MSPB has urged agencies to make full use of information gleaned from the annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey as well as it’s the reports of the periodic surveys it conducts, saying managers can use them to compare their agencies against others and benchmark their agency’s own performance over time.
“Survey results can help management identify ways to improve employee engagement and agency productivity. However, for survey results to be useful, trends and insights must be extracted from the raw data. This is not always a straightforward process. Fortunately, there are several resources available to assist agencies in this endeavor,” MSPB said in a posting on its site.
For example, it said, agencies can benefit from one of the many freely available survey action guides, such as MSPB’s Survey Results Action Guide at www.mspb.gov. Agencies including the Army have also publically posted their survey action planning documents. In addition, there are fee-based services such as those available through OPM’s Human Resources Solutions office to help agencies interpret their results from the 2013 Federal EVS on a reimbursable basis.
Said MSPB: “Federal employees take time from their busy work schedules to respond to surveys in the hope that their viewpoints will be heard and respected. Agencies can respond in kind by taking those viewpoints seriously—which includes choosing and using the best resources available to understand and act on survey results. While agencies cannot expect immediate change within a one-year survey cycle, sustained effort that targets the right issues can produce meaningful and lasting improvement.”
