While employee engagement rates may be flat across most private industries, it’s expanding in the public sector. According to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, overall employee engagement topped 67 percent in 2017, marking the sixth straight year of increases in engagement rates. Julie Brill, acting deputy associate director for the Senior Executive Service and Performance Management at the Office of Personnel Management, says that across the board, agencies are prioritizing employee engagement and that the federal government is working to provide resources to help these agencies succeed. “Organizations have been emphasizing employee engagement, but if you are a manager, a leader, or a supervisor and you want to improve employee engagement, what does that mean? OPM started by making it clear with a definition of employee engagement,” Brill said on the Courageous HR show. “From there, we did some analyses of the FEVS results, and those indicated it's performance feedback, leadership, training, work–life balance; it’s not rocket science. But it helped those organizations that were developing action plans to home in on the areas they could move that needle on.”