Priority
1

Strengthening and Empowering the Federal Workforce

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PRIORITY AREA LEADERS

Kiran Ahuja

Director

Office of Personnel Management

Dr. Kathleen Hicks

Deputy Secretary

U.S. Department of Defense

Julie Su

Deputy Secretary

U.S. Department of Labor

Overview

Challenge

More than 4 million Americans—including more than 2.1 million Federal civilian employees—work for our Federal Government, both at home and overseas. To be a Government for all Americans, we need to focus on those who keep our Government running and deliver services each day. Given the changing nature of work, new technology, and the evolving skills needed to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow, we must invest in our public servants who are the backbone of our Government.

Opportunity

Federal agencies must attract, hire, develop, and empower talented individuals who are well suited and well prepared to face the challenges the Government faces, both in the near and long term. Agencies must also use what they have learned about the resilience and adaptability of the Federal workforce to make the Federal Government an ideal, modern, and forward-thinking employer. As Federal agencies continue to chart a path forward together on the future of Federal work, they will engage with public servants as well as stakeholders within and outside of Government to make every Federal job a good job and give our workforce what they need to succeed.

Priority-level success metrics

Create a more equitable employee engagement experience across the Federal workforce, including across employee groups and organizational units within agencies

  • Increase agency Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) Employee Engagement Index (EEI) scores by narrowing agency-identified gaps in EEI by employee group or organizational unit by 20%.
  • Agencies will select an EEI subfactor (Supervisor, Leaders Lead, Intrinsic Work Experience) or a minimum of three FEVS questions as topics to target for action and quantifiably improve results on these factors/questions. Subfactor/questions should be chosen due to overall low score, gaps across employee groups and organizational unit, or some other mission- or performance-driven factor.

Improve the Federal hiring process to efficiently hire the best talent

  • Increase the percentage of hiring manager satisfaction with the hiring process.
  • This survey currently is going through improvements to improve data collection and availability. A baseline and target will be assessed later this year once those improvements have time to go into effect.

Attract the right talent for the right roles

  • Increase the percentage of agencies meeting projected mission-critical occupation (MCO) hiring and staffing targets.1
  • Agencies will be asked to create robust projections for selected MCOs and report progress towards filling those goals in order to highlight areas of needed support to compete for talent.

Promote diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) strategies and practices across all human capital activities

  • FEVS DEIA Measures.2
  • Agencies will use their 2022 FEVS results, in addition to other DEIA agency assessments, to make progress towards the objectives of their agency DEIA strategic plans.

1 A new measure is being developed for Government-wide collection.

2 FEVS DEIA measures are being reviewed and finalized.

Strategies

1

Attract and hire the most qualified employees, who reflect the diversity of our country, in the right roles across the Federal Government.

Blue icon with a bolt in the center, signifying 'metadata' 7 SUCCESS METRICS

LEADERSHIP

Colleen Heller-Stein

Director, Office of Human Resources and Acting Chief Human Capital Officer

Department of the Treasury

Tracey Therit

Chief Human Capital Officer

Department of Veterans Affairs

2

Make every Federal job a good job, where all employees are engaged, supported, heard, and empowered, with opportunities to learn, grow, join a union and have an effective voice in their workplaces through their union, and thrive throughout their careers.

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LEADERSHIP

Roland Edwards

Chief Human Capital Officer

Department of Homeland Security

Kristin McNally

Branch Chief of Employee Engagement, Division of Worklife and Engagement in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Administration and Management

Department of Labor

Nancy A. Speight

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Civilian Personnel Policy

Department of Defense

3

Reimagine and build a roadmap to the future of Federal work informed by lessons from the pandemic and nationwide workforce and workplace trends.

Blue icon with a bolt in the center, signifying 'metadata' 4 SUCCESS METRICS

LEADERSHIP

Jason Barke

Deputy Associate Director, Strategic Workforce Planning

Office of Personnel Management

Dustin Brown

Deputy Assistant Director for Management

Office of Management and Budget

Wonzie Gardner

Office Head and Chief Human Capital Officer, Office of Information and Resource Management

National Science Foundation

Zoe Garmendia

Senior Advisor to the Administrator

General Services Administration

4

Build the personnel system and support required to sustain the Federal Government as a model employer able to effectively deliver on a broad range of agency missions.

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LEADERSHIP

John Gill

Assistant Director of Center For Leadership Development

Office of Personnel Management

Veronica Hinton

Principal Deputy Associate Director for Employee Services

Office of Personnel Management

David Padrino

Executive Director, Office of Human Capital Data Management and Modernization

Office of Personnel Management

Featured insights

INSIGHT   Blue icon with a bolt in the center, signifying 'metadata' SUCCESS METRIC

Employee engagement at Federal agencies increased during the pandemic

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic transformed the world of work. Results from the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey—a Government-wide survey of Federal employees—suggest the conditions that contribute to engagement improved across the board. The Federal workforce at all levels responded to the crisis by showing their resilience and motivation to ensure that public services continued to be provided to the American people.

Federal employees were more likely to agree in 2020, compared to prior years, that their leadership was effective, there was meaning in their work, and they had the opportunity to learn and grow on the job. The Government-wide score for employee engagement increased from 68 in 2019 to 72 in 2020 (out of 100), for example. The range in agencies’ individual scores narrowed dramatically.

The President's Management Agenda seeks to maintain momentum and achieve even higher levels of engagement across the Federal workforce.

A line graph of Government-wide engagement scores over time, from 2016 to 2020, as measured by the Employee Engagement Index. In 2020, 72 out of 100 was the Government-wide score for employee engagement, the highest ever. The range in agencies' scores was 60 to 99.
The Office of Personnel Management's Employee Engagement Index uses responses to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to score conditions at agencies associated with higher employee engagement (e.g., effective leadership, work which provides meaning, the opportunity for employees to learn/grow on the job).

Some agencies scored above the Government-wide score, suggesting opportunities for agencies to learn from one another.

A beeswarm chart, where each dot represents an agency's engagement score. There are 4 clouds of dots, each representing groups of agencies by size. The takeaway is that Very Large agencies experience less variation in engagement. As agency size gets smaller, the range in agency engagement scores widens dramatically (the cloud of dots spreads out).

INSIGHT

The Federal workforce seeks to draw from all age groups

As the country’s largest employer, the Federal Government has an extensive and complex hiring process, which can hamper efforts to recruit and onboard needed talent. One result: comparatively low representation of young people across the Federal Government. With the growing need for new skill sets across agencies, recruiting the next generation of Federal civil servants is essential to the mission-effectiveness and long-term health of Federal agencies.

A population pyramid chart showing the percentage of the workforce by age group, federal labor workforce vs. civilian labor workforce. It shows a major gap in the federal talent pipeline, in that young people are underrepresented in the federal workforce compared to the civilian labor force.