OPM Cancels Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey for 2025, Retooling for 2026

The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) is officially scrapped for 2025. The cancellation from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) comes after months of delays in launching the survey. 

The survey is considered the flagship federal survey measuring job satisfaction and workplace motivation among the federal workforce. It will return next year with retooled questions. 

“In view of President Trump’s realignment of the federal workforce, and in order to thoughtfully recalibrate the FEVS to align with administration objectives, OPM has decided not to administer the FEVS this year,” Federal News Network reported OPM said in email to Chief Human Capital Officers (CHCOs). “Instead, OPM will update the questions and resume administering the FEVS on its regular schedule.”

In a statement, OPM Director Scott Kupor noted the agency is “revising FEVS to remove questions added by the Biden-Harris administration and to refocus on core administration priorities: to restore a high-performance, high-efficiency and merit-based civil service.”

Impact of No 2025 FEVS

The lack of a government-wide OPM-administered survey for 2025 means that agencies will be generally without updated data on how federal employees are feeling about their jobs, their dedication to agency missions, and their views on their supervisors and senior leadership. 

Exactly how agencies will comply with the statutory requirement for agencies to conduct an annual workforce survey (5 CFR Part 250 Subpart C) remains unclear.

Federal workforce advocates see both pitfalls and the potential for progress. They spoke exclusively to FEDmanager about the impact of the survey cancellation for this year. 

"The decision to cancel this year's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey is deeply disappointing,” said Max Stier, Partnership for Public Service’s President and CEO. “Many agency leaders have used the invaluable data they gather from the FEVS to create remarkable change in employee engagement and agency performance. By making this decision, the administration is depriving itself of the ability to make data-driven leadership decisions that can help government better deliver for the public.”

“The current administration is prioritizing hiring, retention, and efficiency- primarily for positions they deem a priority for national security, those securing borders and supporting the warfighter. But without FEVS data, we’re flying blind on what motivates federal employees to stay, what drives performance, and what barriers exist to transformation. We lose the ability to benchmark progress, identify systemic risks, and tailor interventions that actually work,” said Mika Cross, Government Workplace Expert and Founder of Strategy@Work, a workplace consulting firm. 

“FEVS provides leaders with a critical pulse on their organizations, offering insights into what is working well and where improvements are needed. It is one of the few tools that captures the lived experiences of employees, reflecting both the organizational culture and the effectiveness of leadership,” said a Department of Justice (DOJ) component HR employee now in the deferred resignation program. “Skipping a year means agencies will lose a valuable opportunity to assess their culture, evaluate whether leadership styles are effective, and gauge whether employees respect and trust their leaders and the strategic direction of the organization.”

However, some see potential for rebranding FEVS into a more effective tool. 

“This could be the best news for making FEVS meaningful.  OPM should allow agencies to do their own administration of the annual engagement survey, and simply integrate the data up to a centralized dashboard - something that is technologically feasible TODAY.  Letting agencies do their own surveys - while requiring the 16 mandatory questions for OPM’s top level oversight and planning - enables results to be fed MUCH faster to agency managers and executives so they can take action to improve work environments for employees,” said Sydney Heimbrock, a former OPM executive who serves as Chief Industry Advisor for Public Sector at Qualtrics, a cloud-based survey company.