A workforce survey can tell an agency director something a staff meeting might not: morale is slipping, employees don’t see a future there, or a management problem runs deeper than one difficult supervisor.
Collecting those answers is the easy part. Interpreting them, earning employees’ trust and turning the findings into change is where things get complicated.
On this episode of Fed Thread, Jack Dando, a social scientist and senior survey data analyst in the Intelligence Community, discusses what federal workforce data can reveal, where it falls short and why the way agencies collect it matters as much as the results themselves.
A low score isn’t the whole story
An agency’s workforce data can look troubling in isolation. The next question is whether similar agencies are seeing the same decline.
Dando recommends looking at an agency’s results over time, then comparing them with those of similar organizations. If morale has dropped across the board, the problem may extend beyond one agency’s leadership. If one agency is an outlier, that gives leaders a more specific place to start looking.
The numbers won’t necessarily reveal everything that’s wrong, but they can help determine where to start asking better questions.
Feedback has a shelf life
Employees who spend time completing a survey want to know their effort means something. If they share concerns and nothing changes, it’s easy to see why they might not bother next time.
Dando says some employees feel they’re sending their responses into a void. Leaders can say they want honest feedback, but their actions afterward determine whether employees believe them.
That follow-through can make a difference in participation, as well. When leaders communicate that they heard employees and explain what they’re doing to make things better, workers have a reason to believe their voices matter.
Not all data is created equal
This is where survey methodology becomes more than a technical detail. The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey gave agencies a common basis for comparing workforce sentiment across organizations and over time. Proposed changes to how the survey is administered raise questions about how useful those comparisons will remain.
Dando argues that decentralizing the survey and asking agencies to run their own risks making the results harder to compare. Duplicating the work will also add costs and workforce burdens, particularly for smaller agencies, he says.
While more flexibility can help agencies ask questions tailored to their own workforces, without consistent methods, leaders may have a harder time distinguishing a genuine workforce trend from differences in how the data was collected.
The question after the numbers
Dando also makes the case for open-ended responses, which can help explain what’s behind a score, whether it’s work-life balance, promotion opportunities or a problem within a particular directorate. Those comments take time to analyze, and employees must trust that their candor won’t be used against them or shared publicly.
That leaves leaders with the challenge of not only collecting useful feedback, but protecting the people who provide it and showing that someone is going to put their suggestions to good use.
For more insight into making sense of workforce data, listen to the full Fed Thread conversation, presented by Blue Cross and Blue Shield Federal Employee Program.
Catch more conversations on podcast platforms, YouTube or on the Fed Thread hub page.
Copyright © 2026 Federal News Network. All rights reserved. This website is not intended for users located within the European Economic Area.