CONSUMER 

FINANCIAL 

PROTECTION 

BUREAU

Additional Actions 

Needed to Support a 

Fair and Inclusive 

Workplace

Report to Congressional Requesters

May 2016

GAO-16-62

United States Government Accountability Office
United States Government Accountability Office

Highlights of GAO-16-62, a report to 

congressional requesters

May 2016

CONSUMER FINANCIAL PROTECTION 

BUREAU

Additional Actions Needed to Support a Fair 

and Inclusive Workplace

What GAO Found

Nonexecutive employees at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) 

who responded to GAO’s survey identified strengths and areas for improvement 

in CFPB’s personnel practices and culture. Most respondents agreed that 

enthusiasm for CFPB’s mission is high and that immediate supervisors respect 

and value differences among individuals. However, GAO’s survey found 

heightened concerns related to fair treatment, trust that employees can raise 

concerns without fear of reprisal, confidence in complaint processes, and other 

matters. For survey items on these issues, more than 25 percent of respondents 

bureau-wide had unfavorable views, and dissatisfaction was above 35 percent in 

some CFPB offices and demographic groups. For example, about one-third of 

respondents disagreed with the statement that success at CFPB is based more 

on merit than on personal connections or favoritism. Disagreement was 40 

percent or more for a few offices that focus on examining institutions and among 

black respondents. 

As part of ongoing improvement efforts and in response to challenges it identified 

in late 2013 and early 2014, CFPB has worked to strengthen personnel 

management practices and enhance its diversity and inclusion efforts. In part to 

address weaknesses in personnel practices that may have contributed to 

perceptions of unfair treatment, CFPB has expanded management training, 

developed new guidance on personnel practices, and developed a new 

performance management system. CFPB has made progress in adopting 

leading diversity management practices identified in prior GAO work, such as

finalizing a diversity strategic plan, creating employee diversity groups, and 

expanding diversity training. In addition, CFPB launched a new initiative to 

strengthen its organizational culture that includes obtaining employee input on 

ideas for improving CFPB’s culture and addressing employee concerns. Finally, 

CFPB has strengthened its employee complaint processes by providing new 

training and guidance and creating feedback mechanisms to help evaluate 

progress in some areas. 

CFPB has taken steps to measure and communicate progress on these efforts, 

such as through its process for analyzing feedback from employee surveys. 

However, without additional steps in these areas, CFPB may miss opportunities 

to help ensure sustained commitment and accountability for its initiatives.

• CFPB’s diversity, inclusion, fairness, and culture efforts represent a

significant change management initiative, but CFPB does not

comprehensively report on its implementation goals and progress across

these efforts.

• CFPB has created some feedback mechanisms to evaluate the effectiveness

of its equal employment opportunity complaint process, but has not done the

same for its employee grievance processes.

View GAO-16-62. For more information,

contact Daniel Garcia-Diaz at (202) 512-8678 

or garciadiazd@gao.gov

Why GAO Did This Study

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform 

and Consumer Protection Act created 

CFPB to regulate the provision of 

consumer financial products and 

services. In 2014, congressional 

hearings included testimony from 

CFPB employees about allegations of 

discrimination and retaliation, which 

raised concerns about CFPB’s 

management practices and culture. 

GAO was asked to review personnel 

management and organizational 

culture issues at CFPB. This report 

examines (1) CFPB employees’ views 

on these issues and (2) CFPB’s efforts 

to strengthen personnel management 

and culture, among other objectives.

GAO reviewed relevant CFPB reports, 

policies, procedures, and other 

documents; surveyed CFPB 

employees and executives (with 62 

and 63 percent response rates, 

respectively) to gather their views on 

CFPB’s personnel practices and 

organizational culture; spoke with 

CFPB employees who contacted GAO 

through its phone and email hotlines; 

interviewed CFPB officials; and 

reviewed reports and 

recommendations from the Office of 

the Inspector General for the Board of 

Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System and CFPB. 

What GAO Recommends

GAO makes two recommendations to 

improve CFPB’s personnel 

management efforts, including 

developing a strategy for reporting on 

progress and creating feedback tools 

on its grievance processes in 

coordination with its employee union. 

CFPB concurred with both 

recommendations.
Page i GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Letter 1

Background 5

As a New Agency, CFPB Faced Personnel Management 

Challenges While Meeting Mission-Related Goals and 

Deadlines 13

Employees Reported Positive Aspects about CFPB but Also 

Concerns about Personnel Management, Fairness, and Trust 19

CFPB Has Taken Steps to Address Challenges, but Lacks Some 

Mechanisms to Support Sustained Commitment and 

Accountability 33

Conclusions 51

Recommendations for Executive Action 53

Agency Comments and Our Evaluation 53

Appendix I Objectives, Scope and Methodology 58

Appendix II Comments from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 64

Appendix III GAO Contact and Staff Acknowledgments 73

Tables

Table 1: Positive Survey Responses Related to Views on CFPB’s 

Mission, Supervisors, and Work Teams from GAO Survey 

of Nonexecutive CFPB Employees 21

Table 2. Survey Responses about Diversity and Inclusion for 

Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees 22

Table 3: Survey Responses on Favoritism in Personnel 

Management for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial 

Protection Bureau (CFPB) Employees 24

Table 4: Survey Responses on Discrimination for Nonexecutive 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) 

