Welcome and thank you for joining us. My guest today is Scott Kupor, director of the Office of Personnel Management. Director Kupor, thanks so much for being here today.
Thanks for having me, Drew.
Of course. So in 2026, we're seeing OPM's efforts switch from instead of the rapid personnel actions, executive orders, and workforce overhauls that really took place throughout 2025, it seems like things now are about making much deeper, more long-term policy or regulatory changes for the federal workforce. There's a lot that we could cover in that vein, but I wanted to focus today on a few key changes that have been especially impactful for federal employees and agencies recently. One of those is OPM's final rule on performance management, which is now allowing for a force distribution system and limiting the number of employees that can be rated at the highest levels of the performance rating scale. So I wanted to ask you first if you can just talk through the practical implications of what that's going to mean and what are the changes that employees should expect to see from that.
Sure. Yeah. So the big thing we're trying to do is really create an accountable and high performance culture within government. So if you look historically at the ratings, not everybody but most people get ranked one through five with five being the highest and one being the lowest. Traditionally over time something like 99 plus percent of people have been ranked either a three, four or five, meaning they are meeting expectations or, you know, materially exceeding expectations, and only about 0.3% of people have been below expectations. Our view is that what we really want to see is number one, accountability on the low end. So really make sure that if people truly are underperforming that we identify those underperformers and either reform them and or unfortunately in some cases potentially may have to exit them if they can't perform the job. And then on the other end what we're really trying to do is create differentiation. So in my view, you know, it's probably not reasonable that 99% of the people are all performing, you know, at or roughly at, you know, kind of similar levels, and so the whole idea behind the performance management standards is to create differentiation on the top end. So, as you mentioned, what that will do is for the fours and fives, which are people who are kind of, you know, exceeding expectations is what a four or five means, we will have a numerical limit on the number of people who can go there. We haven't yet published that number. That's actually going through review right now, but I suspect in the next couple weeks certainly we'll publish that number. But the idea here is to create essentially a high performance culture. And what we think that means is people want to know that if people are low performers that they're being either again reformed and or held accountable. And then on the high end that when people really knock the cover off the ball that we're not afraid to say, okay, like we differentiate between performance, and then from a rewards and recognition and promotion perspective the corollary to that is to make sure that we disproportionately reward that top end of individuals who are truly, you know, going above and beyond.
And can you talk about what OPM's role is in this now that the final rule is out? You talked about having maybe a couple other things coming down the pipeline here, but how is OPM going to be helping agencies implement this or oversee that change?
Yeah, so this is a change by the way for this fiscal year that will be in effect for pretty much everybody in the federal system. So the rule around SES, the senior executives, obviously came out last year. The GS rule, which is obviously the broad population of individuals, is there, and then the final piece of that will be SLS and SPS, which are, you know, kind of very, you know, highly ranked, you know, individual contributor roles in various organizations. So we expect all those will be done. The final one will be the SLSP one that's actually finished most of its review and just needs to actually be executed on, you know, by OPM on behalf of the OPM organization. So our job from here on out, and we've done a couple of these already, is basically the implementation of this now. So we put out some guidance already. We've had some meetings with what are called the CHCO councils, which are the representations of the, you know, CHCOs, which are the senior HR officials in government. And then we actually have a second round of implementation feedback that will go out also shortly once we set the numerical numbers. And so part of what we're doing, number one, is just help people understand how to implement this, what they should do. Two will be making sure we're tracking this appropriately. So making sure that we can report on it and ultimately kind of determine how things are, and then importantly also make sure that they understand on the implementation side that we're talking about things at the overall agency level. So we recognize that yes, within an agency there might be some groups who truly outperform other groups and therefore you might have a higher representation of people who exceed expectations in that group and that's totally fine. And so we're really trying to look at the aggregate level at the agency and again with the goal of making sure that we truly differentiate outstanding performance.
