With shrinking budgets and job freezes, teamwork among federal employees is more critical than ever to ensure the delivery of quality services to the American people.
The good news is that teamwork received the second highest score of the 10 workplace categories included the 2012 Partnership for Public Service’s “Best Places to Work in the Federal Government” rankings. Based on the views of nearly 700,000 federal employees, teamwork was given a score of 64.4 on a scale of 100.
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This is one in a series of reports on the 2012 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. For more news and insights on innovations at work in government, please sign up for the AOL Gov newsletter. For the quickest updates, like us on Facebook.
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The survey measured a number of factors, including the extent to which employees believe they can communicate effectively both inside and outside of their teams and organizations, operate in a friendly work atmosphere and produce a high quality work product.
Max Stier, president and CEO of the Partnership, said teamwork within an organization is essential to get things done. But he added that collaboration and coordination on issues that cut across agency boundaries such as economic development, job training or homelessness is also very important.
“This kind of cross-agency teamwork is critical in meeting many of the challenges we now face,” said Stier.
He cited the example of the Johnson Space Center where new employees are given tours of the launch site and told, “Hey look this is what this is all about. Your work enables us to send rockets into space. It doesn’t cost money to do this. It’s smart management,” Stier said.
Other agencies were taking innovating steps to build teamwork, the Partnership said. The Treasury Department launched several department-wide initiatives to improve performance.
The scores are based on a survey of federal government employees conducted earlier this year by the Office of Personnel Management.
Following are the top five agencies for teamwork ratings at large, mid-size, and small federal agencies, and agency subcomponents. The full rankings and analysis are at the Partnership for Public Service’s Best Places to Work website.
Large Agencies – Index Scores
Mid-Size Agencies – Index Scores
Small Agencies – Index Scores
Agency Subcomponents – Index Scores
