Featured April 12, 2023 Opportunities to turn a corner on federal employee engagement and satisfaction Back to Blog How the Office of Personnel Management is working to improve the federal employee experience and bring more talent into government Date May 1, 2023 Authors Rob Shriver Tags Employee Engagement Earlier this month, the Partnership for Public Service and Boston Consulting Group hosted an awards breakfast to celebrate the top-ranked and most improved federal agencies in the 2022 Best Places to Work in the Federal Governmentâ rankings. Recently the Partnership launched its Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings. While these rankings celebrate the places to work, we know it’s the people who work at those places that make them so great. At a time when the need for talent in our federal government is high, the Best Places to Work rankings showcase agencies where employees are truly proud to work and offers a roadmap for creating a good employee experience. Higher employee engagement and satisfaction leads to better retention, and agency leaders should focus on making every employee’s experience a good one—no matter whether a person has worked in government for three months, three years or 30 years. Here’s what we’re doing at the Office of Personnel Management to help agency leaders meet this imperative. Focusing on employee engagement The federal government maintains a resilient, professional and mission-driven workforce. Despite a challenging few years punctuated by a global pandemic, the OPM Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey results show consistently high levels of employee engagement among federal workers. Still, agencies need to use data and other types of employee feedback to develop new ways to engage the federal workforce. The President’s Management Agenda Workforce Priority prioritizes employee engagement with a focus on creating more equitable employee engagement experiences as one of its priority metrics and outcomes. To do this, we established a Chief Human Capital Council Employee Engagement working group and community of practice. This group includes more than 100 representatives from 30 agencies who are coming together to share best practices and innovative ideas for senior leaders, including how to act on OPM FEVS and other employee engagement results, recognize and retain employees, and leverage data to support agency engagement strategies. Modernizing the OPM Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey To support this work, OPM is modernizing the FEVS and supporting agencies as they interpret and implement the findings. The most recent version of the OPM FEVS included new content to help agencies track progress in critical areas including diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility. OPM is also helping agencies act on the FEVS more quickly by developing stronger visualization tools and making it easier to access important survey data. This week, we released a new FEVS dashboard on the OPM Data Portal designed to showcase results and provide information important to successful organizational change and development initiatives A way forward As President Biden has said, career civil servants are the backbone of our government. Agency leaders must continue to support the workforce by prioritizing employee engagement and satisfaction. The Best Places to Work rankings are a great place to start and showcase the myriad of federal agencies working to build exemplary workplaces that nurture employee growth, productivity and satisfaction, highlighting the benefits of a federal career for the next generation of public servants. Visit bestplacestowork.org to see the full 2022 Best Places to Work rankings and data, as well as resources that highlight employee engagement best practices. Rob Shriver serves as deputy director of the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. His portfolio includes recruiting and hiring, pay and leave, labor relations, performance management, the Senior Executive Service, work-life, telework, and supporting governmentwide diversity, equity and inclusion. Leave a ReplyYou must be logged in to post a comment.
