The FEVS Is Gone, the Survey Is Not: OPM's Final Rule Sets 10 Required Questions and Codifies Hiring Committees

Bottom line

The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey ended this year. The legal duty to survey federal employees did not. OPM’s final rule, published Thursday, October 29, and effective November 30, keeps that duty with each agency, shrinks the governmentwide question list from 16 to 10, and writes the Strategic Hiring Committees and Annual Staffing Plans of Executive Order 14356 into regulation ^{[1, 4]}.

What happened

The survey half. Section 1128 of the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2004 requires every agency to survey its employees each year and tells OPM to prescribe common questions so results can be compared across agencies, according to the rule ^[1]. For years the FEVS satisfied that requirement, because OPM folded the required items into it ^[1]. OPM paused the survey in 2025, then canceled it ^[1]. The rule’s preamble says OPM ended governmentwide administration in 2026 because the survey “had become a check-the-box activity” ^[1].

OPM’s July 9 memo had already told agencies to run their own 2026 surveys and, “at a minimum,” to include the 10 proposed questions ^[2]. The final rule makes that list binding. OPM made no changes to the proposed items ^[1].

What the new list asks. Five questions survive from the 2016 list: the one on managers communicating goals (now “clearly”), coworker cooperation, recognition of performance differences, knowing how your work relates to agency goals, and disclosing a suspected violation “without fear of reprisal” ^{[1, 3]}. The new items are these ^[1]:

• Whether the supervisor gives ongoing feedback to help the employee succeed and progress.
• Whether the supervisor holds the team accountable for achieving results.
• Whether the employee feels empowered to get things done.
• Whether steps are taken in the work unit to deal with a poor performer “who cannot or will not improve.”
• What usually happens to poor performers in the work unit, with these choices: remain and improve, remain and continue to underperform, leave by removal or transfer, leave by quitting, or “There are no poor performers in my work unit.”

Gone are every “how satisfied are you” item, “My workload is reasonable,” “My talents are used well in the workplace,” “I recommend my organization as a good place to work,” and the item asking whether employees believe the survey results will be used to improve the workplace ^[3]. FedSmith summarized the July proposal as a move away from broad job-satisfaction measures toward management accountability and the handling of underperformers ^[5].

Six of the nine public comments addressed the survey ^[1]. Several argued that 10 items cannot cover the topics Congress listed, which include the work environment, rewards and recognition, and professional development ^[1]. OPM’s answer is that the statute’s topics attach to an agency’s survey as a whole, including questions the agency writes itself, so the prescribed items are “a floor rather than a ceiling” ^[1]. OPM mapped each item to a statutory topic; professional development rests on a single item, the one about supervisor feedback ^[1].

Disclosure. The 2016 rule listed six things every agency’s public posting had to include, among them response counts for each question and each answer choice ^[3]. The final rule drops that list. Agencies must still post results unless the agency head finds a national security risk, but each agency “may determine the specific content” of its release ^[1]. A new paragraph requires full results to reach OPM and OMB within 90 days of the survey closing ^[1]. OPM says implementation guidance will cover the instrument, response rates and item-level results, and that it will publish a crosswalk from the old questions to the new ones ^[1]. Neither has a date.

The hiring half. Executive Order 14356, signed October 15, 2025, ordered each agency to set up a Strategic Hiring Committee to approve “the creation or filling” of each vacancy and to prepare Annual Staffing Plans with OPM and OMB ^[4]. The rule adds a new 5 CFR 250.204(f): the committee must include the deputy secretary or equivalent, the chief of staff to the agency head and the chief human capital officer, and it must keep hiring consistent with mission needs and the staffing plan ^[1]. Annual Staffing Plans and quarterly reviews replace the old Human Capital Operating Plan, Human Capital Reviews and HRStat ^[1]. Agency heads must now certify each year that the chief human capital officer has enough “visibility, oversight, and control” ^[1].

The rule also removes the words “and diverse” and “diverse” from section 250.203 ^[1]. OPM says statutory obligations, including the merit principle that recruitment draw “from all segments of society,” are unchanged ^[1].

