Is the FCC the Best Place to Work in the Federal Government?

We May Never Know as FCC Dodges Another Interagency Survey

The Best Places to Work, produced by the Partnership for Public Service and American University’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation, rankings are the most comprehensive and authoritative rating and analysis of employee engagement in the federal government. The 2007 rankings are the third edition of this ongoing series, following the 2003 and 2005 versions.

The survey describes its goals as follows:

Why the Rankings Matter

As we advance into a new century, America faces a new set of great public challenges: fighting a war against terrorism, prospering in the global economy, and expanding opportunity by improving schools and health care. Now, more than ever, we need the best and brightest to work on our behalf in government.

Employee engagement and commitment are two necessary ingredients in developing high-performing organizations and attracting the best and brightest. The Best Places to Work rankings are an important tool in recognizing the importance of employee engagement and ensuring that it is a top priority for government managers and leaders.

Since the first rankings were released in 2003, they have helped create much-needed institutional incentives to focus on key workforce issues and also provided managers and leaders with a roadmap for boosting employee engagement. Federal human capital professionals have told us that the Best Places to Work project has heightened awareness among senior leaders and spurred reform of human capital practices. As time goes on, we hope that agencies will use the results of this ranking to gauge the success of their efforts.

The rankings also directly address one of the biggest barriers to federal employment: a staggering lack of information among prospective employees. The Best Places rankings provide job seekers unprecedented insight on opportunities for public service by highlighting the federal government’s high-performing agencies and promoting federal organizations that often go unheralded.

This is the third recent intergancy survey that FCC has not participated in. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission captured the prize as the best large agency for employee satisfaction and engagement. NRC is slightly larger than FCC with about 3300 employees.

NRC Chairman Dale Klein spoke at a ceremony held by the Partnership for Public Service
where he accepted an award for NRC being ranked the best place to work in the federal government.

The Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service, which is close to the FCC's old 20th & M location, won the award for the best small agency.

Why Didn't FCC Want Its Employees Polled
on Their Satisfaction?

In a way, this post is about "non-news": the FCC's nonparticipation in the Office of Personnel Management's Federal Human Capital Survey 2006. This survey is not the product of some liberal think tank but rather a commendable Bush Administration initiative that "that measures employees' perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies."

The list of participating agencies shows the whole Executive Branch and a plethora of small independent agencies ranging from the 3000+ employee Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) to the small and obscure Marine Mammal Commission. (I note that the little known American Battle Monument Commission, that has a few employees in neighboring Suresnes maintaining a WWI and WWII military cemetery visible from my living room, did participate.) FCC did not participate in the previous 2004 survey either. (The first survey took place in 2002 and seems to have disappeared from the OPM website. However, that first year no small agencies were included.)

OPM describes the survey as follows:

"The Federal Human Capital Survey is a tool that measures employees' perceptions of whether, and to what extent, conditions characterizing successful organizations are present in their agencies. The first administration of this ground-breaking survey in 2002 set a baseline for ongoing assessment in the Federal Government. It was conducted again in 2004 and 2006. The survey:

• Provides general indicators of how well the Federal Government is running its human resources management systems.
• Serves as a tool for OPM to assess individual agencies and their progress toward "green" status on Strategic Management of Human Capital under the President's Management Agenda.
• Gives senior managers critical information to answer the question: What can I do to make my agency work better?"

So why didn't FCC participate? Were the employees too busy? I doubt it since repeatedly employees tell me they aren't doing much because they are waiting for leadership from the "8th floor" to tell them what to do and have been told not to take initiative. Are they too busy in training? No, the training budget has been decimated so that couldn't be the answer. Were they afraid that the survey was stacked against small independent agencies? Well, the slightly larger NRC has proudly announced that it "is tops in two indices, Talent Management and Leadership & Knowledge Management. (NRC) is second in the Job Satisfaction Index and fourth in the Results-Oriented Performance Culture Index." So it looks like small independent agencies could fare well.

Could it be that the "8th floor" did not want public disclosure of an objective independent survey of how FCC employees felt on issues such as how their fellow workers cooperate to get the job done; how their work relates to the agency's goals and priorities; and the overall quality of their work group’s products?

I hope that the trade press asks FCC management to explain their nonparticipation. I hope that the "8th floor" gets curious also. I will gladly post any explanation received from FCC.