OPM is emphasizing a slight overall improvement in employee engagement figure—a top personnel policy of the administration—in the latest results of the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, but the specific data also reveal some significant differences.
The engagement measure—commonly used as a stand-in for the level of morale in the workplace, and an indicator of whether employees are working up to their potential and in turn whether the agency is likely to achieve its mission—is up by 1 percentage point over 2014 to 64 percent positive. That’s based on responses to questions to questions about leaders, supervisors and intrinsic work experience.
However, the data show what could be a concerning trend, that engagement falls substantially after the first four years of work. In that initial period, the overall rate is 69 percent, up two points over 2014 but only back to its level in 2012 among that cadre. For those with between four and 10 years of work it drops to 63 percent positive, up a point and again only back to 2012 levels; and for those with more than 10 years, it’s 64 percent, also up a point but still below the 2012 level of 65 percent positive.
Officials said that such a dropoff after the “honeymoon period” with a new employer is common among all employers.
Also, engagement decreases as the employee’s level decreases. For senior executives, the overall rate is 82 percent, for supervisory and managerial employees 71 percent, and for non-supervisory employees 62 percent. For that latter group, there was no change from 2014 and the rate is two points below the 2012 level.
OPM also broke out engagement levels according to certain “mission-critical” occupations, showing for example that among economists the rate is 73 percent positive but among IT specialists it’s only 64 percent positive.
OPM earlier had presented summary figures showing differences by agency, with for example OMB, NASA and FTC at 78 percent positive among large agencies, with DHS in last place at 53 percent positive.
