Our people | Employee engagement
Recognizing performance — the Postmaster General Sustainability award
In 2010, USPS recognized the value of employee contributions to its sustainability efforts with first-ever Postmaster General Sustainability Excellence awards.
Teams from across the country submitted detailed accounts of their sustainability projects, and more than 30 were nominated in these categories: waste reduction and recycling, energy efficiency, green transportation, green IT and electronic stewardship, and promoting and selling green services to customers.
Winning projects included zero waste initiatives, lighting upgrades, and greener and faster ways to print operational reports. Together, these teams’ efforts contributed more than $23 million in savings and cost avoidance.
USE LESS. MAKE MORE.
USPS field managers know that helping reduce corporate energy and fuel use can save money and reduce our carbon footprint.
The Postal Service is the first federal agency to add energy and fuel reduction metrics to its managers’ annual pay-for-performance reviews. Facility energy and vehicle fuel are included in their national performance assessment scores each year.
Employee diversity
Diversity of people and perspectives is an important part of the Postal Service’s success. USPS is one of the leading employers in America for diversity — minorities make up 39 percent of our workforce. And 40 percent of our employees are women. The Postal Service also employs more than 4,000 employees with disabilities. Black Enterprise and Hispanic Business magazines rank the Postal Service as a leader in workforce diversity.
Voice of the Employee
We know that if we’re going to engage employees, we need to listen to what they have to say. The USPS “Voice of the Employee” survey is intended to help that happen at all levels of our organization.
Our survey measures employee engagement — how well the Postal Service is engaging employees in the organization’s mission and efforts, including our sustainability efforts.
In FY 2010, the survey revealed that while attitudes remain positive in many areas — 62 percent of our employees responded favorably to our efforts to engage them — there are opportunities to improve the quality and frequency of communication to employees about how they are performing individually, as well as how their units are performing, and about their contribution to USPS growth.
Several sustainability questions were added to this year’s survey to gauge how employees perceive our green communications to them and the opportunities for them to get involved.