FCC Morale: A Review of New Data from OPM

January 15, 2009 - 10:30am — Michael Marcus

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.

Cross-posted from SpectrumTalk.

Comments

January 15, 2009 - 11:07am — Michael Marcus

Anonymous comment received on SpectrumTalk on this - unedited

The data is skewed positive. For 8 years, and certainly the last 4 under martain, the martian administration has waged war on the FCC staff. His quip about the KGB atmosphere of the FCC made no one laugh bc it was true. Staff has responsibility removed. Staff was moth balled. Staff was beat up by middle management. Management became an insane moving ball of whatever answer MArtian wanted. So I point to three factors that skew this data positive (1) the staff was so beat up that a lot staff left - indeed some of the best staff that had opportunity elsewhere took that opportunity. (2) MArtian brought in a lot of his own staff (someone do a foia of how many FOX people have worked for Martian). (3) The FCC has not participated in this survey for so long that no one took it seriously when it was announced again and (4) there was a lot of retribution inside the FCC. Look the wrong way, and get assigned to the consumer bureau. So people did NOTHING NOTHING that would put them at risk. The Martian / Bush / Cheneys came in declaring that they did not believe in civil servant. And they proved it. Their incumpetence during KAtrina showed how they ruined FEMA. And the telecom broadband disaster we face shows how they ruined the FCC.

January 7, 2011 - 5:28am — Anonymous (not verified)

Part II discusses the

Part II discusses the opportunity for the FCC to adopt a new institutional strategy for telecommunications policymaking, emphasizing the importance of strategic agenda setting and transparency. Part III explains how the agency can use its policymaking tools-rulemaking, adjudication, and merger review-more effectively. Part IV underscores the opportunity for the agency to upgrade its collection and dissemination of data as well as its involvement of the public in its decision-making processes. Part V offers a short conclusion.

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August 8, 2011 - 8:07pm — jimb45

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