Posted by: It’s that time of year when the federal government wants to know what agency employees think.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) is distributing the 2010 Federal Employee Validation Survey, formerly known as the Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS). OPM’s “new and improved” survey is circulating throughout government offices through mid-March. More than 500,000 federal employees are invited to participate this year, most of whom can complete the survey online.
In the OPM announcement, John Berry, director, said: “The Administration has set a course to make the Federal Government America’s model employer for the 21st Century. With the cooperation of those taking the survey, we will be better able to gauge what is and isn’t working to create a workplace that attracts the best and brightest.”
We know that surveys can be a very useful tool to gauge how employees rate everything from training and work/life balance to career advancement, management, IT resources and more. Yet, what happens after the survey is of utmost importance. Essentially, employees will make judgments about their agencies based on how well the survey results correlate to real changes or improvements that are implemented. After the survey, agencies will need to communicate clearly with employees that their feedback was indeed valuable and in some cases will be acted upon where possible. This is one way to ensure a high level of employee participation in the survey for coming years as well.
OPM expects that they survey results will be completed by late June. We’ll be interested to see what the survey data reveals and how agencies will respond.
How useful do you think the OPM federal employee survey will be this year? Share your thoughts with us.
Tue, Mar 2, 2010
Federal