Why the Rankings Matter
As we advance into a new century, America faces a new set of great public challenges: fighting a war against terrorism, prospering in the global economy, and expanding opportunity by improving schools and health care. Now, more than ever, we need the best and brightest to work on our behalf in government.
Employee engagement and commitment are two necessary ingredients in developing high-performing organizations and attracting the best and brightest. The Best Places to Work rankings are an important tool in recognizing the importance of employee engagement and ensuring that it is a top priority for government managers and leaders.
Since the first rankings were released in 2003, they have helped create much-needed institutional incentives to focus on key workforce issues and also provided managers and leaders with a roadmap for boosting employee engagement. Federal human capital professionals have told us that the Best Places to Work project has heightened awareness among senior leaders and spurred reform of human capital practices. As time goes on, we hope that agencies will use the results of this ranking to gauge the success of their efforts.
The rankings also directly address one of the biggest barriers to federal employment: a staggering lack of information among prospective employees. The Best Places rankings provide job seekers unprecedented insight on opportunities for public service by highlighting the federal government’s high-performing agencies and promoting federal organizations that often go unheralded.
The Best Places to Work rankings — the most comprehensive and authoritative rating of employee engagement in the federal government — are produced by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI).
