Employee Views on Pay and Morale Are In

Federal employees have finished submitting their annual feedback on compensation, morale and job satisfaction, and early results will be available in late August.

Most government workers had until June 12 to complete the 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The agency will announce the full results of the survey in the fall.

“We need the visible support and sponsorship of senior leadership to encourage employees to complete the survey,” OPM Director Katherine Archuleta said in an April 21 letter to agency leaders. “Let them know you are personally committed to hearing what they have to say and that you are accountable for making positive changes based on what you learn from their responses.”

The annual survey is voluntary and confidential.

Nearly 400,000 federal employees across government responded to the 2014 FEVS. In that survey, an overwhelming number of feds believed their work was important (90 percent) and said they put in extra effort to get their jobs done (96 percent). But last year’s survey reflects a federal workforce that did not believe their agencies offer promotions, pay raises or other opportunities fairly. Faith in senior leaders also eroded based on the data. Fifty percent of respondents agreed with the statement, “My organization’s senior leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity,” down 4 percentage points from 2013 -- the largest decrease recorded among the survey’s 84 main questions.

Bright spots included slight increases from the previous year related to employees’ satisfaction with their immediate supervisors, recruiting new employees with the right skills, and having enough resources to do the job.  Still, federal employee unions said the results of the 2014 survey show morale among federal workers continues to drop.

Among other things, OPM has created an internal dashboard of survey data – Unlocktalent.gov -- for federal managers to help them drill down into the results from their agencies to improve where needed. “Unlock Talent, along with the FEVS online reporting system you rely on each year, facilitates agency efforts to pinpoint areas of strength and reveal agency challenges,” Archuleta said in her letter. “The progress we have made in the past few years to produce agency results at a more granular, local-level and to develop state-of-the-art tools can only continue if employees give us their feedback.”

OPM collects demographic data, including the agency and job of the employee, but no identifying information is shared. The 2014 FEVS included 12,000 data points for agencies to use in assessing how employees feel about their jobs and bosses.  

“There is hard work ahead. Positive change takes focused attention and sustained effort,” Archuleta said. “The FEVS is a way for us to hear from our people and respond to their feedback with genuine care and leadership.”

(Image via Minerva Studio / Shutterstock.com)