The wellbeing of civil servants has still not rebounded to levels seen before the Covid-19 pandemic, despite some signs of improvement, according to a new study.
Conducted by the Policy Institute and International School for Government at King’s College London, the research finds that no central government department has entirely recovered to pre-pandemic levels of wellbeing, and that in every government organisation analysed, levels of anxiety are higher now than they were before Covid.
The study drew on the most recent wellbeing data from the UK government’s annual Civil Service People Survey (CSPS), collected in 2023, and built upon the researchers’ previous evaluations of findings from this survey, which has run since 2014.
The latest data also reveals that the wellbeing of civil servants in several departments crucial to the new government’s agenda – including the Department for Education (DfE), the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC), the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (recently renamed), and the constituent parts of the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero – remain “stubbornly, and substantially, worse off” than before the pandemic.
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The DHSC was among the worst performers, with life satisfaction seven percentage points lower than before the pandemic, and high anxiety seven points higher.
The DfE fared only slightly better, with a six-point decline in life satisfaction over the same period, although anxiety also rose by seven points.
Meanwhile, up to 40% of officials in the Treasury, DfE, and the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology report experiencing high anxiety. No central government department had fewer than 30% of its staff reporting high anxiety.
However, while the rate of improvement has yet to reach pre-pandemic trends, civil service wellbeing has seen an uptick compared to 2022. 38 organisations experienced positive changes across all four wellbeing measures in 2023, up from 17 the previous year. These include several central government departments, including the Cabinet Office, DHSC, and the Home Office.
And no central departments have experienced uniformly negative changes this year – compared to one in three last year. This suggests that the civil service in the centre is beginning to recover from and stabilise after the pandemic.
The study analysed the wellbeing of civil servants across central government departments, regulators, arms-length bodies, and the Scottish and Welsh governments.
The research focused on responses to the four wellbeing questions in the CSPS, covering life satisfaction, happiness, anxiety, and people’s sense of how worthwhile their life is.
Professor Michael Sanders, Director of the International School for Government at King’s College London, said, The new government seeks to reform and revitalise public services, in an environment of considerable fiscal constraint. Their best resource for achieving this – the civil service – is stressed, anxious and experiencing low wellbeing. The government should prioritise supporting the wellbeing of officials to ensure the civil service can effectively deliver the policies and reforms central to its agenda.”
