Federal Managers Association

In the News

• Feds wary of skills-based hiring survey after 15 months of attacks - May 11, 2026

• The combination of a lack of outreach around a newly deployed survey of federal workers’ skillsets with the recent flood of layoffs, purges and reorganizations has made some reluctant to participate in the bipartisan initiative.

  Erich Wagner, Government Executive

  Some federal workers this week have expressed reluctance to participate in the Office of Personnel Management’s latest phase of a long-running bipartisan initiative, something experts say could mark an unintended consequence of the Trump administration’s campaign against federal workers it perceives as disloyal.
  
  This week, OPM deployed its federal workforce competency initiative survey to roughly 550,000 employees. The questionnaire, which has previously been fielded both in 2021 and 2024, queries feds about the skillsets needed to perform their jobs, a key piece in the ongoing effort to shift away from degree- and qualification-based jobseeker evaluations and toward skills-based hiring, long a priority of both Republican and Democratic administrations.

  To read the full article, click here.

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