And just one final point on this front, employees who maybe had, you know, have historically been used to getting those high performing levels, maybe they're going to end up with a three instead of a four or five as they may have for many years. Do you have any recommendations or guidance for how agencies or supervisors can kind of deal with, you know, changing a system to, you know, be a little bit more distributed evenly so to speak.
Yeah. So look, some of this is an education and a cultural change opportunity for the agency. So look, the very honest answer is a three is actually good. What a three means is you are actually meeting expectations. That means you show up every day, you do your work at a high quality, you perform the expectations that are required of you, and there's nothing wrong with that. I think unfortunately we have kind of, you know, created an inflated system before where we've said, hey, like everybody needs to be ranked a four or five. That's just not the reality in most organizations. Like most organizations need and there should be a large bolus of people who are actually, you know, doing the work that is required of them every day. And then typically what you see is obviously on the tails you have unfortunately some people who can't perform on the low end and then a smaller number, say, people who can perform on the high end. So some of this again is education. The other thing we need to do, and, you know, we're doing this here at OPM and recommending to other agencies, is if we're saying that a three is good performance, we need to look at our compensation policies and make sure that reflects that. So historically I can tell you for example at OPM we have not awarded bonuses to people who received a three rating. Well in this new model that doesn't make sense in my mind because look, I think it's perfectly reasonable for somebody to have a bonus if they are actually doing what they're supposed to be doing. And so, you know, for example we have made that policy change that people who receive a three will receive bonuses. At the same time we want to see greater differentiation. So the percentage bonus that a person who receives a three, you know, will be different than what a four or five is. But certainly the idea here is not to be punitive and to take money away from people who are used to getting bonuses, but to enable kind of number one, realistic ratings for, you know, how people perform, and then number two, to make sure that we do disproportionately reward the people who ultimately are disproportionately adding to the overall accomplishments of the organization.
And just briefly, that change is within OPM, but is that something you're also recommending other agencies do too?
Yes, we are. Yes, we've told, yeah, some of the agencies were already doing this, but yes, we've told them, look, to the extent you have compensation policies that are, you know, incompatible with the overall idea that we are effectively rerating what it means for acceptable performance, yes, we are encouraging everybody to do that and I suspect that most agencies will do that.
One other big change that OPM has just recently put out as well is proposed regulations to do a big update to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. Knowing that this was canceled in 2025 and you've spoken previously about, you know, wanting to make changes to the survey, now we're seeing, you know, changes to the content like the questions being asked and also the way that it's going to be distributed. So can you talk about, you know, why OPM decided to make this change where you're having agencies individually distribute or administer FEVS rather than OPM?
Yeah. So what we've done is you're exactly right. So the changes are number one is we are distributing it out now. As part of distributing it out we have provided in our guidance a set of questions and recommendations that we think every agency should ask. And then the whole purpose of distributing it is really twofold. One is to enable agencies to add questions that are specific to their mission or their particular operational challenges. So you can imagine in an organization of OPM which is a couple thousand people versus let's take, you know, I don't know, HHS or IRS or somebody that's got, you know, 50 plus thousand people, you might want to learn different things and there might be different challenges trying to assess. So we want to enable the idea of customization for the agencies. The other thing that we're doing, and we're really encouraging people and we do this at OPM, is I don't think the frequency makes sense. I don't think an annual survey really gives you as much insight as is appropriate. What you really care about over time in these things is doing this on a regular basis and quite frankly being able to track the time series data associated with that at a reasonable enough interval so that we can actually make changes. And, you know, my personal view is what I believe FEVS became was more of an annual exercise and not that the agencies didn't take it seriously, but, you know, the scores were much more almost, you know, unfortunately sometimes a vanity metric as opposed to the actual lessons that we learn from doing that and what it can mean in terms of reforming the workforce. So what we at OPM are doing, and we're encouraging agencies to do this, obviously they'll do what they think makes sense, is we do a quarterly what we call a pulse survey. It's intended to be very short. So it's typically 10 or 12 questions. We ask the same questions every time. We sometimes have added some additional stuff. So as an example in our last go-round we added some AI questions because we really want to understand are people getting the tools they need? Are they getting the education they need? And then at our, we actually have our staff meeting tomorrow, Thursday, and as part of that we will review the latest quarter numbers and go over it and then develop an action plan for each of the managers to say, okay, look, based on what we learned, what do we need to do. And so that's really what we're trying to do with FEVS. I think the idea is not like we're not trying to, you know, get rid of this. In fact, the opposite is true, which is we want to make this more of a regular ongoing implementation among agencies to answer the questions that are most relevant to the agencies and to drive actionable changes in behavior. And I just don't think a once a year survey does that. And as I said, I think, you know, something that's a one-size-fits-all is less valuable in these days than something that's more customizable to the particular needs of an agency.
