GovernmentExecutive.com

Federal employees who are more engaged in their work can improve government efficiency and save agencies money, according to speakers at Government Executive's Excellence in Government conference in Washington on Monday.

"I think supervisors at every level can have an enormous impact on an organization just by changing their behavior a little bit," said Anne Marelli, a senior research analyst at the Merit Systems Protection Board. "You have to bring an employee psychologically into the work environment."

Cynthia Heckman, chief human capital officer for the Government Accountability Office, credited a range of employee engagement programs for helping the oversight agency cut costs. Heckman said efforts such as group mentoring, job transition programs for workers moving to other positions within GAO and an agencywide review of the performance appraisal system that solicited employee feedback, provided them with an incentive to work harder. In 2008, for every dollar that GAO spent, it achieved $114 in savings -- at a time when the number of full-time employees at the agency was declining.

President Obama said on Monday that he has directed agency leaders to cut their budgets by a combined $100 million during the next three months.

Randy Moon, director of employee engagement and retention at the CIA, said his office had been tasked with re-engaging employees and helping to fully integrate new employees into the agency's culture. Moon's shop coordinates with the managers of existing programs, including a leadership development course, to fill any gaps in their offerings. Moon is building a team of talent advisers who will help employees find the jobs best-suited to them within the CIA, and to develop guidance that helps them achieve their career goals.

Programs that increase employees' enthusiasm and interest in their work can reap productivity gains, Marelli said, but they also can help agencies avoid extraneous costs. Marelli and her team found that at agencies where employees reported being most engaged, they used an average of nine sick days per year, compared to 12 annual sick days at agencies where workers reported the lowest levels of involvement. Marelli also noted that agencies with the most engaged employees reported on average 0.47 percent of their workers filed Equal Employment Opportunity complaints annually, while 1.04 percent of employees in the least-engaged agencies filed such complaints. And departments with more committed employees had fewer cases of workplace injury than those with the least committed employees.

John Palguta, vice president for policy at the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, said agencies need to harness employees' "discretionary energy," the extra effort they bring to their jobs if they are excited about them.

"It's not something you can demand," Palguta said. "It's something that has to come naturally."