2003 Employee Attitude Survey: Analysis of Employee Comments

The Federal Aviation Administration FAA distributed 48,900 Employee Attitude Surveys to its employees in September 2003 of those, 22,720 completed surveys were returned. About 38 8,606 of the returned surveys contained typed or hand-written comments. A 33 random sample of commented surveys 2,860 surveys across FAA lines of business and major organizations was selected for transcription and content coding. Of the total codes assigned, 12,703 91 were considered negative in tone, and 1,193 9 were positive. Comment categories i.e., combined topics and topics were chosen for presentation by rank-ordering codes for positive and negative comment categoriestopics. The top 50 of positive comments included four categoriestopics confidence in leadership, satisfaction with job overall, commitmentloyalty to the FAA, and confidence in nonsupervisory employees. The top 50 of negative comments included 20 categoriestopics. Of these, the categoriestopics representing the highest proportion of negative comments were confidence in leadership morale privatizationfuture contracting understaffing FAA policies, practices, and programs encouraging hard work management concern for employees promotion equity comments about the survey and trust. The high number of negative comments included in this report should not compel the reader to conclude that employees were extremely dissatisfied overall. In fact, the quantitative reports of response frequencies to the closed-ended items on the survey revealed a variety of areas where most employees were satisfied. For a balanced view of employee feedback, consider the results from the quantitative reports along with employee comments from the survey.