Employee engagement is a hot topic across the corporate world. With the Great Resignation, in which 47 million Americans quit their jobs, more employers were forced to look into the "why?" To find the answer, companies began to look within and spend more time engaging with employees, focusing more on improving internal communications and finding ways to improve morale and retention. 

For the second year in a row, Maximus has conducted employee engagement surveys to help leaders understand how employees feel about working for Maximus. While employee engagement surveys take time to review and interpret, these surveys have been a great way to learn from our employees. These insights help us identify ways to improve both engagement and retention by studying the key drivers of both.  We can then work together to create a better and more engaging workplace for everyone.  

Our most recent survey, which wrapped up earlier this year, had a 68 percent participation rate – an 8 percent growth in participation since last year's survey. Overall, we saw a sense of pride, belonging, and motivation in our employees; better yet, our employees have a high level of trust in their supervisors.  

Our most significant lessons from the survey are that our employees want the opportunity to collaborate outside of their project, business unit or function, they want a better onboarding experience, and they want to have their ideas for improving their work environment and processes heard. While some changes will take time to work through, leaders at Maximus are taking our employees' needs to heart when making decisions and planning what types of changes can be implemented.  

One of the best things we do with the survey is that we ask each people manager with a team of five or more to submit their action plans for what they can do to further engage employees and create more Maximus champions.  If your leader hasn’t told you about what their plans are, please do ask them, as I know they want to make sure what they are planning will work.  

I am incredibly grateful for our employees. They have great ideas and Maximus' leadership is listening. I believe the investments and improvements we have implemented over the past couple of years have helped us get to where we are today, and at the same time, I acknowledge that we will always be a work in progress. We will continue looking at emerging trends and, wherever possible, implement additional benefits and programs to improve our employees' experience and continue growing and building a culture that makes Maximus a great place to work.