In Fiscal Year (FY) 2024, the United States Office of Personnel Management (OPM) continued to advance progress toward agency goals and Administration priorities. In the third year of OPM’s FY 2022-2026 Strategic Plan, OPM reports substantial progress in positioning the Federal Government as a model employer, transforming OPM’s organizational capacity and capability, creating a human-centered customer experience, and providing innovative and data-driven solutions to support agency partners. In this report, OPM details the progress made toward accomplishing the objectives in the FY 2022-2026 Strategic Plan.

A Model Employer

Workforce of the Future

OPM is committed both to positioning the Federal Government as an employer of choice and serving as a model employer. OPM took an important step toward realizing this goal by issuing the Workforce of the Future playbook in FY 2024. The playbook, which was highlighted by the Association for Talent Development, provides concrete actions for agency Chief Human Capital Officers and hiring managers, as well as best practices, tools, and resources for agencies to hire the right talent and strategically plan for the future. In addition to releasing the playbook, OPM led eight webinars attended by nearly 5,000 people to support Federal agencies and employees in implementing the workforce management strategies outlined in the playbook. In 2024, OPM increased the percentage of Chief Human Capital Officers who report they have the necessary guidance and resources from OPM to inform their future of work planning by more than 15 percentage points, compared to 2023.

Early Career Talent

A key recommendation in the Workforce of the Future playbook discusses reinvigorating Federal early career talent programs that serve as a pipeline for diverse talent into Federal jobs. As part of these efforts, OPM released the final rule updating the Pathways Programs, which streamlined the process for hiring current students and recent graduates, and expanding access to include graduates of apprenticeship and other career development and trainee programs. OPM also aimed to strengthen agencies’ ability to develop, promote, and retain early career talent, and improved the 2024 Government-wide Employee Engagement Index score for early career talent by more than one point, compared to 2023.

Advancing Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility

OPM continued to implement the Biden-Harris Administration’s Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility (DEIA) in the Federal Workforce. In FY 2024, OPM released a final regulation that prohibits the use of previous, non-Federal salary history in setting pay for Federal employment offers in Government-wide pay systems as a part of the agency’s work to advance pay equity. OPM also completed a barrier analysis toolkit to help agencies utilize data to identify DEIA barriers to hiring. Further, OPM implemented interventions recommended by a FY 2023 assessment of the personnel vetting process to eliminate barriers to transgender, gender non-conforming, and non-binary employees and applicants by eliminating a gender question on vetting questionnaires and by using non-gender specific terminology, as appropriate. While OPM was one point short of its 2024 target for the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey Government-wide Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility index score, OPM improved the score by more than one point, compared to 2023.

Improving the Experience of OPM’s Customers

OPM has made substantial progress in improving customer service. A survey from the American Customer Satisfaction Index ranked OPM first among Government agencies in a year that saw customer satisfaction rise to a seven-year high Government-wide. In FY 2024, OPM built on its enterprise-wide approach to customer service, establishing an internal Customer Experience Steering Committee made up of representatives from 15 OPM offices to facilitate collaboration and expand customer experience improvement efforts across the agency.

Improving Retirement Services

OPM has taken important steps to improve the experience of retirees and prospective retirees in FY 2024. To streamline the retirement process, OPM has piloted an online retirement application, which allows prospective retirees from selected agencies to apply for their retirement benefits electronically. OPM continues to collect customer feedback during an ongoing pilot to identify strengths and opportunities to improve the application in the future. OPM also built the architecture for a minimum viable product of a digital file system that will integrate paper and digital records. This effort will enable a comprehensive view of retirement data and establish secure access to case information across organizations and work sites, allowing for more efficient and effective case management. In the past year, wait times at the Retirement Services call center decreased by more than 63 percent. OPM also reduced the average number of days to process new retirement cases by more than 20 percent and improved customer satisfaction on new retirement cases by 13 percent, compared to FY 2023. Based on this progress, OPM’s Inspector General removed the initial retirement application backlog from its list of top management challenges.

Establishing a State-of-the Art Postal Service Health Benefits Program

In FY 2024, OPM worked to establish a state-of-the-art Postal Service Health Benefits Program in accordance with the Postal Service Reform Act of 2022. The effort hinged on intra- and inter-agency collaboration to ensure postal employees, annuitants, and their families are effectively served. On a tight timeline, OPM met key milestones in technological modernization, data sharing and program development. Notably, OPM developed and deployed a state-of-the-art minimum viable product for the Postal Service Health Benefits Program that included a central enrollment platform and a decision support tool for users. OPM also launched and administered a special enrollment period in the second half of FY 2024. OPM ended the fiscal year on-track for establishing the Postal Service Health Benefits Program for the plan year beginning January 1, 2025.

Improving the Federal Hiring Experience

OPM, in conjunction with OMB, released guidance in FY 2024 to improve the Federal Government’s hiring experience. The guidance calls for reducing the time and administrative burden in the hiring process and offers tools for agencies to improve the hiring experience for HR professionals, hiring managers, and job seekers. OPM also released USAJOBS’ Career Explorer Tool which matches job seekers with Federal careers based on their interests and improves the navigation process for applicants based on their responses to a 32-item questionnaire. OPM also launched an upgraded USAJOBS resume builder that includes content updates to better help job seekers use the site to build effective resumes. OPM successfully redesigned the USAJOBS homepage based on job seeker feedback, making it easier to conduct job searches and view events on both mobile and desktop versions. While overall satisfaction with USAJOBS decreased slightly in FY 2024, compared to FY 2023, OPM continues to review customer feedback to identify opportunities for additional improvement.

Leveraging Human Capital Data

OPM is focused on enhancing human capital data and analytics to better inform Federal workforce policies and further support agencies’ evidence-based workforce decisions. To that end, OPM released an initial enterprise human capital analytics platform, which will reduce the time to access insights on Government-wide HR topics, and become the foundation to deliver new digital experiences to employees, applicants, beneficiaries, annuitants, agencies, the public, and other stakeholders. Further, OPM enhanced and expanded access to two Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey dashboards and a DEIA dashboard, and released a public Time-to-Hire dashboard on the OPM Data Portal. While the percentage of Chief Human Capital Officers who agree that OPM provides agencies with high quality workforce data and information for decision-making decreased by just over one percentage point in 2024, compared to 2023, OPM expects its continued development of an enterprise human capital analytics platform in FY 2025 to result in improvements.

Conclusion

OPM serves as the champion of our nation’s Federal workforce–the 2.3 million Federal employees who serve the American public. As we reflect on the accomplishments of the past year, I want to emphasize the gratitude I have for OPM’s workforce in empowering all Federal workers to tackle challenges and prepare for those to come. In the years ahead, OPM will build on the progress described in this report and continue to deliver the human capital policy, benefits, products, and services needed to support the Government workforce of the future.

Sincerely,

Robert H. Shriver, III

Acting Director, U.S. Office of Personnel Management

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