News Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 25, 2003

Contact: Edmund Byrnes (202) 606-2402

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U.S. Office of Personnel Management Announces the Results of the 2002 Federal Human Capital Survey

Washington, D.C. -During a news conference at the National Press Club, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management rolled out the Governmentwide results of the 2002 Federal Human Capital Survey. The presentation was made by OPM Director Kay Coles James and included a presentation sharing information from 100,000 responses from Federal employees across the nation and around the world. “Based on the perception of its employees, the key finding of the report is that Federal employees understand the importance of their work and are focused on mission,” said James. “Consistent with our efforts to implement President George W. Bush’s e-Gov philosophy, this survey was done entirely online.”

The survey – the largest ever undertaken – assessed whether conditions that characterize high-performance organizations are present within the Federal Government as a whole, as well as, at specific agencies.

James stated, “We have not done this survey out of idle curiosity. We have done so because we want to improve the operations of the federal government. We want high performance within the Federal Government.”

OPM will use the survey as one of its tools for assessing an individual agency’s progress toward obtaining “green” status on the Strategic Management of Human Capital under the President’s Management Agenda. In addition, OPM will use it to ensure agencies are improving their human capital management practices.

Said James: “Senior managers can use the survey to answer the question: What can I do to make my agency better?”

And OPM is inviting and encouraging managers to mine the data, to drill down and figure out what it is telling them about their own operations.

Working with this information and other measures within the Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework, agency managers can make a sophisticated assessment of their own human capital management and develop an action plan for improvement.

The key findings from the survey – which include some variation among agencies – include the facts that:

The Federal workforce is focused on its mission.

This finding was among the strongest positives in the entire survey, with 91 percent believing they do important work, 89 percent knowing how the work they do relates to their agency’s mission, and 81 percent believing the work they produce is high quality.

In addition, employees attest to a strong spirit of cooperation among their co-workers, which helps them get the job done (80 percent). And they derive a strong sense of personal accomplishment from their work (70 percent).

Employees are dissatisfied with their incentives for good performance.

While employees believe they are held accountable for results (80 percent), most are not satisfied with the recognition and rewards they receive for a job well done. They give especially low marks to management’s ability to reward good performance.

(These results coincide with findings in OPM’s white paper, A Fresh Start for Federal Pay: The Case for Modernization, and recommendations of the Volcker Commission that advancement and compensation should be tied more closely to performance.)

A substantial proportion of Federal employees are considering leaving their jobs, is a red flag.

More than one out of three employees report they are considering leaving their organizations, and 16 percent say they are planning to retire within the next three years.

The Federal Government needs to pay more attention to developing and supporting effective leaders – one of the five dimensions of successful human capital management.

Employees fault their leaders for failing to provide them information they need to be fully effective, and they do not find their leaders to be a source of motivation or inspiration. (Only 43 percent of employees hold their organization’s leaders in high regard.)

The low scores in the leadership dimension suggest that management has not done an adequate job of communicating the overall vision and gaining the trust of employees, with survey results corresponding to findings in other studies, reinforcing the conclusion that addressing weaknesses in the Federal Government’s leadership infrastructure is a human capital imperative.

Problems surface in the dimensions of talent and knowledge management.

Two in five employees believe their agencies are effective at obtaining high-quality talent, and they are less likely than their private-sector counterparts to agree that their own skills and abilities are being used as well as they could be, or that they have the opportunities they would like to develop their skills through training and experience.

However, despite these weaknesses, employees believe the Government is up to the challenges before it – 72 percent agree that the work force has the knowledge and skills necessary to do the job, and they see the skill level of their work units as improving.

Federal employees are relatively satisfied with their benefits and, to a lesser extent, their pay.

Satisfaction with leave policies tops 80 percent, and 77 of percent Federal employees indicated satisfaction with the way the Government’s policies help them balance work and family issues.

The Government’s family-friendly programs are useful in managing retention, as research findings by the Corporate Leadership Council and others confirm.

More attention needs to be paid to developing and supporting effective leaders – and to the talent and training of the overall workforce.

Performance management systems are perceived as weak, and more than one out of three Federal employees say they may leave their job. This red flag reinforces the importance of the president’s call for greater focus on strategic management of human capital.

For more information on the survey, you may go to www.fhcs.opm.gov

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OPM oversees the federal work force and provides the American public with up-to-date employment information. OPM also supports U.S. agencies with personnel services and policy leadership including staffing tools, guidance on labor-management relations and programs to improve work force performance.

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