We will establish our own organizational infrastructure and professional standards to obtain the highest quality standards for equal opportunity, customer service, internal efficiency, and fiscal responsibility. The expected outcomes are (1) improved organizational performance and efficiency and (2) a climate of respect, service, and responsiveness.
Achieving Organizational Excellence ensures that the principles and standards we promote are readily apparent in our own operations. Through vision, leadership, and a culture of continuous improvement, our efforts seek to improve our organizational capacity and infrastructure. This will allow us to carry out our mission more effectively through sound management of our resources—human, financial, and technological. We aim to be an organization that sets and implements the highest quality standards for equal opportunity, customer service, internal efficiencies, and fiscal responsibility, using the President’s Management Agenda (PMA) as a roadmap. The PMA addresses important enhancements to internal agency operations and improves organizational performance and efficiency.
Strategic Objective 3, Organizational Excellence, relates to one element of our Five-Point Plan: EEOC as a Model Workplace. It also identifies our long-term goals to achieve results in this area.
The principles and standards we promote to employers must be an integral part of our own operations. This integration of the Five-Point Plan and other Administration and agency initiatives builds a model workplace where we can effectively and efficiently accomplish EEOC’s goals.
There are eight performance measures under Strategic Objective 3. One measure assesses the confidence our customers have in our services. Two measures address our initiatives to manage our human capital and obtain input from our employees. Another measure ensures that, when our financial systems are audited, we receive unqualified opinions from our auditors. Three measures ensure that we internally implement the Federal sector Model EEO Program attributes successfully, process our internal complaints of discrimination in a timely manner, and increase confidence in using ADR to resolve workplace disputes. Our final measure ensures that we transition toward a “paperless” environment by converting our charge and case files into electronic format to improve agency efficiency and enhance disaster recovery.
The agency decided not to continue these eight performance measures in its new Strategic Plan for several reasons. The new Plan’s overall structure is more conducive to focusing on outcome oriented measures and not ones that are predominately internally focused. The identification of these specific measures constrained the agency from being as flexible as possible in allocating its limited resources.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Design survey methodology, conduct survey(s), establish baseline of confidence. Set target values for FY 2005–2009. | Postponed | Postponed |
| Result | Activities postponed | Activities postponed | Activities postponed |
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Target not met |
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Our Strategic Plan identified this performance measure as an indicator of service to our customers. We are currently piloting our National Contact Center, which includes customer service measures for this portion of our work. We intended to use an additional survey approach to address some other aspects of our work in order to measure customer service. Agency resource priorities necessitated several postponements of this activity. The agency decided not to continue this measure in the new Strategic Plan.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target |
Develop and begin implementation of comprehensive human capital strategy (2-year target). |
Implement identified strategies for the fiscal year. | |
| Result | Developed draft strategy, began to design a workforce planning strategy, developed and implemented performance measurement system and other initiatives. | Continue to develop strategies to complete planning for future human capital needs. | Implemented identified strategies (see narrative). |
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Target met |
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It is critical that we address our future human capital needs and provide a good working environment for our employees in order to achieve our internal and external customer service goals. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) developed guidance to help Federal agencies evaluate their working environment and apply successful strategies to manage and develop their human capital. The agency designed this performance measure to help it track and implement OPM’s guidance with several specific strategies. The successful implementation of the FY 2006 strategies have helped us manage our human capital and apply one of the five important elements of the PMA, Strategic Human Capital Management. Although this specific measure is not continued in our new Strategic Plan, the agency will continue to implement its strategies for achieving organizational excellence.
Several cross-organizational working groups formulated strategies to address key areas of our human capital plans. For example, in FY 2006, a working group identified core job competencies for two of the agency’s three mission critical jobs. The working group also reformulated the agency’s nonsupervisory performance appraisal system, which was approved and distributed for implementation at the start of FY 2007.
One of the agency’s major human capital initiatives is the continued improvement to a systematic collection of its workforce and other human capital data. With this improved data, we will be better able to determine our performance on human capital issues and plan for and support our human capital needs. An important technology component implemented this year for this initiative was SAS’s Human Capital Module (HCM), which will help us collect and analyze our data.
Finally, in FY 2006 we implemented additional strategies outlined in our human capital plan. We modified several training courses provided by human resources based on input we received from our agency customers. We also established benchmarks in several areas of human resources and delivered those services to our customers. We initiated a collaborative effort with the OPM to address succession planning. As one of our succession planning and realignment efforts during FY 2006, we planned and simultaneously implemented two programs for employees eligible for retirement under a Voluntary Early Retirement Authority (VERA) and, for the first time at the agency, a Voluntary Separation Incentive Payments (VSIP) offer.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Survey employees and compare results to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) survey. | Based on survey results, establish baseline and begin developing actions/steps to achieve FY 2009 goal. | To be determined |
| Result | OPM conducted government-wide and EEOC employee surveys. (Results available in the 2nd Quarter of FY 2005.) | 57% government-wide (baseline); 54% EEOC | Results not yet available from OPM |
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Target met |
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EEOC participated in OPM’s government-wide Federal Human Capital Survey (FHCS) for FY 2006. OPM had not released the results of this new survey at the time this report was published; however, the agency used the results we previously obtained to identify areas warranting our attention. The survey results were communicated to management and staff in each headquarters and field office. The offices then developed and submitted action plans to address issues raised by the previous survey and held discussions with staff. The agency also implemented several human capital strategies, described in the previous measure, that addressed some of the broad areas raised in the previous survey, such as a nonsupervisory performance appraisal system, revision of training courses, alterations to the awards system, and improving human resources services.
