How Coaching Helps Improve Morale

by Seth Sinclair

In my last post, I discussed the results of the 2014 Federal Employee’s Viewpoint Survey, which demonstrated that morale at federal government departments and agencies was low—and getting lower every year.

Low morale results in lower employee engagement with the goals of the organization—and employees who don’t feel connected to their organizations’ successes.  In an age in which ever-higher levels of quality service are demanded of all employees, including those who work for the government, lowered morale has the opposite effect and puts quality at risk.

As agencies throughout the government search for ways to turn things around, one approach is to invest in employee development, with individual and/or group coaching as a proven effective solution. Coaching is linked to better morale.  It fosters a learning and growth process that can help employees whose morale has been suffering to reconnect with their organizations’ goals and needs while advancing their own professional development.

Coaches are uniquely positioned to help employees at all levels define their personal and professional goals, improve self-awareness, understand others’ viewpoints, and ultimately increase their effectiveness.  They accomplish this by assessing individuals’ personality and leadership styles, and the ways in which they interact with others.  They use this information to create new insights and foster a learning process tied to specific individual goals. 

A good coach can get to the bottom of the reasons many respondents to this year’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey are unhappy in their work—and help employees choose intelligent and rational actions to reduce that unhappiness and make them once again engaged members of the workforce.  In times of stress, including those times when resources are constrained, coaches can help employees to focus on what they can control, instead of feeling overwhelmed by what they can’t. 

Coaches can help employees cultivate a positive mindset about the future, instead of dwelling on past negatives, and help them learn lessons about the past to create success in the future.  They help employers shape the future by increasing their ability to retain talented employees, and to retain and develop new generations of skilled employees.

Finally, coaches work with managers and leaders to improve others’ morale, by helping them explore and implement strategies to get their staffs excited, motivated, and energized about their mission.  

Great executive coaches are fully trained to help employees achieve all of these objectives.  I’ve written about the skills coaches bring to the table in many previous posts.  In our next post, I’ll talk about a different way to support morale in federal agencies and elsewhere—by training agency leaders themselves to act as coaches themselves, in addition to their other responsibilities. 

I call it “coaching as a leadership style,” and every leader will benefit by having the basic coaching technique I outline in his or her arsenal of leadership tools.

Results of the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey

by Seth Sinclair

Every year, the Federal government surveys its workforce to measure Federal employees’ perceptions of whether, and to what extent, the conditions that characterize a successful organization are present in the agencies they work for.  The results of the survey provide managers throughout the government with insight into the challenges they face in leading their organizations, and help them make their organizations a better place to work.

“We believe this survey is one of the most valuable tools OPM provides to agencies,” says Katherine Archuleta, Director of the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).  “It helps agency leaders know and understand their employees, even at the department and office level.”

The results of the 2014 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) are now out (read them yourself at www.fedview.opm.gov), and, to few people’s surprise, employee satisfaction and commitment have decreased since the last survey—in 64 out of 64 questions.

Nearly 400,000 federal employees, working at 82 different agencies, responded to the 2014 survey between April and June 2014—fewer than half of all employees.  At a briefing on the survey, Archuleta told reporters “we have to remember that this has been a very difficult time for federal employees.  It’s going to take time for them to recover from an extended period of sequestration, furloughs, and a government shutdown.”

Only 56.9 percent of federal employees were satisfied with their jobs in 2014. compared to more than 70 percent of private sector employees—and only 38 percent had confidence that anything would be done with the survey results.

Sixty-two percent would recommend their organization as a good place to work, continuing a downward trend since 2011, and only 55 percent were satisfied with their organization overall.  Finally, only 38 percent of employees said that their senior leaders generated high levels of commitment and motivation.

It’s not a pretty picture—and results for a number of federal agencies were significantly worse than the norm.  When morale is low, employees are not engaged.  They don’t feel a responsibility for the success of their organization.  Quality suffers, and tension keeps people from doing their best work.

On December 23, Archuleta; Shaun Donovan, the Director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB); Beth Cobert, OMB’s Deputy Director for Management; and Meg McLaughlin, Deputy Director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office issued a memorandum to the heads of all executive departments and agencies, titled “Strengthening Employee Engagement and Organizational Performance.”

In it, the signatories referred to the results of the latest FEVS, and stated that the Obama Administration “is committed to improving employee morale, but there are no single solutions to improvement.  Rather, it will take actions at all levels of the organization to achieve our improvement targets.”

They suggested “simple fixes” like celebrating successes and increasing partnership conversations with unions, and “more challenging solutions” such as regular and meaningful performance discussions with supervisors and managers.

The memorandum charged every federal agency to identify a senior accountable official responsible for ensuring the agency’s commitment to improving employee engagement.  They also charged every agency to review, by January 31, 2015, the agency’s progress on employee engagement and its focus on these issues.

By 2016, all SES performance plans must include a measurable component related to action planning or results to improve employee engagement.  Every agency must incorporate engagement into their annual human resources performance plan, as well.

“This has been a very big focus across the administration,” Cobert told the Washington Post.  “It is something we talk about at virtually every President’s Management Council Meeting.  It is something the President talks about and stresses at cabinet meetings.  I know this is something the most senior levels care about.”

In subsequent posts, we’ll make some recommendations to the new “senior accountable officials” on what might be done to improve morale.  Since this is a coaching blog, though, you can be sure that one of our recommendations will be to increase and improve the level of coaching throughout the federal government!