Exploring Performance

Assessing the experience of the federal government’s myriad customers is a challenging task. While agencies have made meaningful strides to measure how well they are delivering services to the public, there is still a lack of reliable performance measures that allow for cross-agency comparisons and offer agency leaders an understanding of the factors that will best help them build a strong CX culture.

Through research and case studies, however, we know that organizations that create productive environments for their employees are better positioned to deliver on their critical missions and provide a better experience for the people they serve. We also know that agency mission-support services—acquisition, finance, human capital and information technology—are a fundamental component of the federal employee experience and organizational success.

Given these previous research findings, the Partnership for Public Service set out to understand what measurable elements of agency work environments correlate with a positive internal customer experience for federal employees which drives a positive experience for the public. Using a variety of employee experience and human capital data, we identified four factors that are linked to a productive internal employee customer experience and developed a new way for federal leaders to assess and enhance the performance of their organizations in CX.

To identify the links between the experience of federal employees as customers of mission-support functions and other elements of agency work environments, the Partnership built a dataset composed of employee satisfaction and human capital data from 21 of the 24 CFO Act agencies1—the Cabinet departments and largest agencies within the federal government.

The primary data source for the outcome variable in our analysis was the 2023 Mission-Support Customer Satisfaction Survey led by the Office of Management and Budget and annually administered by the General Services Administration. This data was used to capture employee satisfaction with the support and services they received from their designated HR, IT, finance and procurement functions. Alongside this measure, we compiled data from the Partnership and BCG’s 2023 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings, the Office of Personnel Management’s human capital dataset, FedScope and the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to capture various aspects of agency work environments that served as our explanatory variables.

Using a variety of statistical analyses, we explored the relationship between internal customer satisfaction, as measured by the 2023 Mission-Support Customer Satisfaction Survey, each workplace category from the Best Places to Work rankings that measure a variety of aspects of the employee experience, and several variables measuring other aspects of agency work environments:

• Employee Engagement
  • Defined as: Employees’ satisfaction and commitment to their work and organization
  • Hypothesis: Agencies with better internal service delivery see higher internal customer satisfaction and employee engagement.
  • Data source: The 2023 Best Places to Work rankings
• Internal Communication
  • Defined as: Employees’ perceptions of their agency’s culture of communication and information sharing, and how leadership communicates with the workforce
  • Hypothesis: Agencies with more effective internal communications from leaders and managers can foster better collaboration between mission-support functions and their mission-focused counterparts and see higher internal customer satisfaction.
  • Data source: The 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey
• Goal Clarity
  • Defined as: The employee’s sense of how clearly leaders communicate the organization’s priorities, work unit goals and expectations of their work, and how that work relates to the agency’s goals
  • Hypothesis: Agencies in which leaders are clear about their expectations of employees, work unit goals and organizational priorities see higher internal customer satisfaction.
  • Data source: The 2023 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey
• Relative Size of Mission-Support Workforce
  • Defined as: An agency’s mission-support workforce as a share of its total full-time, nonseasonal, permanent workforce
  • Hypothesis: Agencies with larger mission-support workforces relative to the rest of the agency can deliver better internal services and see higher internal customer satisfaction.
  • Data source: FedScope

In the end, this analysis revealed statistically significant, positive relationships between internal customer satisfaction with mission-support services and:

• Employee engagement (p = 0.02)
• Internal communication (p = 0.03)
• Employee input (p = 0.01)
• Effective leadership (p = 0.04)

In other words, the Cabinet departments and independent agencies with higher rates of employee engagement and satisfaction with leadership, communication and employee input reported higher employee satisfaction with the support and services from their human capital, IT, finance and acquisition functions.

Given the established link between effective mission-support services and agency performance, these findings underscore the importance of focusing on the employee experience to enable a better experience for the public.

Using the results of the analysis, the Partnership calculated employee customer experience scores for 21 of the 24 CFO Act agencies by averaging their respective customer service satisfaction, employee engagement, internal communication, effective leadership and employee input scores. This new measure, and accompanying rankings, shed light on the organizations that provide the most constructive environments for mission delivery and a productive external customer experience. All scores are out of 100.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the agencies responsible for providing mission-support services to the rest of government—the General Services Administration and the Office of Personnel Management—registered the highest scores, a reflection of their investments to improve and sustain the quality of their mission-support services and their employee experience.

On the lower end, some of government’s largest organizations—the Department of Homeland Security, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Justice registered the lowest scores. For most, this was driven by lower internal communication and employee input scores, an element that can be difficult for large agencies to manage effectively. Our research and work with federal agencies have shown that crafting a detailed communications plan to collect, disseminate and inform employees of changes made based on feedback can be an effective way to build a culture of open communication and help employees feel that their voices have been heard.

Below are recommendations that federal leaders can use to create more effective organizations that better serve both their employees and the public:

• Use this data as a starting point for a deeper investigation with employees into the challenges in their experiences that impact their ability to deliver a positive experience for your customers.
• Invest in mission-support services to ensure they are equipped with the talent, resources and authority they need to effectively support their internal customers and enhance mission delivery.
• Develop a detailed communications plan to guide your efforts in collecting, disseminating and informing employees of changes made based on their feedback. This can be an effective way to build a culture of open communication and demonstrate to employees the value of their input.

The Employee Customer Experience Factors reflect the Partnership for Public Service’s ongoing commitment to identifying the essential components of agency success. Like the Best Places to Work rankings, this analysis makes government performance more transparent to improve accountability and serves as a tool to help federal leaders improve their organizations and deliver better outcomes for the public.

This work also aligns with our vision for a better government and our ongoing advocacy efforts around systemic reforms to empower change in government and a renewed focus on providing efficient, customer-friendly services to the people.

Looking ahead, the Partnership sees several opportunities to enhance this analysis and provide additional insights for federal leaders:

• Continue to explore the relationship between the internal customer experience and agency performance: Further investigation of the impact of the internal customer experience on overall agency performance can provide deeper insights into how mission-support functions influence agency outcomes.
• Add additional variables: Incorporating additional variables that capture other aspects of agency work environments, such as the ratio and status of political leadership, can help build a more comprehensive assessment of factors that influence agency performance in CX.

By refining and expanding the Employee Customer Experience Factors, the Partnership for Public Service aims to support federal leaders in creating environments that foster delivery on their critical missions and service to the public.