City Survey Shows Improvement in Employee Satisfaction and Engagement

The City of Pensacola has completed the second annual city employee engagement and satisfaction survey, which showed that 72% of employees are satisfied to work for the city, and more than half 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 74% of employees completing it during the survey period in July 2020.

“Despite the significant challenges our employees have faced this year, I am thrilled to see that our employee engagement and satisfaction have improved significantly over the past year, along with the city’s national percentile ranking,” Mayor Grover Robinson said. “We know there is still plenty of work to do, but these results show that our efforts so far have been effective at improving employee engagement.”

Some highlights of the survey include:

72% of employees are satisfied to work for the city (an increase of 5% from 2019).
56% of employees are highly engaged in their work (an increase of 9% from 2019)
The City of Pensacola ranks in the 58th percentile when compared to similar organizations nationwide (an increase of 19 percentile points from 2019).

Through the survey, Mayor Robinson hopes to continue to gain insight into how to better engage employees, which in turn will help provide better service to citizens of Pensacola.

“Having an engaged workforce is essential to becoming the best organization we can be,” Mayor Robinson said. “I’m looking forward to continuing the momentum we have built, and I’m excited to have this valuable feedback from our employees on how we can improve and move forward as a team.”

Conducting an employee engagement survey was one of the recommendations from Mayor Robinson’s Transition Team Report, something Transition Team Chairman Quint Studer identified as an important action item to help improve employee performance and morale.

Using a series of questions with a five-point scale, the survey measured employee attitudes on 13 factors, including city image, recognition and development, compensation and benefits, work pressure, progress and job security.

Some strengths employees identified through the survey included satisfaction with benefits, city retirement plan, and feeling like their supervisor treats people fairly and cares about them as a person. Other factors where the city scored above the norm were satisfaction with coworkers, my job, and recognition and development.

One issue raised through both the 2019 and 2020 surveys was pay, which the city has been working to address through a compensation study and merit-based pay plan implemented by Human Resources. The 2020 survey showed improvement with employees’ satisfaction with compensation, reflected in several of the items with the most significant increase from 2019.

Items with significant increases from the 2019 survey to the 2020 survey included:

Employee compensation
Employee retention
Health benefits
Investment in individual development

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.

City administration and Mayor Robinson will be working with staff to prioritize which items to address first and identify a plan of action based on the survey results.

To view the survey results, click here.

For more information or general questions, email pio@cityofpensacola.com. To stay informed about what's happening with City of Pensacola government, sign up for email or text notifications through Notify Me or follow @CityofPensacola on social media.