Every employee survey has two audiences. The first reads the high scores and feels reassured. The second reads the low scores and learns something. In local government, the low scores are where the real work begins.
The National Employee Survey (NES) now represents more than 300,000 government employee voices across the country. Most of that data is encouraging. Around 87% of local government employees say they are satisfied with their jobs overall. Yet a specific set of workplace factors lands at the bottom of the ratings almost every time, across cities and counties of very different sizes and regions.Those low scores are not random noise. Looked at one by one, the ten lowest-rated factors can seem unrelated. One is about pay. Another is about communication. A third is about career growth. Read together, they behave like vital signs. Each one points to a specific part of an organization's health, and the pattern they form is remarkably consistent.
The ten lowest-rated factors collapse into five signals. Here is what each one says about the health of the organization behind it.
Signal one: accountability that runs only one way
The two lowest-rated items on the NES sit right next to each other. Only 40% of employees rate the connection between pay and performance positively. Just 42% say their organization manages low-performing employees effectively.
Put those two numbers together and a clear message emerges. Many employees do not see a reliable link between how well someone performs and what happens next. Strong performers want to know that good work is noticed and rewarded. They also want to know that weak performance is addressed. When neither feels true, the people you most want to keep start to wonder why they are working so hard.
As an organizational-health signal, this is about fairness and follow-through. Employees rarely expect a perfect system. They expect a consistent one.
Signal two: people who do not feel seen
Recognition shows up twice near the bottom. Only about half of employees say high performers are adequately recognized, and a similar share say they feel appreciated by the organization.
Recognition is one of the strongest predictors of engagement and retention, and it is also one of the least expensive to improve. It does not always require a raise or a bonus. Often it requires leaders to name good work out loud, connect it to the mission, and do so consistently. When appreciation is missing, people still do their jobs. They just stop going beyond them.
The health signal here is belonging. A workforce that feels seen stays through hard seasons. A workforce that feels invisible leaves at the first better offer.
Signal three: information that does not flow
Two communication items also land low. About half of employees say the organization shares enough information for them to understand the challenges it faces. A similar share rate the organization's responsiveness to important issues and change positively.
When communication is thin, people do not stop trying to make sense of things. They fill the gaps themselves, and the story they invent is usually worse than the truth. Silence during a budget crunch or a reorganization reads as bad news, even when it is not.
As a health signal, this is about trust under pressure. Organizations that explain the why, even when the news is hard, hold trust through change. Organizations that go quiet lose it.
Signal four: departments that work in silos
Collaboration between departments consistently rates among the lower-scoring factors. This one surprises few people who work in government. Departments develop their own goals, their own workloads, and their own language. Specialization is necessary. Isolation is not.
When teams stop working across lines, decisions slow down, good ideas stay trapped, and residents feel the seams between departments that were supposed to serve them as one government.
The health signal is alignment. A healthy organization shares problems across boundaries. A strained one defends turf.
Signal five: people who cannot see a future
Career development rounds out the pattern. Only a little more than half of employees say they can see a path to grow their career where they are.
This is not only about promotions, which are limited everywhere. It is about whether people can picture themselves learning, stretching, and advancing without leaving. Cross-training, mentorship, and new responsibilities all count. When employees cannot see a future inside the organization, they look for one outside it, and government cannot afford to lose institutional knowledge it spent years building.
The health signal is retention. People stay where they can grow.
The good news hiding in the low scores
The most important thing about these signals is that they move. They are not fixed traits of government work.
The City of Goodyear, Arizona, is the clearest example. When Goodyear first ran the NES, its rating for managing low-performing employees sat at 36%, right in line with the national pattern. After years of defining expectations, building a feedback system, and treating the survey as a report card rather than a formality, that number climbed to 73%, the highest in the country for that item. Nevada County, California, saw a similar arc on workplace flexibility after it brought employees into the redesign of its policies.
Neither organization fixed everything at once. Each picked a low-rated signal, listened closely, and acted. That is the pattern behind almost every turnaround.
Reading your own vital signs
The value of an employee survey is not the discomfort of the low scores. It is the direction they give. Ten low-rated factors that first look like ten separate problems turn out to be a short list of organizational-health signals: fairness, belonging, trust, alignment, and growth. Strengthen those, and engagement, retention, and performance tend to follow.
Polco's National Employee Survey helps local governments read these signals with confidence. It provides statistically reliable feedback, national benchmarks that show how your organization compares, and clear guidance on where leaders can make the greatest difference. Instead of guessing what employees mean, you see it, and you see where to start.
Ready to read your organization's vital signs? Request a demo to see how The National Employee Survey can help. You can also try Polco free to start exploring.
