

And on the newest index for FEVS — which measures employee views on how their agencies are addressing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) — 72% of respondents gave overall positive responses, resulting in a 3% increase over the past two years. All four components of the DEIA index showed increasing scores, the highest being 77% positive responses on questions related to inclusion. For instance, 79% of FEVS respondents this year said employees in their work units made them feel like they belong.

The “leaders lead” category, which typically results in lower scores from federal employees, increased from 61% to 63% between 2023 and 2024. Feds’ views of their supervisors were 81% positive this year, compared with 80% on the 2023 FEVS.

Some questions on 2024 FEVS, however, revealed lower scores from federal employees. For example, 61% of respondents said new hires in their work units have the right skills for the job. And 56% said they were satisfied with the information they receive from management about what’s going on in their agency.

On another survey question, 54% of employees said they were satisfied with how involved they are in decisions affecting their work. And just 48% of respondents agreed that management involves employees in decisions affecting their work.

Between May and July 2024, 41% of eligible federal employees filled out the survey — a 2% increase over the 39% governmentwide response rate for the 2023 FEVS.

A more detailed breakdown and analysis of the 2024 FEVS results is expected to be released later this year. OPM typically issues a FEVS report each November. But ahead of the anticipated management report, OPM also updated its FEVS data dashboard — a new tool introduced in 2023 that shows trends on the different survey questions and indices over time.

In a preview of agency-specific FEVS results earlier this month, the Social Security Administration shared promising scores from agency employees with Federal News Network. SSA’s 2024 FEVS score showed increasingly positive views from employees on engagement, satisfaction and agency leadership. The agency increased its engagement index score from 65% positive responses in 2023, to 68% positive results in 2024.

SSA also managed to bring its response rate up to 70% for the survey earlier this year. It’s an increase of 24% over SSA’s 46% response rate in 2023, and marks the highest FEVS response rate for SSA in recent memory.

Many federal human capital experts, however, have said receiving the results of FEVS each year is only the first step for long-term workforce planning. To actually make improvements for their employees, experts say agency leaders have to then analyze the FEVS results and make adjustments as necessary. Later this fall, the Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCO) Council plans to publish a FEVS “toolkit” including recommendations for how leaders can make changes based on FEVS, as well as strategies for action planning and better communication with employees.

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