Survey Time by Dianna Tafazoli

SURVEY TIME

Are organizations interested in the viewpoints of employees?  The federal government is.  The federal government’s interest is demonstrated via its Federal Viewpoint Survey (FEVS).  The survey provides senior leadership with pivotal information on job satisfaction and other elements essential to creating a high-performing diverse workforce.  This year’s survey results will not be available until late August, 2015.

Survey participation was respectable with 45 small agencies taking part in the survey along with 37 department and large organizations.  The survey asks a plethora of probing questions to determine collaboration or the need for more employer-employee engagement, agency inclusion, transparency and other questions to see how the workforce thinks the largest employer in the country is doing.

The surveys are done annually and serve as one of the basis for assisting senior level management with understanding the demands of the workforce and the strategies needed to build  stronger more coherent relationships between management and staff.  The federal government has approximately 46 agencies under the Executive branch, 8 under the Legislative branch and 5 under the Judicial branch each with an enormous breakdown of sub-agencies within each of the overarching agencies.  Therefore, even with the participation rate and/or numbers given by OPM, there is still a lot of room for the rest of the Federal Government to participate in the survey so that a more vivid picture can be painted to improve the federal sector’s performance.

P. S.  Always Remember to Share What You Know.