Dear Colleagues,

At U.S. Department of Agriculture we know that our employees are our greatest assets. In order to make USDA the Best Place to Work, we must continue to listen to and engage with employees and act on feedback and ideas received. We value you and your work and welcome your views on ways to make USDA a model employer. In addition to the Federal Viewpoint Survey, the insights you provided when 54% of you took the 2021 Telework Survey were valuable and allowed us to inform policies to better reflect the current landscape, experiences and needs of employees. Last year, you shared your views and we listened and that resulted in expanded flexibilities for remote and telework, more guidance on strategies and activities as we navigated our return to the physical workplace, and additional tools and resources such as a Future of Work Toolkit and a supervisory guidebook to support a successful hybrid workplace. 

Because we understand the experiences of our employees are critical to reimagining how we work, we are launching a follow-up survey. The survey provides you with the opportunity to share your perspectives and insights on what you need to enhance your work experience and what the future of work looks like for USDA. We need to hear from you about what is working just as much as we need to hear about what we need to improve—and the more employees participate, the better our data and actions. We continue to deliver on our promise to listen and learn from our employees. It is the only way forward. This year, let’s commit to surpassing the 54% response rate and reach a goal of 60%!

USDA employees will have access to the survey for two weeks starting today, Oct. 18, through Tuesday, Nov. 1. The survey is completely anonymous, voluntary and should take approximately 15 to 30 minutes to complete. You may use official time to complete the survey. 

2022 Survey Link: https://survey.fedw1.medallia.com/?FutureOfWorkSurvey 

We want our employees to know that listening to your feedback is not a one-and-done process. We believe sharing results to inform decisions should be ongoing. Insights from this survey, coupled with our analysis of 2022 FEVS results, will help guide our long-term future of work strategies. 

We also owe our employees transparent communication about the results and a commitment to making decisions based on that data. We are listening, and we want to ensure how we work, the policies and practices in our workspaces, and how we lead as leaders reflect our commitment to our employees. The Office of Customer Experience will work with leadership across USDA to make meaning of the data, identify opportunities for policy changes, and determine additional actions needed to make USDA the Best Place to Work. 

Thank you for sharing your valuable feedback and supporting our journey toward a highly motivated and thriving workforce.

Future of Work Taskforce

See this and other announcements on OneUSDA Intranet.