The City of Pensacola has completed its fourth annual city employee engagement and satisfaction survey, which shows a consistent increase in employee engagement during Mayor Grover Robinson’s term as Mayor. The City of Pensacola rose from the 39th percentile for employee engagement in 2019 to the 67th percentile in 2022, when compared to other organizations nationwide.
The 2022 survey showed that 69% of employees are satisfied to work for the city, and 60% of employees are highly engaged in their work.
The survey gathered valuable feedback from staff in an effort to identify areas for improvement and better serve city employees and residents. The survey saw great participation from staff, with 73% of employees completing it during the survey period in June and July 2022.
“Taking care of City of Pensacola employees has been one of my top priorities since I took office, and I am excited to see those efforts positively reflected in our employee engagement survey,” Mayor Robinson said. “Engaged employees not only create a better work environment, but also provide better service to our citizens overall, which is our ultimate goal. There is always room for improvement, and I appreciate our employees who took the time to give valuable feedback on how we as a city can continue to improve and enhance our employee engagement.”
Some highlights of the 2022 survey results include:
- The City of Pensacola ranks in the 67th percentile when compared to other organizations nationwide (an increase of 28 percentile points since 2019).
- 69% of employees are satisfied to work for the city (an increase of 2% since 2019).
- 60% of employees are highly engaged in their work (an increase of 13% since 2019).
Some strengths employees identified through the survey included satisfaction with benefits, recognition, opportunities for development, and feeling like their supervisor treats people fairly and cares about them as people. Other factors where the city scored above the norm were satisfaction with coworkers, treatment and work pressure.
Several areas that scored below the norm on the survey were city image, communication and compensation. The city has been continuing to address compensation through the implementation of a merit-based pay plan by Human Resources.
Other items that received high scores (above the norm) in the survey included:
- Retirement plan
- Health benefits
- Accountability
- Supervisors caring about employees
- Fair treatment by supervisors
- Working with supervisors to set clear work goals and objectives
The survey was conducted by Atlanta-based Sperduto & Associates, a firm of corporate psychologists and management consultants that works with organizations throughout the country to help their employees be more engaged, satisfied and productive at work.
To view the City of Pensacola Employee Engagement Survey results, visit the city’s website.
For the few who will read the report, it should raise a lot of concern. As example, above we read, in what appears to be a city hall press release: “69% of employees are satisfied to work for the city (an increase of 2% since 2019).” However, the report itself describes that “Satisfaction” is down 4% from 2021. Why is that? That seems a lot for one year. There were below average scores for: City Image, Communication and Compensation. There are declining scores in Treatment [Fairness?], Mayors Office and Compensation. Certain pages like 15 and 21 are especially damning. I know from my own experience talking to city employees, and having people tell me what city employees told them, that all is not well. A great question to ask city employees in 2023 is if they live “in” the City of Pensacola. Then ask the non-city resident city employees why they will not live in our community. I ask and the responses are shocking. Another good question for 2023 would be how city employees feel about the City Council. You might also ask if city employees would prefer to work for a professional manager or administrator (as in Escambia County, Santa Rosa County, Gulf Breeze, Milton, etc.) or for a politician only accountable every four years (and only if they run for reelection) and who under our new system of governance knows very little about city government and lacks executive leadership experience.