Workforce Insights from Central Governments

Executive summary

Governments today face rapidly evolving challenges that require strong, people-focused leadership across central administrations. A resilient and high-performing workforce is essential, but it cannot be achieved without understanding the lived experiences of public servants. Leadership and management practices play a critical role in shaping these experiences, yet many governments lack the tools to systematically assess their impact. Large-scale employee surveys offer a valuable lens into this dynamic and can help leaders navigate the complexities of organisational transformation. When used strategically, they provide actionable insights that can drive meaningful change, foster trust, and guide sustainable and impactful reforms.

This report summarises the results of the 2024 Standard EU/OECD Survey of Central Government Public Servants - a first-of-its-kind cross-country survey that provides leaders with high-quality, comparative data to drive insight into a wide range of organisational domains including leadership quality, organisational performance, employee engagement, well-being, learning and innovation, and working arrangements. The Survey and this synthesis report are the flagship outputs of a project conducted by the OECD with funding and support from the European Commission’s Technical Support Instrument.

This project collected and compared data from 56 980 employees from central government ministries and agencies in eight participating EU countries: Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia and the Netherlands (hereafter EU8), as well as partial data from Denmark and Norway. This provides unique insight into what matters to government employees, how leaders can create workplaces for them to thrive, and in turn deliver the best possible public services to citizens.

Key findings

• Public employees are generally engaged with their work, and mission-driven – a large majority report being satisfied with their job (76%), willing to do extra work (70%), and identify with the mission of their organisation (68%). Employees tend to be more engaged when they see opportunities for professional development and growth and hold a positive impression of their senior leadership.

• Public employees who have opportunities for mobility and to develop their digital skills tend to have more positive perceptions of organisational performance, and professional growth is particularly important for employee engagement. However, only half of employees feel that they are growing professionally, or that their organisation provides regular opportunities to build their digital skills, while only a third feel that their organisation supports mobility for career building.

• Public employees generally view their organisations as effective and accountable but are more critical when it comes to the efficiency of their organisations and their responsiveness to change. Employees feel that their organisations perform better when they support bottom-up innovation and have capable, forward-looking senior leaders. Half of employees feel that the rules and procedures within their organisation make it difficult and complicated to work effectively and efficiently.

• Employees are very positive regarding their direct employee-manager relationship. A large majority report their manager treats them with respect (85%), lets them be reasonably autonomous (83%), and trusts their judgement (79%). Managers who plan the work well, maintain high standards of honesty and integrity, and trust their employees’ judgement, tend to drive the most positive impression of team performance.

• Innovation climate is the strongest driver of perceived organisational performance, however, less than half of employees view their organisations’ innovation climate favourably. Employees evaluate their organisation’s performance more positively when their organisation learns from past problems and encourages employees to look for new ways of doing things. Employee participation in innovation projects is higher when there is a strong innovation climate.

• Employees are generally positive regarding the values-based and strategic leadership of their senior leaders. Over half of employees (56%) feel that senior leaders generally manage the organisation well. Only 44% of employees feel their senior leaders provide frank, evidence-based advice to political leaders and only 42% agree that they effectively lead change in their organisation. Overall, employees are pessimistic that senior leaders will act on the results of the employee survey.

• Public employees are very positive regarding the performance of their team. Quality of management and the extent to which employees feel engaged in their work are important in shaping how employees evaluate the performance of their team. However, managing underperformance remains a key challenge with half of employees reporting that underperformers typically remain in their organisations and continue to underperform.

• Well-being is important for productivity, as employees take more sick leave when their well-being deteriorates. However, half of employees report feeling exhaustion at the end of the day, while over a quarter feel burnt out. Employees report better well-being when they have access to meaningful opportunities for learning and development and are managed by skilled and effective line managers.

• Most public servants express low satisfaction with pay and benefits, especially when compared to the private sector, but are satisfied with their employment security. Remote work is commonly used and appreciated, although there is significant variation across the countries in the study.