Five Ways Government Agencies Can Use an LMS to Solve the Employee Engagement Crisis

Sep 16, 2025 | Articles, Employee Training and Employee Experience Design

Key Takeaways:

  • Professional development and modern learning opportunities are critical for government agencies to boost employee engagement and retention.
  • Personalized and accessible training helps bridge generational and technological skill gaps within the public sector workforce.
  • Modernizing compliance training and automating administrative tasks increases training effectiveness and streamlines operations.
  • Continuous feedback, recognition, and mission-driven onboarding foster a sense of purpose and motivation among government employees.

Engaging employees is more critical than ever for the public sector, with 72% of government workers citing professional development as a key factor for retention, according to a recent survey. Accurate, consistent, and easy-to-access training empowers employees to cultivate their own careers while building public trust, driving operational efficiency, and fulfilling their organization’s mission.

Yet, government agencies face a persistent challenge in maintaining employee engagement. Data from Gallup shows that more than a quarter of government workforce is burnt out. The ripple effects of disengagement are felt beyond employee morale, since a lack of worker engagement can also negatively impact productivity and increase employee turnover, chipping away at agency-wide institutional knowledge and hindering an agency’s ability to effectively serve the public.

Five Government Employee Engagement Challenges

So, what’s the real key to fighting public sector employee disengagement? Creating a culture of continuous learning and development makes a sustained impact on engagement, morale, productivity, and performance. To make a strategic investment in learning and development (L&D), public sector employers must first identify the main causes of employee disengagement.

In this article, we’ll explore five common public sector employee engagement challenges and explore how learning platforms can be used to overcome them:

1. Career Stagnation

A common perception of government work is that it involves rigid roles with limited upward mobility. This can lead to a sense of stagnation in the workplace, where ambitious and talented employees feel their careers have hit a ceiling. This isn’t just a perception problem; it’s a structural one that directly fuels disengagement.

When employees cannot see a future for themselves within an agency, their motivation wanes, their connection to the mission weakens, and they begin to look elsewhere for opportunities. The impact is severe: a “brain drain” of valuable institutional knowledge, persistent skill gaps as technology evolves, and a workforce ill-equipped to adapt to new challenges. This creates a cycle of costly recruitment and training for new hires, while the root cause of disengagement remains unaddressed.

Customizable Government Learning Platforms Drive Employee Motivation

The most effective way to combat stagnation? by building a robust internal ecosystem for career growth, powered by modern learning and development (L& D) solutions. Litmos provides the tools to transform this challenge into an opportunity. Through its extensive and continuously updated course library, agencies can offer on-demand access to training for the latest regulations, emerging technologies, and critical leadership skills. This empowers employees to take control of their professional development, acquiring new competencies that make them more valuable to the agency and more fulfilled in their roles.

By creating clear, actionable career paths by working with employees to map out their long-term goals, managers can use their LMS to assign the specific training modules and certifications needed to achieve those goals. If managers aren’t able to provide one-on-one career coaching, Litmos offers AI powered learning paths that give learners the power to curate their own mix of training modules, based on natural language prompts. This proactive and autonomous approach to development makes government employees feel valued and can turn the tide on stagnation and fostering a culture of loyalty and engagement.

2. Generational and Technological Skills Gaps

Government agencies today are composed of a complex, multi-generational workforce. From Baby Boomers nearing retirement to Gen Z digital natives, each generation brings different expectations, learning goals, and levels of technological proficiency. This diversity is a strength, but it also presents a significant engagement challenge. The “Great Resignation” and a wave of retirements are stripping agencies of decades of institutional knowledge, while new hires arrive expecting the same level of technological sophistication they use in their personal lives. A failure to bridge this gap results in inefficient workflows, resistance to the adoption of new, more effective tools, and an inability to leverage data for informed decision-making, ultimately hindering the quality of public service.

Modern Government Learning Platforms Personalize Learning Experiences

When training the multigenerational workforce, a one-size-fits-all training approach is doomed to fail. The solution to addressing skills gaps and meeting the needs of every generation in your workforce is delivering personalized learning experiences. In the age of YouTube, TikTok, and ChatGPT, your employees have tons of options for self-guided learning. Government employers have to get ahead of these external sources and set their learning environments up to ensure that every employee has easy access to the most relevant, accurate training – the moment it’s needed. To enable personalized employee learning experiences at your organization, you’ll need:

  • A centralized, secure, mobile-friendly LMS that is easy for anyone to use, regardless of their technical expertise. The Litmos mobile app gives employees the ability to learn on any device, online or offline. Seamless single-sign-on (SSO) and an intuitive and modern mobile platform makes learning accessible and easy.
  • Private and secure AI learning tools that help learners discover and dive more deeply into required training materials. Learning platforms with AI chatbots like Litmos’s AI Assistant can generate summaries and recommendations from employee prompts, deepening the learning experience and providing instant learning support.
  • Self-guided learning opportunities, like the personalized playlists learners can create using the Litmos AI Playlist. Put your employees in the driver’s seat by giving them the power to tailor their learning paths based on their role, existing skill set, or learning preferences.

