“When it comes to employee engagement, a small organization within the National Institutes of Health has a short and simple motto: ‘You speak, we listen, things happen.'”
“That mentality has guided the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK) in recent years; it scored a 91% on the engagement index on the 2020 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, the highest of any NIH institute.'”
“’Our staff have to work in the system, but it’s incumbent upon leaders to work on the system,’ Dr. Griffin Rodgers, NIDDK director, said in an interview with Federal News Network.”
“For Rodgers, that work on the “system” got easier thanks to a data tool the institute’s staff developed back in 2018.”
“The tool, known as the Employee Viewpoint Survey Analysis and Results Tool, or EVS ART, helps agency leaders quickly sift through the mountain of annual FEVS data from the Office of Personnel Management and clearly pinpoint bright spots and weak points.”
“OPM and the Office of Management and Budget have flagged EVS ART as a best practice to help agencies more quickly evaluate employee engagement — and make headway on their goals.”
“NIDDK has since changed the tool to account for new COVID-19 and telework questions on the 2020 survey, and the institute worked with OPM to launch a supplemental survey last year, which solicited feedback from trainees, fellows, Pathways students and others.”
“Now, the same team that created EVS ART is working on another tool, this time designed to create an intersectional analysis of employee perceptions based on the demographic data in the FEVS.”
“’In general I don’t think that across government people have overlaid that on the results,’ said Camille Hoover, NIDDK’s executive officer.”
“Her team is creating a new tool will overlay demographic data over the answers on the FEVS. The goal, Hoover said, is to evaluate whether employees from different backgrounds have different perspectives about the workplace.”
“’We can add in education, supervisory status and we can drill down deeper to understand what different communities in our workforce are saying and are there different voices from different communities,’ she said. ‘That’s something we just haven’t done before…'” Read the full article here.
Source: NIH team creating new data tool that tracks federal employee perceptions and demographics – By Nicole Ogrysko, August 17, 2021. Federal News Network.
