How to improve employee engagement in the public sector

Why it is a delivery lever, not a survey score

If you think employee engagement is a periodic survey, a slide deck and an HR team reporting that engagement has improved by a few percentage points year on year, it is worth pausing and reconsidering what engagement really represents.

Employee engagement is often misunderstood. It is not shorthand for happiness or wellbeing, and it cannot be improved through messaging alone. For years, it has been treated as something vaguely nice to have, a morale indicator to keep an eye on while the real work of delivery, reform and cost control happens elsewhere. That framing has become increasingly detached from reality.

In the public sector in particular, employee engagement has become a business-critical issue. It directly affects performance, productivity, retention and an organisation’s ability to deliver in an environment shaped by constant change, political uncertainty, automation and sustained financial constraint.

Why employee engagement matters more than ever in the public sector

For a long time, public sector employment offered relative stability, predictable career progression and a shared understanding of mutual commitment between employee and organisation. Those expectations were neither naïve nor misplaced; they were an explicit part of the deal that helped draw many people into public service.

What has changed is not the legitimacy of those expectations, but the extent to which organisations can still meet them consistently. Prolonged financial constraint has limited pay progression, reduced the scope for meaningful benefits, and, in some cases, altered pension expectations. Alongside repeated restructures, automation, funding cycles and political shifts, this has changed both the nature of work and the psychological contract that sits behind it.

Many public sector employees today have lived through extended periods of uncertainty. Some have had to reapply for their own roles. Others have taken on additional responsibilities as teams have reduced or merged. Many have remained while colleagues have left involuntarily.

These experiences do not automatically result in disengagement, but they do leave an imprint. People may begin to question whether effort is noticed, whether loyalty is reciprocated, or whether the organisation genuinely knows what it needs from them next. In that context, engagement becomes less about enthusiasm and more about whether people still see a reason to invest their energy, judgement and commitment.

This is often where productivity erodes quietly, not through resistance or lack of care, but through caution, fatigue and emotional withdrawal.

Retiring the outdated view of employee engagement

Employee engagement has traditionally been framed as a secondary concern, separate from delivery and performance. In some cases, it has been treated as a proxy for morale or wellbeing, something to be monitored rather than actively shaped.

That view no longer holds.

Public sector organisations are operating in conditions defined by automation, political choice, competing priorities and frequent change. In this environment, engagement is not about perks or positivity, it is about whether people have the confidence, clarity and motivation to do demanding work well, even when circumstances are difficult.

Increasingly, engagement is best understood as a signal of organisational health. When engagement declines, it usually reflects friction in how work is designed, prioritised or led, rather than a sudden loss of commitment to public service.

The hidden engagement trap: low-demand work followed by sudden pressure

One of the least discussed contributors to disengagement in the public sector is the long-term design of work environments that are deliberately undemanding, followed by periodic interventions to raise performance or reduce headcount.

When roles are structured to minimise challenge, stretch or responsibility, they can unintentionally encourage passivity and low expectation. Over time, this shapes who stays. People who want to improve systems, take responsibility or make a meaningful impact often leave, while those who remain may do so because the environment asks little of them.

When organisations later respond to performance concerns by abruptly raising expectations or removing roles, the results are rarely what leaders intend. Reducing the size of the workforce does not guarantee that the most capable or committed people remain, particularly if the environment never rewarded ambition or initiative in the first place. What it does guarantee is that remaining teams are asked to deliver the same or greater objectives with less capacity.

From an engagement perspective, this combination is deeply corrosive. Long periods of low demand followed by sudden existential threat erode trust, commitment and discretionary effort. Sustained engagement depends on work that is meaningful, appropriately demanding and clearly connected to outcomes, not on oscillating between comfort and crisis.

What the evidence actually says about employee engagement

Recent public sector research and analysis, including work frequently cited by organisations such as CIPD and OECD, points to a consistent set of conclusions.

Public sector employees continue to report strong commitment to mission and public value. Engagement levels vary significantly between teams, often more than between organisations. Line managers play a critical role in shaping engagement, but are frequently overloaded and under-supported. Workload, prioritisation and the way change is managed, consistently emerge as dominant drivers of disengagement. Organisation-wide engagement initiatives tend to have limited impact unless they are reinforced locally.

Taken together, this suggests that engagement is rarely broken everywhere at once. It is fragile in specific places, usually where pressure is highest and clarity is lowest.

Measuring employee engagement without mistaking movement for progress

Engagement surveys are not inherently flawed, but they are often over-relied upon. Organisation-wide scores smooth out variation and obscure where engagement is deteriorating or holding up under pressure. They can also create a misleading sense of control, where small movements in percentages are treated as evidence that underlying issues have been addressed.

More useful approaches focus less on headline scores and more on patterns and friction points, such as persistent variation between teams, recurring issues linked to workload or decision-making, and gaps between stated priorities and lived experience. Early signs of disengagement often show up not as dissatisfaction, but as increased risk aversion, slower decisions and declining initiative.

Used well, engagement data helps leaders understand where the system is making work harder than it needs to be. Used poorly, it becomes a performance metric that discourages honesty and masks emerging problems.

What actually improves employee engagement in the public sector

Engagement does not improve because people are told to care more. It improves when the conditions for good work are deliberately and consistently put in place.

In practice, this usually means focusing on a small number of fundamentals.

Clear priorities matter because people engage when they understand what matters now, what can wait, and how trade-offs are being made. Realistic workloads are essential because no amount of purpose compensates for sustained overload. Trust and autonomy play a significant role, as engagement rises when people are trusted to use judgement rather than constrained by excessive process or risk aversion. Strong team leadership helps teams navigate uncertainty and competing demands. Finally, engagement improves when people can see a clear connection between their daily work and meaningful public outcomes.

These are not soft interventions. They are operational choices that shape how work feels and functions day to day.

Engagement is about purpose and work design, not one or the other

Employee engagement is often framed as either a purpose problem or a workload problem. In reality, it sits at the intersection of both.

Purpose without manageable work leads to burnout. Manageable work without purpose leads to indifference.

In the public sector, people want to believe that their work matters, that their contribution is needed and that the organisation stands for something they can support. At the same time, they need work that is realistically scoped, clearly prioritised and supported by sensible decision-making.

Sustained engagement depends on holding these two forces together rather than treating them as alternatives.

Why engagement often improves at team level first

Teams are where priorities collide, where workload is experienced and where decisions either make sense or do not. This is why engagement often improves locally before it improves organisation-wide.

When intact teams are supported to work better together on real delivery challenges, engagement becomes practical rather than abstract. People regain clarity, confidence, and a sense of agency in their work. Engagement follows as a consequence, not as a target.

This is why many public sector organisations are increasingly focusing on team-based development rather than broad engagement programmes.

Teamshaper’s work with public sector teams reflects this shift. Rather than attempting to increase engagement directly, our programmes focus on helping teams clarify priorities, strengthen ways of working and rebuild confidence in delivery. Engagement improves because the work itself becomes more meaningful, more achievable and better supported.

Employee engagement is about commitment, not sentiment

Employee engagement in the public sector has never been about making people happier in the abstract. It is about whether people still feel a sense of affinity with their organisation, believe their contribution matters, and see a reason to commit their energy and judgement to the work ahead.

In an era of constant change, automation, political uncertainty and financial constraint, that commitment cannot be assumed. It has to be rebuilt deliberately, practically and close to the work itself.

If you are exploring how to improve employee engagement in your organisation and want a team-focused, delivery-led perspective, you can learn more about Teamshaper’s approach here.