OPM's 2010 Employee Survey

The Office of Personnel Management on Thursday announced that it has begun to distribute the 2010 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. The survey will be distributed governmentwide through mid-March, 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 and was distributed every two years, will measure employee morale and overall employee perceptions of pay and benefits and whether conditions that characterize successful organizations are present in their agencies. New questions on the survey will address employee engagement and work/life issues, OPM said.

"The administration has set a course to make the federal government America's model employer for the 21st Century," OPM Director John Berry said. "With the cooperation of those taking the survey, we will be better able to gauge what is and isn't working to create a workplace that attracts the best and brightest."

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 (i.e. telework), it will be interesting to see if the new survey better aims to gauge employee perceptions of agency IT programs and their ability to promote knowledge-sharing, collaboration and improved work-life balance.