The Relationship Between Job Satisfaction, Performance, and Employee Engagement

In local government, employee engagement is rarely a mystery. Most leaders can name who’s disengaged. What’s harder to see is the decision pattern that created those conditions, and what it would take to change them.

Recent research points to a consistent finding: job satisfaction, engagement, and performance reinforce each other, and the driver underneath all three is values alignment. When the work people do connects to something they actually care about, engagement follows. When that connection is absent, or was never built, no amount of morale programming closes the gap.

Why Does This Matter?

Employee engagement and job satisfaction aren’t soft concerns. In a recent dissertation for Walden University, Alexis L. Shellow examined the relationship between engagement, job satisfaction, and performance, noting that decreased employee performance results in decreased productivity, increased turnover, and negative financial outcomes. In local government, those outcomes carry an additional cost: eroded public trust and declining service quality.

Measuring Employee Engagement: Going Beyond the Basics

For local government organizations, measuring employee success goes beyond productivity metrics. It involves understanding the commitment and enthusiasm employees bring to serving their communities. A study through the National Institutes of Health found that a combination of observational and psychological assessments provides a more complete view of engagement, evaluating not just output but emotional investment in the work itself. The study notes that appropriate work engagement is critical to job performance. Employees who understand their roles and feel their work matters tend to navigate the complexity of public service more effectively, producing higher satisfaction and stronger performance outcomes.

The Influence on Job Performance

Research consistently shows a strong connection between engagement and performance. The mechanism isn’t complicated: employees who feel aligned with their organization’s mission are more motivated and more effective. Research from the International Business and Management Education journal confirms that engaged employees demonstrate commitment and emotional attachment to the organization, and that satisfaction depends on whether the work connects to the employee’s own values and motives.

That alignment doesn’t happen by accident. It happens when leaders have done the work of defining what the organization actually stands for, and have built conditions where people can see the connection between their daily work and that purpose. That clarity is the heart of Define What Matters. Without it, engagement programs operate without a foundation.

Job Satisfaction and Effects on Public Service

When individual values align with organizational mission, satisfaction follows, and that satisfaction becomes a gauge for organizational culture health. Engaged and satisfied employees are more productive, more motivated, and more connected to community outcomes. The reverse is equally true: when employees can’t connect their values to their work, disengagement is a rational response. The work still gets done, but the discretionary energy, the kind that drives service quality, withdraws.

Building the Culture That Drives Engagement

The research points to something leaders in local government navigate constantly: engagement can’t be manufactured from the outside. What creates it is conditions. Specifically, conditions where people feel safe to speak honestly, where their contribution is visible, and where the organization’s stated values actually govern decisions under pressure.

That’s what Circle of Safety describes: an environment where people aren’t spending psychological energy managing risk from within their own organization. When that safety is absent, engagement withdraws. People show up, do enough to stay, and protect themselves. The conditions that produce this pattern were built by decisions: about who gets promoted, which behaviors get tolerated, what gets acknowledged and what gets quietly ignored.

Examining those decisions is where engagement work tends to actually begin. Not as a performance exercise, but as an honest look at whether the conditions leaders are responsible for creating match what they say the organization values. That gap, between stated values and operational reality, is what Face the Truth is designed to surface.

Framework Connection

Define What Matters is where the alignment work begins: clarifying what the organization actually stands for so that engagement becomes possible rather than manufactured. Face the Truth creates the conditions for leaders to see the current state of engagement honestly, including what decisions produced it. Make It Real builds the practices that sustain alignment between individual contribution and organizational mission over time.

Research Foundation

• Workforce Expectations – Understanding the disconnect between what employees need and what organizations provide
• Political Dynamics – Why trust and engagement are interconnected in public service