Budget cuts, downsizing and reinvention efforts have made the jobs of federal managers more difficult, according to a Merit Systems Protection Board survey of 9,700 federal managers and employees.
According to the report, called The Changing Federal Workplace: Employee Perspectives, almost three-quarters of the supervisors in the random sample said their responsibilities had increased over the previous two years and nearly half said the number of subordinates they managed had increased over the same period. MSPB conducted the survey in 1996.
Almost no employees said that downsizing had helped their agencies and about half believed that it had "eroded institutional memory." Nearly half of those surveyed said their work units did not have a sufficient number of employees to do their jobs, while 40 percent said the possibility of a reduction in force, a furlough resulting from budget cuts, or changes in employee benefits had a negative effect on their productivity.
Employees also questioned the degree to which their agencies were pursuing efforts to reinvent government.
Only 37 percent of respondents said their agencies had made National Performance Review goals an important priority. Labor-management partnerships, which are encouraged by NPR, covered slightly less than half of the respondents.
Additionally, even though increasing federal managers' flexibility to manage human resources was an NPR goal, only 21 percent of managers said they had been given any flexibility to take personnel actions.
Overall, only 20 percent of those surveyed said NPR efforts had brought positive change to the government.
Despite the effects of government change, the overall job satisfaction of federal employees remained high.
Seventy percent of employees said they were satisfied with their jobs. Four out of five employees in organizations that had made NPR goals a priority expressed job satisfaction, while only half of the people who said they worked in organizations that had not emphasized NPR goals said they were happy with their jobs.
About 14 percent of employees said they were victims of discrimination because of race--the same as in a similar MSPB survey conducted in 1992.
Problem employees remained a significant problem for federal managers. Fifty-six percent of the supervisors responding to the survey said they had had to deal with at least one problem employee in the past two years.
Based on the survey, MSPB made the following recommendations:
- Agencies should make sure their efforts to cut costs include a sincere effort to involve employees in attempts to improve operations.
- The government must change a culture that sanctions ineffective approaches to dealing with problem employees.
- OPM should make sure the government maintains its ability to recruit high-quality applicants.
- Agencies should put effective systems in place to ensure that supervisors are held accountable for their decisions.
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