Just considering the fact that this is all new for 2026, can you talk about either, you know, any potential challenges or pitfalls you see agencies potentially running into that they're doing this for the first time and how OPM is helping them kind of work through this shift.
Yes. So we actually also spoke at this last, at our last CHCO Council, our meeting of the kind of the heads of HR for the various large agencies. And I'd say there are a couple buckets of things. Number one, by the way, there are a number of agencies who have been doing what we've been promoting, which is kind of more ongoing kind of granular level employee engagement surveys is often obviously how you hear people talk about the term. So number one I would say like the current state of people doing it is actually more advanced than obviously just everybody's solely relying on FEVS. So I think that's important. And then two, what we did at this last meeting was just kind of shared best practices. So for example, you know, some of this is very simple system stuff which is, okay, some people have implementations of software that they've developed that allow them to do this very simply and allow them to then granularly look at the data. And so we had a number of CHCOs who were kind of sharing best practices on how to do that. And then the third thing we're doing is look, just around helping give guidance around the types of questions to ask. So again, I think there is some stuff statutorily that we are required to ask based on the original kind of statute that put in place FEVS. And then we're trying to give guidance around, you know, other areas that we think are important. Look, at the end of the day, I mean, my view of this, and people may have a different view, what you really want to get out of these surveys is do people understand the objectives? Do they understand the organizational objectives? How that ties to their own individual objectives? Do they feel like the organization communicates effectively? Do their managers, you know, are they, you know, holding people accountable? Are they differentiating performance? Are they helping people from a career development perspective? I mean none of this to be quite honest is rocket science, but it's really valuable I think to have an ongoing kind of directional sense of are we addressing the things that ultimately will determine whether the agency itself can achieve its objectives.
And just digging a little bit more into the specific changes to the questions and the content that OPM's been looking at. It looked like from the proposed regulations that you had that you're adding in questions that were previously there about poor performers. Other questions about asking about, for example, workload or job satisfaction have been taken out. Can you just, you know, walk through what OPM's process was for deciding what should be the main core questions that agencies have to ask?
Yeah. So some of it as I mentioned by the way, some of it was statutory. So there are some requirements in the statute. And then outside of that what we really looked at was what do kind of people who do this for a living, what do they try to do? So for example, you may know this, but, you know, the Gallup poll has a set of questions that they often do for employee engagement surveys. There are a number of other agencies. And what you tend to find again is there's a common set of 10 or 12 questions that are really kind of geared towards again actionable things that we can do to make sure people understand their role in the organization, how what they do applies to the organization. By the way, we do, we have on our pulse survey, we still have kind of what you would call that overall satisfaction score, right? Which is okay, ultimately the question that I like, which is really a net promoter score question, is would you ultimately recommend, you know, your friend to join OPM for example in this case. And I think that's important. It's a very, you know, look, it's a very high level measure because there's lots of things ultimately that affect that. But again I think what's really important on all these things is it's the time series data that really matters. And so, you know, when we review this at our upcoming staff meeting we will look at not only the kind of, you know, ordinal numbers but more importantly we'll look at obviously the relative numbers in terms of, okay, this was a problem last time, are we kind of positive or negative in terms of our direction there, and if so like what do we need to do to make sure that we continue to move in the right direction.
