Federal government workers are more apathetic than workers in the private sector and it’s costing taxpayers billions.
A new Gallup survey found that just 27 percent of federal government employees considered themselves “engaged” in their jobs this year, compared with 31 percent of all other workers in the U.S. About 53 percent of federal workers said they were “not engaged,” and 19 percent considered themselves “actively disengaged.”
Engaged employees feel a “profound connection” to their workplace and work to move the organization as a whole forward, Gallup said. Not engaged employees do the bare minimum and actively disengaged employees actually undermine overall progress.
Theese federal government employees who are actively disengaged, combined with those employees who are not engaged, translated into 11 percent lost productivity across the government this year, according to a Gallup analysis.
So with more than 2 million federal employees, Gallup estimates that this lack of engagement cost the federal government $18 billion — about $9,000 per employee — this year.
The new survey also broke down apathy for jobs by age group.
Millennials were the least engaged with their government jobs, with 75 percent of the under 30 crowd either “not engaged” or “actively disengaged.”
The 41 to 50-year-old age group was the most engaged with about 30 percent positively engaged this year.
