The Office of Personnel Management on Tuesday announced that it has begun to distribute the 2011 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The survey will be distributed governmentwide through the end of May, and OPM will invite more than half a million federal workers to participate.
The survey, which was previously known as the Federal Human Capital Survey, will measure employee morale as well as organizational climate, culture and engagement issues. This year's survey also will include expanded sections on telework and work-life balance, OPM said.
"The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is crucial to helping agencies understand how to improve their work environment to increase productivity and provide better service to the American people," OPM Director John Berry said. "Our employees are our most valuable resources, and engaging them is critical."
In past surveys, OPM has asked a couple of questions on how employees use information technology and how satisfied they are with IT systems to perform work. With IT becoming more central to agency missions as well as employee satisfaction (for instance, in the case of telework), it will be interesting to see if the new survey aims to better gauge employee perceptions of agency IT programs and their ability to promote knowledge-sharing, collaboration and improved work-life balance.
Brittany Ballenstedt
Brittany Ballenstedt writes Nextgov's Wired Workplace blog, which delves into the issues facing employees who work in the federal information technology sector. Before joining Nextgov, Brittany covered federal pay and benefits issues as a staff correspondent for Government Executive and served as an associate editor for National Journal's Technology Daily. She holds a bachelor's degree in journalism from Mansfield University and originally hails from Pennsylvania. She currently lives near Travis Air Force Base, Calif., where her husband is stationed.
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