Surveys

OPM Psychologists are experts in survey methodology and evaluation and have the unique capability of providing Governmentwide benchmark data in addition to private sector comparisons. Our survey administration services include survey design, sampling, communications, data management, statistical analysis, and results reporting.

Agencies can have a custom survey developed to meet their specific needs or they can utilize one of our standard surveys. Our standard surveys provide agencies with research-based assessments, streamlined administrations, and benchmarking capability.

Our standard surveys include:

• Organizational Assessment Survey (OAS)
• Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS)
• OPM Leadership 360™
• New Employee & Exit Survey
• New Leader Onboarding Assessment

Related Services

OPM offers services in addition to our standard surveys. These other services are generally highly customized to meet agency needs and expand our ability to assist agencies. We can provide additional data collection services or use multiple methods to assess specific needs. These services include:

• Training Needs Analysis
• Action Planning
• Mentoring

Our approach is to learn about your specific needs and work with you to identify a solution.

Focus Groups

A focus group is a research tool for gathering information from a group of people in a focused discussion. The purpose is to gather in-depth, qualitative information to find out how people feel or think about an issue, idea, product, or service.

Focus group services can be provided as a follow-up to surveys conducted with employees or agency customers. Focus groups can also be used to explore issues prior to, during, or after new policies or programs have been implemented. OPM Personnel Research Psychologists have extensive experience in applying rigorous procedures to ensure trustworthy results, including selection of participants, use of standardized protocols, and systematic analysis of results. Focus groups can be conducted in person, over the phone, or in a virtual online discussion group format.

After a focus group project has been completed, data from each focus group are used to prepare a written report that integrates the findings from the various groups.

Action planning is a change management activity that enables agencies to improve their ability to achieve agency goals by taking action in response to assessment results. OPM’s action planning services can be full service with fully customized and facilitated action planning assistance, or we can provide training and guidance to assist your internal efforts. We have a structured, four-stage approach to action planning, and our method can be tailored to meet agency needs. The model below highlights our approach to action planning.

OPM developed the Customer Satisfaction Survey (CSS) to help agencies measure their effectiveness in terms of their customers’ perceptions. The CSS also helps agencies meet the requirements of customer service-related regulations, including the 2011 Executive Order “Streamlining Service Delivery and Improving Customer Service,” Executive Order 1286 “Setting Customer Service Standards,” and the 1993 Government Performance and Results Act (GPRA). To meet these two needs, the CSS relies on a standard model of customer service quality, standardized core items, and custom items designed to focus on issues unique to individual agencies.

The CSS Model

Customer satisfaction is an overall affective reaction to all experiences with an agency, including interactions with its people, its processes, and the products it provides, in addition to the agency’s recovery in response to problems.  Customers may be satisfied with some components of an agency’s service delivery and not others; intermittent problems, however rare, that are not addressed appropriately could decrease satisfaction. The CSS pulls each of these facets into a single diagnostic, comprehensive assessment.

The survey consists of approximately 17 standard items (the number depends on your customers, products and services), two open-ended comment items, and items customized specifically to meet your needs.   The survey can be administered online with our USA Survey platform or by paper and pencil. 

The CSS database consists of 160,000 ratings from 235 surveys of 63 different customer populations (some of the surveys are for multiple administrations to a targeted population). 

OPM developed the New Employee Survey and the Exit Survey to assess two critical points in an individual’s tenure:  their socialization into the organization and the reasons they decide to leave. The hiring process and socialization into the organization impacts an individual’s satisfaction and performance by developing a foundation that the employee can use to facilitate their success.  When employees choose to leave an organization, agencies can collect vital information about the determinants of turnover, information on who chooses to leave, and suggestions for how organizations can minimize dysfunctional turnover.

The New Employee Survey consists of three modules to assess the Hiring Process, Formal Orientation, and Socialization of new employees. Together these modules provide a comprehensive, end-to-end assessment of the on-boarding process. Each module consists of core, standardized items that allow us to provide you with benchmarks and custom items designed to provide you with insight into your unique programs, processes, and areas of interest.

The Exit Survey captures the main motivation for leaving, diagnoses the organization's strengths and challenges, and solicits suggestions for improving retention. Separations are categorized by type, providing the opportunity to compare groups.  Additionally, the survey can be customized to measure programs and issues unique to your organization.

Unlike annual surveys which capture the perceptions of an agency’s workforce at a single point in time, the New Employee and Exit Surveys capture individuals' perceptions at various time periods. The similarity in administration methods for the New Employee and Exit Surveys enables us to provide both surveys together to help agencies maximize their resources. We can work with you to set up an administration plan based on the number and frequency of employees hired and leaving within your agency.  Reports can be provided on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

A high performing organization needs employees with the capabilities and competencies required to perform the organization’s mission.  Equally important are the climate, environment and culture in which the employees work.  The organization must create a climate that facilitates employee motivation and engagement.   OPM’s organizational assessment services can help you measure, diagnose, and understand the factors that lead to organizational effectiveness.

OPM developed the Organizational Assessment Survey (OAS) to provide agencies with a standardized tool for assessing organizational climate. Through a comprehensive literature review and analyses of more than 10 years of climate and employee satisfaction data, OPM identified the characteristics of organizations that theory, research, and practice indicate are related to organizational effectiveness. The OAS measures employee perceptions of 12 key dimensions and 35 facets of high performing organizations, along with critical employee attitudes and behaviors.

Organizational Climate

1. Teamwork: Cohesion | Communication | Collaboration
2. Customer Orientation: Feedback | Resources | Innovation
3. Training: Formal | Informal | Tools & Values
4. Resources: People | Information | Time | Workspace | Organizational Structure | Work Facilitation
5. Flexibility: Work Processes | Willingness to Change | Voice
6. Rewards: Contingent Reward | Tools | Procedural Justice
7. Supervision: Expectations | Evaluation | Feedback
8. Strategic Management: Vision | Communication | Performance Orientation | Public Service Orientation
9. Emotional Support: Consideration | Safety | Family Friendly
10. Ethics: Fairness | Diversity | Integrity
11. Communication: Team | Information | Voice | Vision and Strategy
12. Innovation: External Products and Services | Internal Processes

Employee Attitudes and Behaviors

1. Attitudes: Satisfaction | Affective Commitment | Value Internalization | Continuance Commitment | Job Involvement | Burnout/Stress | Internal Motivation | Passions | Job Complexity | Job Fit | Role Contribution | Role Conflict | Role Overload | Role Ambiguity | Perceived Organizational Support | Attitudinal Engagement
2. Behaviors: Effort | Organizational Citizenship | Turnover Intentions | Behavioral Engagement
3. Outcomes: Perceived Work Quality | Perceived Customer Satisfaction | Perceived Mission Attainment

The OAS benchmark database consists of more than 150,000 ratings from dozens of survey administrations conducted over the previous three years.

We can incorporate items from the OPM Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to further expand the range of benchmarking possibilities. You also have the option to tailor the survey by emphasizing different dimensions and facets and by creating items to assess issues, challenges, and questions unique to your agency. The survey can be administered online via our online survey USA Survey platform or by paper and pencil.

The OAS is a powerful assessment that can help you maximize outcomes such as employee retention and customer satisfaction by diagnosing root causes, uncovering relationships and trends, and pointing the way toward needed actions and sustained improvements.