Remarks of Acting OPM Director Beth Cobert

OPM-AU Research Summit

American University School of Law

March 8, 2016

As Prepared for Delivery

Thank you, Jon Foley. Hello everyone. Welcome to this inaugural summit dedicated to connecting research and policy. We are excited to see so many Federal policy makers, academic researchers, and industry partners here today.

First, I want to thank Jon’s team at OPM’s Office of Planning and Policy Analysis, in particular Kimya Lee, OPM’s Senior Advisor on Research and Evaluation, for conceiving of and organizing today’s event. And thank you to American University’s School of Public Affairs and Dean Barbara Romzek and Vicky Wilkins, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, for partnering with us and hosting us in this beautiful new space at the law school.

This summit is a great way for OPM to continue to build relationships with researchers, with Federal practitioners from agencies across government,   with industry as we shape the human capital research agenda for the future. At today’s summit we have researchers from 19 universities, Federal policy makers from 20 agencies and partners from industry and the non-profit sector. This promises to be a great collaboration.

Before I joined the Federal Government in 2013, I was a Director and Senior Partner at McKinsey for 29 years. I’m glad to see some McKinsey colleagues in the audience today. At McKinsey it was the expectation that everyone not only needed to help clients improve workplace performance, but that our job was also to advance the state of the art of management. Contributing to that base of knowledge and insight was imbedded in everyone’s job. And while I was there I saw lots of great collaborations between our firm and academic institutions.

For example, since March is Women’s History Month, it seems appropriate for me to mention some of McKinsey’s Global Institute research that focuses on women. Just a couple of its research-based papers include: How advancing women’s equality can add $12 trillion to global growth and a CEO’s Guide to Gender Equality. This research, based on public-private collaboration, has helped advance equality as well as economic growth.

In the Federal Government we want our decisions about human capital policy to be grounded in research as well. This is part of OPM’s strategy to support the President’s Management Agenda’s People and Culture goal to recruit, hire, develop and retain a world-class Federal workforce and is a key Administration priority government-wide. In December, 2015 the White House convened representatives from across government to share research and evaluations that agencies are working on that will influence policy development.  This Evidence Deputies Process workshop included presentations from nine agencies on a diverse range of topics. We heard from the Department of Labor’s about its effort to establish a database to evaluate the impact of education and training programs on subsequent employment and wages. The Department of Housing and Urban Development shared its evaluation of strategies to help HUD-assisted housing residents get access to college.

In 2014, the White House National Science and Technology Council created the Social and Behavioral Sciences Team, a cross-agency group of academics with backgrounds in such diverse fields as psychology, economics, policy, law, medicine, statistics, and political science. The goal of this team is to use what research tells us about how people make decisions to improve the lives of Americans and make government more efficient.

For example, members of the team are helping OPM improve how information about Federal Employee Health Benefit plan choices is presented to employees during the annual Open Season. Research tells us that the choices employees make about health plans are affected not only by the quality of the information, but how user-friendly the presentation is. By studying the changes we intend to make to the tool that helps employees and their families compare plans, we hope to make the process less confusing and more beneficial for our customers. You’ll hear more about SBIS from Maya Shankar this afternoon.

Connecting research like I’ve just described to policy is so important to us at OPM that it’s included in our Strategic Plan. One of our nine strategic goals directs us to foster a culture where evidence-based policy setting is the norm. That goal also states our intention to collaborate with academics and others to develop a human resources research agenda. We’ll be discussing that outcome in more detail over the next day and a half.

OPM is already sharing our rich cache of data that provides a window into the Federal workforce. Many of you in this room have taken advantage of our annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. We know, for example that the authors of at least 60 peer-reviewed journal articles have used our FEVS data. In fact, the paper that won the best academic paper award in 2015 from Public Administration Review is a review of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. I’m happy to say that three of the authors – Sergio Fernandez, Bill Resh and Zachary Oberfield – are participating in this summit. I also know the authors have had some robust discussions with Kimya about our survey.

We also encourage researchers -- along with the general public – to take advantage of our interactive FEVS data analysis portal – called UnlockTalent.gov. We make available agency-level information on employee engagement and satisfaction in the Federal workforce. And researchers can request even more granular data by requesting a research database or entering into an agreement with us for a more detailed and customized database.