What it means for you

Employees. The survey you take from now on will look different depending on where you work. Agencies choose timing, platform and method ^{[2, 5]}. Under the old rule, data had to be collected by December 31 each year, and the October rule leaves that paragraph in place ^{[1, 3]}. The preamble also says agencies “remain bound by the survey regulations in effect at the time a survey is administered” ^[1]. Read literally, an agency surveying before November 30 is still under the 16-question rule even though OPM’s July memo told it to use the 10 ^{[1, 2]}. OPM has not explained how it will treat surveys that fall on either side of that date.

On confidentiality, OPM points to its Employee Survey Playbook and the Privacy Act and says it will watch response rates for signs of eroding trust ^[1]. The rule itself sets no minimum reporting threshold for small units ^[1].

Supervisors and managers. Four of the ten items are about how you manage: your feedback, your team’s accountability, and two on poor performers ^[1]. The last of those is not an agree-or-disagree item. It asks employees to report what usually happens to poor performers, which turns the answer into a count agencies will have to send OPM and OMB ^[1]. The preamble describes the survey as placing responsibility for acting on feedback “with the agency leaders best positioned to respond to it” ^[1].

Applicants and employees seeking promotion. The committees are not new; agencies have operated them under the executive order since late 2025 ^{[1, 4]}. What changes is that they now sit in OPM’s regulations. The rule says the committee has no examining authority and that rating, ranking and certification still run under 5 U.S.C. 3317 and 3318 ^[1]. The executive order directs the committee to keep hiring consistent with “the priorities of my Administration”; the regulation’s text uses mission needs and the staffing plan instead ^{[1, 4]}. The rule names the Office of Special Counsel as the place to go for political-affiliation discrimination ^[1]. Hiring timelines under the Merit Hiring Plan were the subject of the October 6 memo.

Contractors. Section 250.205(c) requires every staffing plan to consider “reduction of unnecessary or low-value contractor positions,” alongside layer cuts and consolidation ^[1]. The executive order used nearly the same words ^[4]. It is now a standing planning requirement, reviewed annually by OPM and OMB ^[1].

HR offices. OPM estimates 100 hours per agency in the first year, about $1.25 million across more than 80 agencies, and 120 hours a year after that ^[1]. One commenter called that an understatement; OPM kept the estimate ^[1].

• When OPM will issue implementation guidance and the question crosswalk ^[1].
• What minimum content agency public releases must carry ^[1].
• Whether OPM will publish governmentwide comparisons from the 10 items, and when ^[1].

Questions you’re probably asking

Is the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey coming back?

No. OPM stopped administering the FEVS governmentwide in 2026, after canceling the 2025 survey ^{[1, 2]}. Each agency must now run its own annual survey that includes OPM’s required questions ^{[1, 2]}.

What questions are required on the new federal employee survey?

Ten, listed in 5 CFR 250.302(a)(2) as of November 30 ^[1]. Five carry over from the old list of 16, one of them reworded; the new items ask about supervisor feedback, team accountability, feeling empowered and how poor performers are handled ^{[1, 3]}.

When will federal employees take the 2026 agency employee surveys?

Your agency sets the date, platform and method ^{[2, 5]}. OPM tells employees to ask their agency human resources office ^[2].

Will agency employee survey results be made public?

Yes, unless the agency head finds that posting them would harm national security ^[1]. Each agency now decides what its public release contains, and full results go to OPM and OMB within 90 days of the survey closing ^[1].

Does a Strategic Hiring Committee decide who gets hired for my job application?

OPM says no: the committee oversees which positions are created and filled, and the rule gives it no rating, ranking or certification authority ^[1]. Applicants who suspect political-affiliation discrimination can go to the Office of Special Counsel ^[1].

What I’m watching

• November 30: the rule takes effect, including the 10 questions and the agency-head certification ^[1].
• December 31: the collection deadline for this year’s agency surveys under section 250.303(b) ^[3].
• No date set: OPM’s implementation guidance and crosswalk ^[1].