Navigating OMB’s new organizational health guidance

What?

On April 13, 2023, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) called on agencies to increase meaningful in-person work and announced new measures to improve organizational health and organizational performance. OMB Memo M-23-15 outlines steps executive departments and agencies will take to:

• Continue to improve organizational health and performance in order to meet agency missions
• Use data to make informed decisions on where to improve agency work environments

Organizational Health is an organization’s ability to drive performance results collectively in support of its mission, deliver programs and services, and meet stakeholder needs and priorities on an ongoing basis. An organization’s health may include considerations such as resilience, capability, and capacity. 

Organizational Performance is an organization’s effectiveness in delivering mission aligned results. Effectiveness and results can be measured by a range of indicators and evidence, both internal and external to the organization. 

Who?

Agencies:

Agriculture

Commerce

Defense

Education

Energy

Environmental
Protection Agency

Health and
Human Services

Housing and Urban
Development

Homeland Security

Interior

Justice

Labor

National Aeronautics
and Space Administration

State

Transportation

Treasury

Veterans Affairs

The path forward

The memo gives agencies a clear directive to take a closer look at performance, employee satisfaction, and customer experience. While there’s no one-size-fits-all approach, agencies can be intentional as they chart their path forward. Here’s how:

Communicate

• Communicate early. It’s important to foster trust through honest conversations. Be transparent with staff about what changes they can expect to see and how they’ll be involved throughout the process.
• Ask employees what they need. Check in with staff through channels like surveys, focus groups, office hours, and all-hands meetings. 
• Listen to staff feedback – and act. Engage employees and create buy-in by establishing feedback loops. Identify concerns and resistance points, create key messages, and respond with timely communications.

Plan

• Establish your response and planning team. Identify the main players and extended support team. Define expectations, roles, and responsibilities.
• Understand the status quo. Conduct a rapid organizational assessment to get a current-state view of existing processes, data, and metrics.
• Develop an action plan with clear objectives. Align on assessment implications, desired outcomes, and timeline.

Act

• Leverage existing information. Gather and analyze existing organizational performance data, identify gaps, and develop an outline for what measurements need to be captured. 
• Initiate workforce planning.
  Ensure you have the right people, roles, and capacity to optimize agency performance and deliver the mission.
• Lead with facts. Drive changes to organizational health and performance through data-based insights.