The Office of Personnel Management released the results of the 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, showing a slight ripple in the status quo of how government workers view their jobs.

The survey polled almost 422,000 federal employees on things like job satisfaction, employee engagement and the evaluations of agency leadership.

"The survey is one of the most valuable tools OPM provides to agencies because it helps leaders understand what is going on with employees," OPM acting director Beth Cobert said in a conference call. "It helps them make strategic decisions about their workforce initiatives."

Cobert also highlighted OPM's newest evaluation scale, the New Inclusion Quotient, or New IQ Index, which first debuted in 2014 and tracks government employees' "sense of inclusion" in the federal workplace. The New IQ Index also trended up a single point to 57 percent in 2015.

The survey is seen as the barometer du jour of federal government's ongoing battle to recruit and retain its workforce, especially with millennial workers.

In an effort to further diagnose employee engagement on an agency level, Cobert pointed to OPM's rollout of UnlockTalent.gov, an interactive site to provide federal managers with data from both FEVS and the Enterprise Human Resources Integration database to develop a more data-driven picture of the health of agencies.

Cobert also said the rise in employee engagement was a sign that OPM's efforts were bearing fruit.

"Agency leaders and managers have responded to the president's management agenda on people and culture by taking active steps to improve how employees engage with their jobs, organizations and missions," she said.

"Some examples include better internal communications from leaders to employees, greater input from employees on how their agencies operate, increased training opportunities and more explicit recognition of a job well done."

But while most scales were showing inclines, Cobert acknowledged that leadership assessments continued to be low when it comes to engagement, jumping a single point to 51 percent in 2015, still lower than 2012's 54 percent rate.

"The leadership component of the Employee Engagement Index have historically and consistently been low," she said. "In departments and large agencies, leadership component scores very widely, from a high of 75 percent to a low of 38 percent positive.

"This highlights the need for tailored solutions to respond to each agency's unique challenges."

While many aspects of employee satisfaction and engagement appeared to be on the rise this year, the report showed those gains were still far less than where they were three years ago.

Cobert said the lukewarm gains reflect the turmoil that federal employees have experienced since 2013.

"I think it's really important for us to think of some of the things that have gone on in period covered in the survey," she said. "In Fall 2013, there was a government shutdown. There's been uncertainty about budgets, those things get in the way of what federal employees care about. So when you see those declines in 2013 and 2014, that era is not conducive to people feeling like they are being respected or able to do their best work."

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