Live Q&As

Yes, DOJ Antitrust dropped in the rankings from 22 in 2010 to 178 this year. Overall satisfaction decreased by 20.7 percent. We don't know specifics, but what we do know from our analysis is that leadership is the #1 driver of overall satisfaction. That is, employees' views of leadership are strongly linked to overall satisfaction. Antitrust's scores on leaders dropped by 29.5 percent. For more information, I'd suggest reading a recent Post story by Ed O'Keefe.

Glad to hear you enjoy your work! That's clearly the case for many federal employees. Scores on our skills/mission match category tend to be very high. In fact, skills/mission match is the second most important driver of the overall satisfaction score.

There are lots of things agencies can do to improve the work environment. Some of the high ranked agencies did things like host town halls and employee focus groups to get at the root causes of frustrations. Check out the Post's Fed Coach column for more examples of what agencies are doing to improve employee satisfaction.

What we find is that it all goes back to leadership. If leaders are communicating the challenges effectively, employees will understand. Smithsonian is also  an agency where employees are very passionate about the mission and the work they do.

Through our analysis, we found that pay is important, but not nearly as important as effective leadership and skills/mission match. It's true that some agencies like FDIC have unique circumstances and rank high. SEC, on the other hand, is near the bottom of the rankings.

Yes, I did. I think it's great they include some federal agencies in their rankings. The more we can get the word out about about the great job opportunities in the federal government, the better.

No, the Best Places rankings are based on OPM's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. We analyze the data which provides a red flag for agencies that might be in trouble. To get the complete picture, one needs dig deeper and talk with employees and leaders to find out what's going on.

Our analysis tells us NRC has dropped, but they're still ranked 2. The leadership scores are also near the top.

When we started the rankings in 2003, we had all agencies in one list. We decided to divide the rankings by workforce size in 2005. 2,000 employees was a good cutoff because it gave us about equal numbers in the large and small categories.

Thanks! We rank agencies based on what employees say. The Best Places to Work Index measures employee satisfaction and commitment. 

The Department of Education has been near the bottom of the rankings for a while now, but they are paying attention and trying to improve. ED improved by 9.1 percent on the strategic management category -- it's a good sign that employees think the skill level is improving and that they are recruiting the right people.

When we looked at the data, we had the very same question! We reached out to FDIC and OPM to find out and it is important to note that their gains did not happen by accident. Both agencies have worked very hard to improve their work environments. Check out what they did to improve.

We don't look at happiness, our overall satisfaction score is based on three different questions:
• 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?

We understand that it's been a tough year for federal workers. The government-wide index score drop of 1.5 percent reinforced that -- although some of us were expecting an even bigger drop considering the tough climate for feds.