SpectrumTalk

FCC Morale:
A Review of New Data from OPM

The Federal Human Capital Survey is an admirable Bush Administration initiative that OPM describes as,

"a tool that measures employees' perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies. Survey results provide valuable insight into the challenges agency leaders face in ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce and how well they are responding."

As I wrote 2 years ago, the FCC has used its status as an independent agency to opt out of participation in the past even though other independent agencies did participate. (This year as last time, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) got very high marks in the survey. The obscure Court Services and Offender Supervision Agency, a new agency that is smaller than FCC, also ranked in the top 10 agencies in job satisfaction. So the survey was not biased against independent agencies or small agencies.)

Below are two groups of selected questions from the survey. The first group consists of questions for which the FCC responses were more positive* than the government-wide response. The second group is a sampling of questions for whihc the FCC responses were more negative than the government-wide response. The 2nd column is the % of FCC responses that were positive, by comparison the next column shows the overall government-wide positive response. The last column shows the positive response rate from NRC - an indication of how well a top-ranked agency can do.

Question	FCC Positive Response	Government -wide Positive Responses	NRC Positive Responses
Questions for which FCC is better than government-wide responses
(1) The people I work with cooperate to get the job done.	86%	84%	92%
(7) I have trust and confidence in my supervisor.	70%	64%	77%
(9) Overall, how good a job do you feel is being done by your immediate supervisor/team leader?	70%	66%	80%
Questions for which FCC is worse than government-wide response
(3) I have enough information to do my job well.	66%	73%	85%
(4) I feel encouraged to come up with new and better ways of doing things.	52%	61%	73%
(5) My work gives me a feeling of personal accomplishment.	60%	73%	81%
(37) I have a high level of respect for my organization’s senior leaders.	38%	52%	72%
(38) In my organization, leaders generate high levels of motivation and commitment in the workforce.	31%	40%	62%
(39) My organization's leaders maintain high standards of honesty and integrity.	38%	50%	74%
(40) Managers communicate the goals and priorities of the organization.	49%	60%	78%

The first 3 questions above show that FCC employees are more satisfied with their own work group and immediate supervisors than federal employees in general. However, the bottom group of questions shows major negative feelings about top management and the agency as a whole. Clearly FCC employees have a lack of respect for "senior leaders" and doubts about their "standards of honesty and integrity."

I hope that the new leaders of FCC will review this report carefully and formulate a plan to turn the situation around quickly.

* Methodology: the numbers shown are the sums of the data from the OPM report in the "Strongly Agree" and "Agree" columns.