3. An Outdated and Manual Approach to Compliance Training

For many government employees, the phrase “mandatory training” evokes images of tedious, “check-the-box” exercises that are seen as an interruption to their real work. In this outdated approach to compliance training, the focus becomes simply getting it done, rather than understanding and internalizing the material. Often delivered through static PDFs or outdated PowerPoint presentations, old school compliance training is a notorious driver of disengagement. That’s because, when training is perceived as boring and irrelevant, employees don’t retain critical information, which can lead to serious ethical, safety, or security concerns.

Government Learning Platforms Modernize and Automates Compliance Training

Modernizing the way your government agency approaches compliance training can ultimately cultivate a healthier culture of learning, by reducing resistance to compliance training and even creating positive associations with it! A more engaging approach to compliance training can foster trust and confidence, and drive engagement in other career or skills-based training initiatives.

Imagine compliance training delivered through bite-sized videos, interactive scenarios that test real-world decision-making, and quizzes that foster a sense of competition and accomplishment. Government agencies can deliver engaging and impactful learning experiences by leveraging the Litmos library of compliance courses, which are regularly vetted for regional and industry specific regulatory compliance. Public sector organizations looking to create their own compliance courses can use our drag-and-drop built-in AI content authoring tool gives to quickly and easily create and deploy dynamic, interactive SCORM modules.

Automating the time-consuming administrative tasks associated with compliance can also streamline your agency’s approach to compliance training. Litmos lets administrators automatically assign required training, send compliance reminders, and generate detailed reports, freeing your agency’s managers and HR professionals from the tedium of manual compliance tracking. This ensures higher compliance training completion rates, while also allowing for the rapid deployment of urgent training updates in response to new legislation or emerging security threats.

4. Lack of Recognition

It can be rare for employees to receive public recognition or appreciation in workplaces that are hierarchical and often formal, like government agencies. Employees may work diligently on projects for months without receiving direct feedback on their contributions, leaving them to feel like a cog in a machine. This absence of recognition is a silent employee engagement killer. When people feel their hard work goes unnoticed and unappreciated, their motivation plummets and their connection to the agency’s mission weakens, causing them to check out of their work. This can lead to a lack innovation and a noticeable decline in performance metrics.

Government Learning Platforms Create Continuous Feedback Loops

L&D can be instrumental in building a culture where recognition and regular feedback are the norm. Litmos can be used to train managers and leaders on giving effective, constructive, and continuous feedback. Modules on coaching, active listening, and motivational leadership can equip managers with the tools to foster more engaged and productive teams. Learners in individual contributor roles need to receive recognition and feedback to feel motivated and to guide them in their professional growth. Litmos offers an AI powered video assessment tool that gives employees real-time feedback on video submissions, so that they can practice public speaking and client interactions while receiving personalized feedback on their sentiment, use of target keywords, and rate of delivery.

To reward learning activities, many L&D leaders gamify learning activities in the form of public leaderboards, badges, and certifications. LMS gamification features like these motivate learners by instilling a sense of pride in learning accomplishments, while fostering a sense of healthy competition which can drive employee training engagement.

5. Misalignment with the Agency’s Mission

The “why” of public service is a powerful motivator. However, it can be easy for government employees to lose sight of the connection between their daily tasks and the broader mission. For example, a data entry clerk, an IT specialist, or a procurement officer may not see how their work directly contributes to protecting the environment, ensuring public safety, or supporting vulnerable populations. When this connection is lost, work becomes transactional. It becomes “just a job,” and the intrinsic motivation that drives engagement in the public sector evaporates. This disconnect is a critical challenge that must be addressed to unlock the full potential of the government workforce.

Continuously Onboarding within the LMS Improves Employee Alignment

A strategic L&D program that continuously reinforces your organization’s core values can keep employees aligned with your mission and excited about how their work contributes to it. Litmos can be used to create a robust continuous onboarding experience that does more than just cover policies and procedures; it can immerse new hires and long-time employees in the agency’s history, its values, and the real-world impact of its work through compelling stories and testimonials. For example, a module on a new data management system can begin with a short video featuring a senior leader explaining how clean, accurate data helps the agency deliver critical services more effectively.

By constantly reinforcing the “why,” employers can transform routine training into a reminder of a shared purpose. This approach, combined with a strategic investment in leadership development for succession planning, can ensure that your agency’s mission remains at the core of organizational culture, inspiring a level of engagement that no checklist ever could.

Unlocking the Potential of Government and Public Sector Training

The challenges to employee engagement in government are multifaceted and deeply ingrained in the structure and culture of the public sector. However, they are not insurmountable.

The common thread running through the solutions to employee disengagement is a commitment to investing in people. By moving beyond outdated training tools and methods, and embracing a modern, strategic approach to L&D, agencies can directly address the root causes of disengagement to foster a more innovative, more productive, and skilled workforce that’s prepared to meet the evolving needs of the public it serves.

It’s time to empower your employees to reach their full potential. Ready to transform your agency’s employee engagement? Discover how Litmos provides tailored training solutions for government. Request a demo today to see these solutions in action.