Glossary of terms and concepts

This chapter is a reference/glossary of various terminology used throughout this companion, including terminology relating to both the processing of the Civil Service People Survey data as well as terms and concepts relating more generally to the operation and management of the Civil Service.

This companion uses the terms ‘Civil Service People Survey’ and ‘People Survey’ interchangeably; the acronym ‘CSPS’ is used sparingly, usually were space is at a premium (see the CSPS entry below for further details).

A

agency: See organisation.

C

civil servant

An official employed by the Crown that works in the UK Civil Service.

Civil Service

The term “Civil Service” means the UK Civil Service, that is the body of officials employed by the Crown that work in departments and agencies of the UK’s central government, the Scottish Government and the Welsh Government. Historically, it has been called the ‘Home Civil Service’. The vast majority of civil servants working for the UK Civil Service are invited to take part in the survey¹.

The Diplomatic Service are the combination of Crown employees working for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office and staff employed locally by British diplomatic missions and posts (e.g. High Commissions, Embassies or Consulates). Staff of the diplomatic service, both FCDO Crown employees and those locally employed, participate in the People Survey.

Unlike the Scottish and Welsh Governments, the Northern Ireland Executive is supported by a legally separate body of civil servants called the Northern Ireland Civil Service. Staff for the Northern Ireland Civil Service do not participate in the People Survey. Staff of UK government departments or agencies based in Northern Ireland do participate in the survey as they are UK civil servants.

Civil Service People Survey

The Civil Service People Survey is the annual employee attitudes survey of civil servants working in the UK Civil Service.

core questionnaire

The bulk of the People Survey uses a common questionnaire seen by all respondents no matter which organisation they participate through, this is called the ‘core questionnaire’. Some items of the core questionnaire use ‘variable terms’ that adapt the language of the question so that it reflects the organisational context of the respondent. In addition to the core questionnaire organisations can chose a small number of additional ‘local’ questions bespoke to their needs, these are not included in the central datasets published by the Cabinet Office.

CSPS

‘CSPS’ is a commonly used acronym to refer to the Civil Service People Survey. Like many terms used in the Civil Service/government this acronym is not unique. In the context of this companion and the data processing it describes, ‘CSPS’ is only used to refer to the Civil Service People Survey.

The other main use in the context of the management of the Civil Service is the Civil Service Pension Scheme (also ‘CSPS’, all capitalised).

Elsewhere in government, Community Safety Partnerships (local partnerships of public service organisations in England and Wales) and Co-ordinated Support Plans (a legal support plan in Scotland for children with long-term, multiple or complex support needs) can both be referred to using the acronym ‘CSP’ and is pluralised as ‘CSPs’ (note the lower-case ‘s’).

D

demographic questions, demographic categories: In addition to attitudinal questions the People Survey includes a number of ‘demographic’ questions that allow the results of the survey to be broken down by different characteristics of respondents. The demographics are split in to two major groups: work-related characteristics such as a respondent’s grade, their working location or the type of role they do; and, personal characteristics such as a respondent’s sex, their age or whether they have childcare responsibilities. Individual responses to demographic questions are referred to as ‘demographic categories’.
See also: core questionnaire.
department, departmental family, departmental group: See organisation.

E

EEI, EES

See employee engagement index.

employee engagement

The concept underlying the measurement framework for the Civil Service People Survey. There is no singular definition of employee engagement, however Bailey et al. (2015) notes that many definitions have developed as a result of the “positive psychology” movement. In regards to the People Survey, the Cabinet Office (2025) describes employee engagement as:

a workplace approach designed to ensure that employees are committed to their organisation’s goals and values, motivated to contribute to organisational success, and are able at the same time to enhance their own sense of well-being.

employee engagement index

The Civil Service People Survey measures employee engagement through an ‘employee engagement index’ (often simplified to ‘engagement index’), which is calculated from five questions that individual respondents levels of “pride, advocacy, attachment, inspiration and motivation” with their organisation (Cabinet Office 2025). The index is calculated such that a score of 0% reflects all respondents answering ‘strongly disagree’ to all five questions, and a score of 100% reflects all respondents answering ‘strongly agree’ to all five questions.

The employee engagement index is sometimes referred to by the acronym EEI (for employee engagement index) or EES (for employee engagement score).

See also: employee engagement and theme scores.

executive agency

See organisation.

