Staff Engagement Survey 2026 - Overall Results

This year 2,225 of you took the time to complete the survey and have a say. This equates to 26% of the Council’s workforce and is an increase of 129 people compared to last year’s survey.

The graph below shows how many people have taken the time to take part in the survey over the last four years – and it is pleasing to see that there has been an increase in participation over the last three years.

We asked you to respond to a series of statements by indicating your level of agreement on a rating scale from Strongly Agree to Strongly Disagree.

Below, you’ll find a summary of the overall results for 2026 plus a comparison with previous survey years. This year's results have also been ranked to clearly identify our areas of greatest strength as well as those requiring further development.

We’ve used a colour-coded system to make it easy to see how we did:

• Dark Green: Strongly Agree

• Light Green: Agree

• Amber: Neutral to Slight Agreement

• Red: Disagree

• Dark Red: Strongly Disagree

The results show that employee engagement remains strong across the Council with employees reporting positive experiences across almost every area measured in the survey.

Colleagues continue to express high levels of pride in working for Carmarthenshire County Council, commitment to public service, and confidence in the important contribution they make to local communities. Employees also highlighted supportive teams, positive relationships with managers, opportunities for learning and development, and the benefits of working for the Council. Many employees continue to view the Council as a positive place to work and would recommend us as an employer.

Alongside these positive findings, employees identified areas where further improvement is needed. Recurring themes included communication and organisational awareness, transparency around decisions, employee voice and involvement, recognition, leadership visibility, workload pressures and workforce capacity.

The findings were discussed by the Heads of Service Forum last month. In response to what employees told us, Heads of Service agreed a number of organisation-wide actions:

• A new Internal Communications Strategy, supported by an internal communications framework that will change how we approach communication across the Council.

• A recognition framework to support a more consistent approach to recognising employees' contribution.

• An employee voice and involvement framework to strengthen how colleagues can share views and help shape decisions

• A clear standard for leadership visibility across the Council, which Heads of Service are working together to develop.

• Our existing workforce planning processes will be used to build a robust understanding of service demand, workload pressures and workforce capacity, helping services identify and plan the action needed.

Together, these actions respond directly to the themes of communication and transparency, employee voice and recognition, leadership visibility, and managing workload and workforce capacity.

We will continue to share updates as this work develops, so colleagues can see how their feedback is influencing change across the Council.

Alongside this organisation-wide work, Departmental Management Teams will consider their own results and feedback, identify any department-specific concerns and agree appropriate local actions. Departments will keep employees informed about this work through their existing departmental communication channels.