VA cancels plans for employee satisfaction survey this year

Veterans Affairs leaders will not conduct their annual employee surveys this year, stating that they are confident that the majority of the workforce is happy with the direction of the department.

Late last week, the Office of Personnel Management announced in an email to federal workers that they had canceled plans for the 2025 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, typically conducted each spring. Officials had said for months they were revising the poll to better focus questions on key workplace issues and not extraneous topics, such as diversity programs.

The survey is mandated under federal code and provides an annual snapshot of employee satisfaction. Administration officials have not said whether they will provide other avenues for tracking those metrics.

Earlier this summer, in response to questions about workforce changes, Veterans Affairs officials said they would conduct their own all-employee survey in conjunction with the FEVS.

However, after last week’s decision, VA press secretary Pete Kasperowicz said that his department “is following OPM’s lead on this issue and will not be conducting the VA All-Employee Survey this year.”

He also dismissed concerns that the absence of the polling data would ignore concerns within the department’s workforce.

“VA employees are happy the department is fixing many of the problems left by the Biden administration and is making improvements across the agency,” he said in a statement.

The VA All-Employee Survey has been conducted every year since 2006. In 2012, the results ranked the department as the second-worst large federal agency to work for, out of 19 departments. By 2024, that ranking had risen to fifth-best.

About 72% of VA employees surveyed said they were satisfied with their jobs in 2024, up from about 55% a decade before. Officials from President Joe Biden’s administration frequently cited the survey as evidence that they were making workforce improvements throughout VA.

Whether this year’s survey would have shown continued optimism or new problems will remain unknown. Union officials and critics of President Donald Trump have strongly objected to a host of workforce reforms by his administration in recent months, including trimming nearly 30,000 jobs from the department payroll since January.

Earlier this month, VA Secretary Doug Collins announced plans sever ties with most federal employee unions, terminating their collective bargaining contracts.

About 450,000 federal employees currently work at VA hospitals, benefits centers and other offices. In the past, nearly three-fourths of the workforce participated in the employee surveys.