At OPM we can learn from the research being done at institutions and by industry partners across the country. We do not have the resources or capacity to do this research independently. But working together we can expand the breadth of research and data that we all can use to determine best practices in human capital management.

For example, we’re working with behavioral economists the University of Minnesota to look at how people decide what to contribute to their Thrift Savings Plan, the retirement savings plan for the Federal Government. We want to see how research can help us determine, for example, what systemic barriers there are to people contributing the optimal amount to this savings vehicle. We’re also developing a research agreement with Duke University and Vanderbilt University on synthetic data to help us discover how OPM can put out more granular data in a way that protects individuals’ Personally Identifiable Information – or PII. As you can imagine, since joining the government, and particularly since becoming Acting Director of OPM, I’ve learned a lot about protecting PII.

In addition to our partnerships with institutions of higher learning, OPM is helping Federal agencies benefit from our data and research findings. Two weeks ago, OPM hosted a webinar for agencies on what drives employee engagement. The presentation was based on a multiple regression analysis we conducted of the FEVS data. That presentation has already led to conversations about further collaborative research that will help specific agencies better understand what strategies work best when it comes to employee engagement.

The ultimate goal of all of these collaborations and of this first inaugural research summit is to help us establish a research agenda for Federal human resources management that will build the foundation for how we shape human capital policy for years to come. Over the next day and a half we will zero in on six topic areas: work/life issues; benefits; performance management; diversity and inclusion; leadership, and employee engagement. It’s important that we determine the current state of research in those areas. What are the gaps in the research? What are the challenges and limitations to closing those research gaps? What research will best inform policy decisions that need to be made over the next several years?

Once we identify and quantify those gaps, they will serve as the foundation for developing our research agenda. By making sure that our human resources policies are informed by the most rigorous and up-to-date research, OPM can design more effective human resources policies and help the Federal Government move to the forefront as an employer of choice. The government’s ability to attract, develop and retain the talent we need is especially critical in the current world of dwindling resources.

If we get this right, then we’ll understand how we help people grow and develop; how we build their skills. It will enable us to provide the benefit packages that meet people’s needs, training that produces results, and development strategies that help us retain the talent we need to fulfill our missions to serve the American people. For example, there is a lot of research already being done about whether or not people should move away from annual performance appraisals. Some private sector organizations, including DeLoitte, which is represented at this meeting, are already doing that. According to the research management firm CEB – formerly the Corporate Executive Board -  six percent of Fortune 500 companies have abandoned annual performance reviews. Some analysts say that percentage is even higher.  What can we learn from that research to help inform our policies?

Policy experts are also taking a look at issues like telework and at a new definition of a workplace. We need to understand how to manage differently in a telework environment. Research can help us understand how to provide the flexibility of telework while not losing the human connection to the workplace. I certainly appreciate and think about our ability to use telework when I’m on the phone at 3 a.m. during a snowstorm deciding how to balance the need to keep the government running with the need to keep people safe.

As I said, the definition of the workplace is also changing. People often ask me: What are the main differences between working in the private sector and for the Federal Government? One thing I tell them is it’s going to an office every day. When I worked at McKinsey the norm was that the people you worked with were usually in a different city or even on a different continent. We didn’t have the same in-person interaction that I have now.

One thing that isn’t different is the high level of talent, dedication, and commitment to the mission that I have found since joining the Federal service. You have to work differently. And flexibility improves productivity. We’re beginning to see that in the Federal Government with telework and other alternative work schedules. We’re also experimenting with trading in cubicles for open space floor plans. At the General Service Administration, for example, the administrator’s office is a desk on a floor with glass walls around it. It’s basically out in the open. The new GSA spaces were designed with collaboration as a keystone. Now we may not want to transform all of our workspaces. But maybe we need research to form the basis of our decisions about what atmosphere is most conducive to the kind of innovation and employee engagement we know increases productivity.

This summit is just the beginning. As you engage with each other throughout this event, I hope you will identify opportunities to build more – and richer -- partnerships with fellow participants here and with colleagues in government, academia and private industry across this nation. Thank you again for participating.