The previous survey results indicated that employees throughout the government answered 57% of the 78 survey questions with a positive response and that EEOC employees answered 54% of the questions with a positive response. OPM is expected to conduct the government-wide survey every 2 years, with the agency conducting its own survey in the intervening years. Since OPM just conducted its survey in FY 2006, the agency anticipates conducting its own employee survey starting in FY 2007. Although this measure will not continue in the agency’s new Strategic Plan, we will use OPM’s and our survey results to help us continue to chart progress toward improving the human capital climate at the agency.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Receive an “unqualified” financial audit opinion. | Receive an “unqualified” financial audit opinion. | Receive an “unqualified” financial audit opinion. |
| Result | Received an unqualified audit opinion. | Received an unqualified audit opinion. | Received an unqualified audit opinion. |
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Target met |
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In FY 2006, the agency received an unqualified opinion on its financial statements.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Develop action plan and EPCA tool for implementing Federal sector Model EEO Program attributes. Meet or exceed 50% of identified attributes. | Meet or exceed 75% of identified attributes. | Model EEO Program successfully implemented. |
| Result | 79% | 79% | 90% |
|
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Target not met |
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We adopted an accelerated time frame for this measure in order to implement the criteria for a Model EEO Program described in MD-715. A model equal employment opportunity (EEO) program supports our efforts to attain organizational excellence and be a model workplace. As noted earlier in Measure 2.1.2., we set a goal for one-half of the major Federal agencies to adopt the model program by FY 2009. We intended to reach that goal for our own agency within the first 3 years. We used a “self assessment checklist” based on the MD-715 while the EEO Performance Compliance Assessment (EPCA) tool was under development. Now that development of the tool has been curtailed, we continued to use our self-assessment to measure our results. For FY 2006, we successfully met 90% of the criteria identified in the directive. Even though this measure is not continued in the new Strategic Plan, we will seek to implement all of the criteria to achieve a model EEO program.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | Reduce average time to process internal EEO complaints by 10% below FY 2003 benchmark. | Reduce average time to process internal EEO complaints by 20% below FY 2003 benchmark. | Reduce average time to process internal EEO complaints by 25% below FY 2003 benchmark. |
| Result | Reduced to 17.5% below FY 2003 benchmark. | 8% below FY 2003 baseline. | 20% below FY 2003 baseline. |
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Target not met |
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This measure captures the average processing time for all internal EEO complaints from the date of filing to the closure date. The complaints included in the average are those that were settled during the formal stage, withdrawn from the process, closed by a Final Decision without an Administrative Judge, and closed by a Final Action after a decision was issued by an Administrative Judge.
The average processing time for closures in FY 2003 was 510 days, which we established as our benchmark for this measure. For FY 2006, we expected to reduce the average processing time by 25% from this benchmark value. Although we made significant improvement from last year, we did not meet this goal. Our average processing time for FY 2006 was 408 days, representing a 20% reduction in overall processing time.
There are several reasons for this result. First, we have been very successful in reducing our overall year-end inventory by 73% since FY 2003, from 56 complaints at the end of FY 2003 to 15 complaints at the end of FY 2006. As the total number of cases decreases, the calculation of the average processing time can be skewed dramatically when only a few cases exceed expected timeframes. Second, the number of formal complaints filed also decreased over the past 2 years. In FY 2003, 38 formal complaints were filed. Only 31 complaints were filed in FY 2004, 26 in FY 2005, and 21 in FY 2006. This steady reduction in cases can be attributed to the success of our alternative dispute resolution program, RESOLVE, which was implemented in the last quarter of FY 2003. More complaints are being resolved at the informal stage of the process.
We will continue to expeditiously process our internal complaint inventory, even though we are not continuing this particular measure in our new Strategic Plan.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target | 30% | 90% or greater | 90% or greater |
| Result | 94% | 92% | 100% |
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Target met |
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The RESOLVE Program began in July 1, 2003. Based on limited information at the time, we anticipated that it would take several years for employee confidence to build and achieve established targets. We increased our targets and final goal for this measure substantially based on the overwhelming success of the program during FY 2004. Our new targets and long-term goal at 90% or greater was established; however, even that target and goal has been markedly exceeded. For FY 2006, 100% of the employees using the program, who responded to a survey, were willing to use the program again. We intend to sustain this high level of employee confidence in our RESOLVE program but have decided not to continue this measure in our new Strategic Plan.
| FY 2004 | FY 2005 | FY 2006 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Target |
Build IT infrastructure required to support document management and initiate pilots with headquarters and field offices (2-year target). |
3% of active files converted | |
| Result |
Installed first phase of production DMS infrastructure and began converting Federal appellate case files into electronic format. |
8% converted | |
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|
Target met |
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By the end of FY 2006, EEOC had converted over 11,000 Federal sector appellate case files into electronic format within our Document Management System (DMS). This accounts for approximately 8% of our active charge, litigation, Federal appellate, and Federal hearings files. In order to maintain the resource flexibility to implement these types of initiatives, the agency decided not to continue this measure in our new Strategic Plan; however, we will use future opportunities to initiate the activities necessary to fully implement the DMS and convert our agency files into electronic format.
This page was last modified on December 7, 2006
