Engagement Lessons Learned from Local Government

By Janelle Callahan, Principal Consultant, Institute for Public Sector Employee Engagement, CPS HR Consulting

ICYMI – Check out Atlanta mayor Kasim Reed’s TEDCity2.0 Talk and his reflections on it in an episode of TED Radio Hour, Building Better Cities.

Mayor Reed talks about how, in his campaign, he learned a valuable lesson from a constituent. “What I learned that day is what you really have to do when you're trying to lead people is find out what they care about and what needle they want moved,” said Mayor Reed in an interview. It’s good advice for any leader – to try and see the world from the perspective of your people who are most in need – and make progress on the issues they care about.

He also talks about the speed at which change can happen in cities, “You see, I don’t need 218 votes in Congress, or I don’t need 91 votes in the Georgia Legislature to move. I need eight votes on the Atlanta City Council to make change.”

Mayor Reed makes good points about the speed of change in cities and the closeness in which leaders and city employees are in relation to the citizens they serve. Perhaps these are some reasons why our national poll results* show that local government workers are more likely to be fully engaged compared to federal and state government workers. We define someone as “fully engaged” if they have an average score of four or higher (out of five) in response to our six engagement questions.

We found that 44 percent of local government employees are fully engaged versus only 34 percent in the federal government and 29 percent in state government. We also found that local government workers were more likely to agree that change is managed well in their organizations (53 percent agree compared with only about 40 percent of state and federal workers).

Our nation’s large cities offer exciting opportunities for employees to make a difference. As Kasim Reed says, “Cities are where hope meets the street, and if you don't want to spend your whole life waiting to change something, I happen to believe that you ought to be in cities. You pick an issue, and we are dealing with those issues head-on at cities.”

*National poll on employee engagement (In-press). CPS HR Institute for Public Sector Employee Engagement, Sacramento, CA.