G

gender, gender identity: See sex and gender.
git: A distributed version control system for managing source code and data.
government department: See organisation.
grade: Changes in 1991 and 1996 ended the collective pay and grading system in use across the Civil Service and government departments were given flexibility to set their own salary scales (Public Service Select Committee 1998), often called ‘grades’. For coordination purposes these departmental grades are aligned into a cross-Civil Service framework of seven broad grades (Cabinet Office).

M

machinery of government change

A ‘machinery of government change’ or ‘MoG’ change (typically pronounced “mog change”) is the common term used for the transfer of functions between different government/public service organisations.

Machinery of government changes present complications in analysing People Survey time-series data as government departments and executive agencies can be created, merged, split. While many MoG changes are visible in the published data (typically through changes in organisation name), some MoG changes involve the transfer of functions between existing organisations without any visible external changes to organisation names/labels.

Machinery of government changes and their implications for the People Survey are discussed further in the chapter on harmonising organisations.

N

non-departmental public body: See organisation.
non-ministerial department: See organisation.

O

organisation

The organisational structure of the UK Civil Service is not simple and nor is it formally codified. While there are aspects common to the experiences of civil servants and all are required to follow the Civil Service Code. The UK Civil Service is not a single employer, rather it is the government department or agency that is the employer of individual civil servants.

The People Survey is designed to support this flexibility as questions in the core questionnaire include a ‘variable term’ that ensure respondents see terminology specific to their context rather than use a generic term like ‘organisation’ or ‘department’ that may cause confusion. Organisations also have the option to include bespoke local questions in addition to the survey’s core questionnaire.

In this context, individuals participate in the People Survey through one of around 100 ‘organisations’. These agencies typically align with individual government departments and agencies, however in some cases staff in agencies are surveyed as part of their parent department, in other cases for a department may have additional ‘organisations’ that split out a specific group of staff for operational reasons. Individual organisations are grouped into departmental groups (sometimes referred to as ‘families’).

The nature of the Civil Service’s organisational structure, and its implications for the People Survey is discussed further in the chapter on harmonising organisations.

P

pay band, pay scale: See grade.
People Survey: See Civil Service People Survey.

R

regex: See regular expression.
regular expression: A regular expressions (often called a ‘regex’) is a method for pattern matching in text. They are used in the People Survey to identify attitudinal questions, demographic questions and categories, and organisation names within the People Survey datasets.
See the introduction to harmonisation for further details on how regular expressions are used in the processing of People Survey data.
repo: See repository.
repository: In the context of this companion the term ‘repository’, often shortened to ‘repo’, typically means a collection of software code managed through a version control system such as git and often stored in a cloud service such as Github.
responsibility level: See grade.

S

sex and gender: Over the years of its operation there have been several changes to the way the People Survey has measured sex, gender and gender identity. These questionnaire changes and the particular choices made to harmonise People Survey data over time are discussed in a dedicated appendix.

T

theme scores: Alongside the engagement index, the survey results include a set of ‘theme scores’ which provide a summary score for the nine main themes of the survey’s questionnaire. Theme scores reflect the level of positive response to the questions in the given theme, that is ‘strongly agree’ or ‘agree’ answers. Theme scores are calculated on a per respondent basis and as a result of missing data (i.e. if a does not answer all questions in a theme) theme scores may not match a simple mean of the published percent positive scores for a theme.
See also: employee engagement index.

U

UID

See unique identifier.

UK Civil Service

See Civil Service.

unique identifier

A unique identifier (UID) is a code that refers to a specific item.

In the context of the People Survey processing there are three sets of UIDs that have been implements: UIDs for attitudinal questions and measures; UIDs for organisations; and, UIDs for demographic questions and categories.

V

variable term: The core questionnaire is seen by all respondents to the survey, however to ensure questions are clear some questions include ‘variable terms’ which replace a generic term with terms that are bespoke to the specific organisation. As of 2024 the only variable terms are ‘my organisation’ and ‘your organisation’, which are substituted with the organisation’s actual name (or in some cases acronym, such as ‘HMRC’ for staff in HM Revenue and Customs).
The question on grade can be considered a special variation of the variable terms as it is part of the core questionnaire but the options are bespoke to each organisation’s grade structure. In practice each organisation has a separate grade question for their respondents and the answers are then matched to the Civil Service’s common grade framework.

Very small organisations are not obliged to participate in the People Survey. Some civil servants provide secretariat services to advisory bodies that are independent of government, in most cases these staff participate in the People Survey through their ‘home department’ (as they are employed by the government that ‘sponsors’ the advisory body) however in some cases these staff do not participate in the survey.↩︎