Update on the 2025 Smithsonian Employee Perspective Survey

We are reevaluating and working to improve the survey to better meet the needs of both staff and leadership.

Each May, we conduct the Smithsonian Employee Perspective Survey (SEPS), which is patterned after the broader federal employee survey—referred to as the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS). This approach allows us to benchmark our results against other federal agencies and participate in the annual Best Places to Work in Government rankings. This alignment also means that we run our survey around the same time as the rest of the federal government so that our results are from a comparable period.

This year, the Office of Personnel Management has postponed the FEVS until at least the end of the calendar year. Based on this announcement, we have decided not to run SEPS this year.

We are going to use this additional time to reevaluate and improve the current survey without losing what is working or the questions that are necessary for the Institution to participate in the Best Places to Work in the Government. For example, we will:

• Explore revamping the survey to better meet the Smithsonian’s needs. This will give us an opportunity to address some of the areas that have made the survey difficult to use, such as a lack of clarity in the wording of some questions as well as its length.
• Consider more effective ways to solicit and extract insights from the written comments.

This is a year in which we are experiencing a lot of change, and I assure you that we remain committed to gathering your input and acting on it. To ensure we maintain open communication, we will be running periodic pulse surveys—short, issue-driven surveys—that will give you an ability to provide input and feedback to the leadership team.

We know that these pulse surveys will allow us to communicate more often and drill deeper into specific topics in meaningful ways. It will also help inform updates to the annual SEPS survey tool when it returns.

Thank you for all that you do for the Smithsonian.