25 years of survey trends indicate that employees are still critical of supervisors’ management skills.

Federal supervisors serve a critical role because they are responsible for facilitating the accomplishment of the Federal Government’s missions through the efforts of their employees. Results from 25 years of MSPB’s Merit Principles Survey suggest that the majority of Federal employees are satisfied with their supervisors and respect their technical qualifications. However, they also perceive substantial room for improvement in supervisors’ managerial skills. While employee perceptions are just one indicator of supervisory quality, these perceptions suggest that agencies should continue evaluating whether they are holding supervisors accountable for exercising effective management skills.

One area that employees identified as presenting substantial managerial challenges is performance management. Supervisors are commonly viewed as not dealing effectively with poor performers—only 30 percent of 2005 and 22 percent of 2000 survey respondents gave their supervisors favorable marks on this item. When poor performers aren’t held accountable, it is more difficult for the team to achieve its goals and can have a negative impact on other employees who have to shoulder the extra burden.

Similarly, in 2007, only 49 percent of employees reported that rewards and recognition are based on performance. Although this represented a substantial increase over the first time the question was asked in 1983 (17 percent favorable), the fact that only half of employees saw a link between performance and outcomes could mean that awards provided by supervisors have limited motivational value.

Building trust between employees and their supervisors is another area that appears to need work. This becomes readily apparent in questions regarding employees’ trust of their supervisors in fairly and effectively exercising various personnel authorities (e.g., rating applicants, making selections, setting pay, and taking adverse actions), as seen in Figure 2. Ratings in each of these areas improved slightly compared to 1996, although fewer than 40 percent of employees expressed faith in their supervisors in any of these areas.

As these results show, there has been some progress in employees’ perceptions of supervisors’ managerial ability, yet this improvement has been modest. Given that supervisors accomplish their mission through their employees, it is essential that agencies select, develop, reward, and retain their supervisors based on the supervisor’s ability to effectively manage. Unless employees perceive that they are being managed well, it is highly unlikely that they will perform at their best. Additional longitudinal trends are summarized in the recent MSPB report, The Federal Government: A Model Employer or a Work In Progress?

Reprinted from Issues of Merit, a publication of the Office of Policy and Evaluation, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board.