OPM formally discontinues Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

Drew Friedman

Well, this is something that we've been expecting from OPM for the last couple of months since it had its proposed regulations over the summer. But what this final rule from OPM does is officially bring an end to the federal employee viewpoint survey. That's after OPM has conducted this survey on behalf of agencies for more than 20 years.

Drew Friedman

most agencies were using the federal employee viewpoint survey as a way to fulfill statutory requirements to survey their employees annually. But now starting for the 2026 cycle, so as you mentioned, just a short amount of time left for agencies to do this, but they're going to have to run their own surveys, then report the results back to OPM.

Drew Friedman

And this also just for a little bit of context, comes after OPM fully canceled the 2025 federal employee viewpoint survey, was talking about the changes it's been wanting to make to that survey and just now coming forward with these with this pretty significant overhaul to the assessment here.

Drew Friedman

asking employees about how they felt about their workload, a question about job satisfaction, a question about whether they would recommend their organization as a good place to work. All of those questions are no longer required by OPM to ask employees.

Drew Friedman

But agencies will have to add back in two questions asking their employees about poor performers in their work unitsquite significant revisions from OPM.

Eric

OPM says the changes will make the survey more actionable, but critics warn of undermining the survey's transparency and value.

Drew Friedman

There were some concerns that came up during the public comments window when OPM proposed these changes to the survey, but the final rule, OPM dismissed the the concerns and said it would make no changes to the questions that it first posed.

Drew Friedman

They've been holding the argument for quite some time now under the Trump administration at least that this one size fits all approach as they call it, makes it difficult for agencies to assess internal workforce needs. They also said that not all agencies rely on FEVs,

Drew Friedman

so OPM is using that evidence and then also just the general argument of saying that a decentralized survey is going to improve how much agencies understand their missions, their workforces, the management challenges that exist and be able to get a little bit more detailed in the way that they're they're posing questions to their employees.

Scott Cooper

People can actually get feedback that is actionable for them in terms of the core fundamental questions, which is at the end of the day do we have the elements of a high performance culture? Do people understand their objectives? Do they understand how their work ties into the overall organization?

Drew Friedman

They of course have the calendar year deadline to get this out the door to their employeesit could be as simple and short as asking those 10 required questions from OPM.

Drew Friedman

But then there's there's questions about are they going to add in more agency specific elements as well? You know, that's that becomes a question of do they have the time and the resources to add in more depth and more layers of the assessment and what they're going to be asking their employees?

Scott Cooper

Those things kind of predict long-term performance of an organization as well as obviously long-term retention of of key performers.