Unconventional consulting—and breakthrough results
Best Place to Work in Government (out of 17 very large agencies)
increase in Employee Engagement Index score
increase in employees who say HHS will use FEVS results to make their agency a better place to work
In its journey to become the #1 workplace in the federal government, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) relies heavily on data from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) to inform its Workforce Engagement Strategy and action plans. As received, however, the Excel-based data is cumbersome to extract and analyze, which limits its benefit—particularly among infrequent users.
Since 2019, a team of Eagle Hill data analytics and employee experience experts have supported HHS’s Office of Human Resources (OHR) to streamline its analysis and reporting on the FEVS survey and its larger goal of improving how HHS uses FEVS data to improve employee engagement and experience.
Goal
Turn unwieldy FEVS results data into accessible information HHS can utilize to inform its Workforce Engagement Strategic Plan and improve overall employee experience.
Our starting point
Although HHS uses FEVS as its primary tool to measure and improve employee engagement, tapping into the data’s full value has proven complicated. Survey results come delivered in a cumbersome Excel format that is formidable, especially to less experienced users.
Compounding the challenge, the structure of the FEVS survey recently changed, making mapping results for year-over-year perspectives difficult. To help HHS move away from laborious processing, our team worked to:
Simplify the process of accessing and understanding HHS FEVS results by making use of unique identifiers. This innovation would prove to save hundreds of hours in manual labor, while creating a new ability to see year-over-year trends across all HHS operating and staff divisions.
Create tools for interactive dashboards to further enhance the value of FEVS data and allow additional data analysis on an as-needed basis, including analyzing and reporting on engagement measures across various demographic groups.
Incorporate new data analysis and the feedback gathered through facilitated workshops into engagement strategies to achieve organizational goals.
The roadmap to success
Enable easy-to-access data insights. The tools Eagle Hill created, implemented, and trained users on allow HHS to easily find their offices’ results; identify year-over-year trends; compare organizations and offices; quickly see “good” and “bad” scores; and drill deeper into the FEVS data to inform decisions and improvement action plans.
Double down on training. We developed 11 Standard Operating Procedure guides, training materials, and a branding campaign to speed uptake of the new ways of working with FEVS data. As a result, HHS’s utilization of the FEVS data has increased, growing its value as a measurement and planning tool—while saving time for employees tasked with FEVS analysis and reporting.
Turn data into action. Our team helped design and develop a new engagement action-planning process and guide to instruct HHS stakeholders on their next steps to maintain or increase employee engagement based on their FEVS results.
Lean into flexibility. Utilizing an empathetic and collaborative working style, our team was able to create the tools, supporting documentation, and implement the training required to support HHS at a pace that did not overwhelm other agency priorities. We tailored our processes to put our client’s needs and working style first.
Keep an eye towards sustainability. As we continue our work with HHS OHR, we are expanding on the utility of HHS FEVS data by moving data analysis away from Excel and into PowerBI. With a slate of PowerBI tools currently under development, users will be able to create personalized and interactive dashboards and reports from previously static information.
As a result, since 2019, HHS has consistently been ranked as the #2 Best Place to Work in Government and recognized improvements in its FEVS scores across all performance indexes.
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