Methodology

The Partnership for Public Service created the Best Places to Work in the Federal Government® rankings in 2003 to provide the most comprehensive rating of employee engagement and satisfaction across federal agencies and their subcomponents. We use the term employee engagement and satisfaction to refer to the commitment of the workforce, its job and organizational satisfaction, and the willingness of employees to put forth discretionary effort to achieve results. 

The 2023 Best Places to Work rankings include 532 federal agencies and their subcomponents, the most in the history of the rankings: 17 large agencies, 26 midsize agencies, 30 small agencies and 459 subcomponents. We group agencies by workforce size to provide comparisons of agencies that may face similar management challenges.  

Large agencies are those organizations with 15,000 or more employees. Agencies with 1,000 to 14,999 employees are included in the midsize category. Small agencies are those with at least 100 but fewer than 1,000 employees. Subcomponents—the subagencies, bureaus, divisions, centers and offices within agencies—need to have at least 100 employees and 30 survey responses to be included in the rankings. The number of employees was determined by using the Office of Personnel Management’s FedScope database for June 2023.  

Using a combination of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey and FedScope data, the Partnership determines which agencies and subcomponents meet the 100-person criteria for inclusion. In some cases, the employee count is unavailable from either the FEVS or FedScope. When this occurs, our team makes informed inferences on the likely employee count at a subcomponent using the Office of Personnel Management’s average response rate for agencies with 100-999 employees.  

At times, a lack of data may result in a subcomponent being included in the rankings that falls short of the 100-person threshold. We do not attempt to recreate the rankings in these situations, but we do document them for further review during future Best Places to Work rankings.

Data Source

The majority of the data used to develop these rankings was collected by the Office of Personnel Management through its Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The survey was administered as a census of all full-time and part-time, permanent, nonseasonal executive branch employees and some temporary employees. It was completed between May and July 2023 by 625,568 federal workers, for a response rate of 39%. To ensure the data represents demographic characteristics such as age, gender, race, supervisory status, agency size and occupation, OPM data uses weights. Visit OPM’s website to learn more about the FEVS methodology 

The Best Places to Work rankings include responses from more than 395,200 additional employees at 12 agencies that conducted their own employee surveys. Employees were surveyed around the same time the FEVS was administered and had a response rate of more than 50%. The rankings also incorporate responses from employees at the nation’s intelligence agencies, which conducted a similar survey but did not report the number of respondents. 

This year, the addition of agencies that provided their own survey data included the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, the Department of Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence and Analysis, the Federal Deposit and Insurance Corporation, the Government Accountability Office, the Millennium Challenge Corporation, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Smithsonian Institution, the U.S. Postal Service’s Office of the Inspector General, the Library of Congress, the Tennessee Valley Authority’s Office of the Inspector General and the Department of Veterans Affairs. 

The data from these additional organizations are not used in the calculation of the government-wide employee engagement and satisfaction score. However, because these agencies conducted employee surveys that included the three questions needed to calculate an agency’s Best Places to Work employee engagement and satisfaction score, they are included in our index rankings. Also, because their surveys did not include some of the questions used to calculate workplace category scores, they are included in some workplace categories and not others. 

Best Places to Work Employee Engagement and Satisfaction Ranking and Score Calculation

The rankings are based on the Best Places to Work employee engagement and satisfaction score. The measurement model for Best Places to Work was created in 2003 by our partner, CFI Group, which uses the same methodology for the highly regarded American Customer Satisfaction Index. 

The Best Places to Work employee engagement and satisfaction score is derived from three different questions in OPM’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey: 

• I recommend my organization as a good place to work. 
• Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job? 
• Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your organization? 

To calculate the score, we use the percentage of positive responses in a weighted formula. The more the question predicted intent to remain on the job, the higher the weighting. The weightings for the formula are proprietary and are weighted according to a formula developed with the Hay Group (later acquired by Korn Ferry) in 2007. 

The percentage of positive responses is calculated by dividing the number of employees who answered a question positively by the number of employees who answered that question. Prior to the 2020 edition of the Best Places to Work rankings, the percentage of positive responses was calculated by dividing the number of employees who answered a question positively by the total number of employees who completed the survey. The change also aligns with the methodology OPM used in analyzing the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. 

The government-wide employee engagement and satisfaction score is calculated using data from agencies that participate in the FEVS. While agencies that conduct their own internal surveys are included in the rankings, their data is not used in the calculation of the government-wide employee engagement score.  

Workplace Category Rankings and Scores Calculation

The workplace category scores are calculated by averaging the percentage of positive responses to the respective survey questions across different aspects of the employee experience. 

This year, the eight workplace categories included effective leadership at various levels, mission match, satisfaction with pay, work-life balance, recognition of performance, employee input in decision-making, professional development and a set of categories evaluating how effectively agencies support improving diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in the workplace. 

Workplace categories are selected based on their importance to the Best Places to Work engagement and satisfaction score. Changes to the workplace categories are made based on academic literature and statistical analysis to ensure validity of workplace categories. As a result, agencies may have missing workplace category scores if data for any of the questions that comprise the category is not available. 

Comparison to Scores from Previous Years

In 2020, the Partnership changed how it calculates the percentage of positive responses (e.g., percentage of respondents who answered “agree” or “strongly agree”) to the FEVS questions to align with the Office of Personnel Management. Prior to 2020, the percentage of positive responses was calculated by dividing the number of employees who answered a question positively by the total number of employees who completed the survey. Beginning with the 2020 edition of Best Place to Work, the percentage of positive responses was calculated by dividing the number of employees who answered a question positively by the number of employees who answered that particular question. This change resulted in smaller denominators, filtering out respondents who skip questions as well as a slightly larger percentage of positive responses. Because of the methodological change, scores from the years prior to 2020 cannot be compared to 2020 and onward. 

Among the 2023 Best Places to Work scores, the following categories can be compared to scores from 2020-2022: 

• Best Places to Work Engagement and Satisfaction Score
• Effective Leadership: Senior Leadership
• Effective Leadership: Supervisors
• DEIA and its subcategories (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility)
• Mission Match
• Pay

The Work-Life Balance, Recognition and Effective Leadership categories were revised in 2023 to use a different set of questions. Therefore, scores and rankings in these categories should not be compared to any created before 2023. The Employee Input and Professional Development categories were new in 2023 and are not comparable to any category we have used before.  

In addition, the Department of Veterans Affairs continues to administer its own All-Employee Survey and does not participate in the FEVS, a practice that began in 2018. Because VA is such a large agency, the government-wide scores and VA’s own scores from the years VA was included in the FEVS (2003 to 2017) cannot be compared to the scores after VA started to conduct its own survey (from 2018 onwards). Since the VA’s survey included the three questions needed to calculate an agency’s Best Places to Work employee engagement score, the department is included in our rankings. However, as with other agencies that conduct their own surveys, we have not included the VA’s data in the calculation of the government-wide score from 2018 onward.  

The Partnership and BCG would like to thank OPM for the excellent administration of its employee survey, without which the Best Places to Work rankings would not be possible.