Government Executive - Authors - Bob Duffy

Analysis: Slicing and dicing OPM’s workforce survey

Bob Duffy, Insight Consulting LLC — Mon, 28 Jan 2013 12:16:32 -0500

2012 Employee Viewpoint Survey results, the Office of Personnel Management focused renewed attention on federal workforce issues. And once again, the Partnership for Public Service has refined and consolidated OPM’s findings into its Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings to clarify the significance of this data. Teaming up with Deloitte Consulting, the Partnership has overlaid the survey results with an agency benchmarking and performance assessment tool, convenient for federal leaders and job seekers alike.

But the Partnership’s rankings, however useful, tend to suck most of the oxygen out of workforce planning by diverting attention from the practical value of OPM’s data.

The 2012 survey attracted 687,000 respondents, a remarkable increase from the 250,000 participants in 2010. For any large enterprise, public or private, a 46 percent response rate is enviable. The resulting data repository is a human resources management ace in the hole.

The operational value embedded in this data is not lost on OPM, but it should be just as obvious to agency leaders. OPM underscored the potential for data mining the results in its slice-and-dice demographic report, which parses survey findings question by question among categories such as gender, ethnicity, age and management level.

For agency leaders interested in exploring the morale and attitudes of their workers, the Excel version of OPM’s survey can prove invaluable. Even the most basic analysis reveals what is important to key demographic groups.

Take question 69: “Considering everything, how satisfied are you with your job?” The responses to this question were extremely positive across the board. On question 69 alone, consider the value of being able to compare the balance or imbalance of perspectives among men versus women, whites versus minorities, managers versus the rank and file, or new employees versus seasoned veterans.

Hypothetically, a human resources official could discover that 61 percent of the agency’s male respondents are satisfied with their jobs, versus 70 percent of women, or that satisfaction levels drop sharply among workers with six to 10 years of service and workers at field offices versus headquarters. These findings could be operational cues to determine why certain groups responded the way they did and develop management approaches to correct negative variances.

Agencies could dig deeper still into attitudes across sets of related questions and nested categories of employees. OPM already has pointed the way to the former approach through its use of thematic categories that roll up responses into designated indexes: leadership and knowledge management, performance culture, talent management and job satisfaction. Agencies could develop Excel data probes that assemble and compare their workers’ responses to customized combinations of questions.

A logical next step might be to nest demographic categories to individual or to indexed questions, resulting in an even more refined view of workforce attitudes. A hypothetical example of this nested approach might address how male Asian-American team members who are age 40 to 49 and work at headquarters respond to a half-dozen questions related to morale, satisfaction and their perceptions of their leaders’ performance.

But this stratum of analysis can get dicey.

HR managers and agency leaders can improve performance by learning more about workers’ attitudes, perceptions of leadership and identification with mission. Acting on these revelations can boost morale, productivity, innovation, teamwork, buy-in to mission and recruiting strategies, and employee engagement.

There’s a potential downside as well. If agencies adopt a data analytics approach that’s heavy handed, employees might begin to view the workforce survey as intrusive, particularly if HR managers delve too deeply into small segments of the population. This could sour employees on participating in the survey. A slippage from OPM’s 46 percent response rate would be unfortunate, given the high potential for understanding and managing agencies’ workforce culture.

Put to reasonable and practical use, analysis of the data could help reverse the tide of unfavorable responses to one of the survey’s most revealing questions -- No. 41. Only 42 percent of respondents agreed with the statement: “I believe the results of this survey will be used to make my agency a better place to work.”

Bob Duffy leads Insight Consulting LLC, a Columbia, Md.-based firm that provides research and creative services in talent branding and corporate culture. He can be reached at bobduffy@insight-hq.com.

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Stretched to the Limit

Bob Duffy — Wed, 08 Jun 2011 00:00:00 -0400

If you think recruiting and retaining the right people has been difficult up until now, get ready for redoubled challenges in the months and years to come. Many lawmakers and more than a few governors are attempting to tighten the screws on the public workforce, promising deep cuts in staffing for federal and state agencies.

The Obama administration, mindful of voter sentiment, has attempted to get out in front of this movement by sponsoring curbs of its own on government hiring. Owing to pressure from all sides, the future of most federal agencies is likely to be one of runaway austerity. Among the first points of pain will be agencies' ability to stay ahead of normal attrition by recruiting new workers. After all, the first recourse in limiting perceived "mission creep" is the hiring freeze.

But extended hiring shutdowns can have dire consequences over the long term. Freezes -- not to mention more stringent measures that could come -- likely would mean a public workforce stretched thin, even hamstrung, in performing agency missions. And many other circumstances will combine to make the situation worse. For one thing, private industry is emerging from the recession ready to hire; don't doubt that many ambitious top performers currently on the public payroll will be tempted to jump ship. During the past year, I've talked to many feds -- particularly engineers and information technology pros -- who acknowledge that a government job has been a safe haven for them during the recession. But economic conditions are improving. Will they stick around?

And what about the senior, retirement-eligible folks who provide hard-to-replace experience and know-how? With retirement accounts climbing back to pre-recession levels, will the long-anticipated (and up-to-now overhyped) federal retirement wave finally begin to kick in?

There's at least one other possible outcome to all this, and it is the scariest yet. Faced with undiminished mission requirements and a shrinking, inexperienced or bare-bones workforce, what agency planner wouldn't look to a nearby source of experience and talent -- seasoned workers in other government agencies? I know this smacks of the Mad Max school of management, but it makes sense for government managers to be prepared for peers at other agencies to come after their critical talent. Many managers will be tempted to respond to these incursions in kind. You certainly can envision where this will end up, notwithstanding the Office of Personnel Management's efforts to encourage common cause in hiring.

So, short of abandoning your principles or defecting to the private sector yourself, what can you do in this increasingly bleak environment? There's no magic bullet here, but building internal awareness of this impending challenge seems like a sensible first step. Although it's likely most federal leaders see this perfect storm brewing, sounding the alarm is critical. An unvarnished understanding of what's at stake here might spur individual departments and agencies to plan realistically but creatively for the inevitability of shrinking workforces.

In practical terms, fortifying organizational culture and employee job satisfaction might be your agency's immediate -- and possibly its only -- recourse today. To hedge against voluntary attrition, the smart leader will take steps to fortify staff morale agencywide. High-morale organizations like NASA and the Nuclear Regulatory Commission are best-positioned to weather the coming storm. In the lean recruiting years to come, morale-rich agencies also will have a built-in sourcing advantage, because many of their workers will be de facto ambassadors for their employers' "brands," enthusiastic boosters of the values and the signature workplace experience these organizations offer.

Proactive first steps like these entail directing a renewed focus on enriching organizational culture, which for most government entities could mean reallocating resources to the tasks of buttressing internal communication, staff development, and team building and inclusion initiatives, to name a few. Don't dismiss so-called Web 2 .0, video and social media tools either; they can be productive and -- just as important -- cost-effective allies in this counteroffensive.

If you don't already have a hold on your staff members' hearts and minds, then you should do what you can right now to win them over. You might be stymied in recruiting outside talent today and tomorrow, but you still can look within the walls of your agency, with an eye on building job satisfaction, hanging on to potential defectors, and creating a workplace environment that values and rewards individual and team contributions.

It could mean adjustments to standard policy and operations and some workaround with regard to traditional HR silos, but face it: It might be all you have in your tool set for at least the near term.

Bob Duffy, managing consultant at Insight Consulting LLC, is a branding, corporate culture and organizational development specialist who has worked with federal agencies including the Environmental Protection Agency, Energy Department and Defense Information Systems Agency.

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