Keep an eye on your mailbox in the coming days if you're a senior executive. The Office of Personnel Management, in a effort to take stock of current issues and concerns among federal execs, recently mailed a survey to all 6,800 members of the Senior Executive Service.
OPM and its partner, the Senior Executives Association, hope the survey will help them get a feel for how federal managers and supervisors weigh in on topics like executive qualifications and development.
For senior executives, it could be another chance to vent about what's wrong with the way the federal government manages its executive corps. In June, a survey conducted by the PricewaterhouseCoopers Endowment for the Business of Government revealed that more than 80 percent of SESers have considered ditching civil service, primarily because of low pay.
The new survey also has a section on compensation, giving execs a chance to say how satisfied they are with their salaries.
OPM is in the process of making changes to Senior Executive Service rules. Recently proposed rules would allow agencies to form their own qualifications review boards and increase their SES appointment limits.
According to the executive association, which is against many of the proposed SES reforms, the new survey is a chance to get real opinions from people who are in the know. Previous reform proposals were based only on anecdotal information, the association said.
OPM plans to use the survey data to help shape its SES policy. "It is critical that we tap into the views of our senior leaders to find out what works and what doesn't," OPM Director Janice Lachance said.
The survey is the first of its kind, and will serve as a baseline for future data when it is repeated in 2002. OPM hopes to have all the surveys back by Sept. 10.
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