Employees 25

Table 5: Percentage of Survey Responses on Complaint 

Processes for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial 

Contents
Page ii GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Protection Bureau (CFPB) Employees Who Reported 

Having Experience with One of These Processes 27

Table 6: Survey Responses on Comfort Level in Raising Concerns 

for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees 28

Table 7: Survey Responses on Accountability for Nonexecutive 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) 

Employees 30

Table 8: Survey Responses on Employee Retention for 

Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees 31

Figures

Figure 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Organizational 

Chart 7

Figure 2: Total Number and Percentage of Consumer Financial 

Protection Bureau Employees by Division and Location, 

as of March 2015 8

Figure 3: Percentage of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

Employees by Race and Ethnicity, as of March 2015 9

Figure 4: Percentage of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

Employees by Gender and Age, as of March 2015 9

Figure 5: Total Number of CFPB Employees, March 31, 2011 

through March 31, 2015 15
Page iii GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Abbreviations

CFPB Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

Dodd-Frank Act Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer 

Protection Act

EEO Equal Employment Opportunity

EEOC Equal Employment Opportunity Commission

Inspector General Office of the Inspector General of the Board of 

Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau

MSPB Merit Systems Protection Board

No FEAR Act Notification and Federal Employee 

Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002

OMWI Office of Minority and Women Inclusion

OPM Office of Personnel Management

SEFL Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending

Treasury Department of the Treasury

This is a work of the U.S. government and is not subject to copyright protection in the 

United States. The published product may be reproduced and distributed in its entirety 

without further permission from GAO. However, because this work may contain 

copyrighted images or other material, permission from the copyright holder may be 

necessary if you wish to reproduce this material separately.
Page 1 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

441 G St. N.W.

Washington, DC 20548

May 19, 2016 

Congressional Requesters

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act (DoddFrank Act) created the Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection, also 

known as the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), to regulate 

the offering and provision of consumer financial products or services 

under the federal consumer financial laws.1 The act consolidated many of 

the consumer financial protection authorities previously shared by seven 

federal agencies into one. It also provided CFPB additional authorities 

related to supervising and enforcing federal consumer financial laws; 

handling consumer complaints; promoting financial education; and 

monitoring financial markets for risks to consumers. CFPB began 

operations on July 21, 2011, and its first director was appointed on 

January 4, 2012, and confirmed by the United States Senate on July 16, 

2013.

In December 2013, CFPB identified disparities in employees’ 

performance ratings for fiscal year 2013 by race, age, and office location.

In January 2014, CFPB management shared these findings with the 

CFPB employee union, and in March and May 2014, it shared reports 

summarizing ratings distributions and plans to address disparities with all 

employees. In March 2014, a press article reported on these ratings 

disparities and other alleged personnel matters.2 The House Financial 

Services Committee began an investigation into these matters and from 

April 2014 through June 2015 its Subcommittee on Oversight and 

Investigations held a series of hearings that included testimony by five

CFPB employees about allegations of discrimination and retaliation.3

Seven other CFPB employees provided the committee with anonymous 

1

Pub. L. No. 111-203, § 1011(a), 124 Stat. 1376, 1964 (2010). 

2

Rachel Witkowski, “CFPB Staff Evaluations Show Sharp Racial Disparities,” American 

Banker (Mar. 6, 2014). 

3

On April 2, 2014, the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations held the first 

hearing, titled “Allegations of Discrimination and Retaliation within the Consumer Financial 

Protection Bureau.” On May 21, 2014, June 18, 2014, July 30, 2014, and June 25, 2015, 

this subcommittee held additional hearings on these matters. 

Letter
Page 2 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

written statements about their allegations of unfair treatment by CFPB 

managers. On the basis of personal accounts these and other CFPB 

employees shared with Congress, members of Congress raised 

questions about the level of trust between CFPB’s management and 

employees and the health of CFPB’s organizational culture.

You asked us to review personnel management and the organizational 

culture at CFPB. In this report, we examine (1) CFPB’s early efforts as a 

new agency to establish personnel practices and organizational culture 

and challenges it encountered in promoting a diverse, inclusive, and fair 

workplace; (2) employees’ views on personnel management and 

organizational culture at CFPB; and (3) CFPB’s efforts to strengthen its 

personnel management practices and organizational culture.

To describe CFPB’s early efforts as a new agency to establish personnel 

practices and an organizational culture, we reviewed CFPB reports and 

documents, and testimony and public statements by CFPB officials. We 

obtained and analyzed CFPB workforce data for fiscal years 2011 to 2015 

to describe the growth in CFPB’s workforce. We also reviewed data and 

documentation related to CFPB’s initial efforts to identify and address 

specific personnel challenges. For example, we reviewed a 2013 report 

by a management consulting firm on CFPB’s diversity and inclusion 

efforts and CFPB’s internal analysis of disparities in performance ratings 

by race and other factors. In addition, to describe trends in the number 

and basis of employee complaints, we obtained and analyzed CFPB data 

for fiscal years 2011 to 2015 on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) 

complaints and grievances. To describe employee perspectives on 

challenges CFPB faced as a new agency, we reviewed the report by 

CFPB’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI) on listening 

sessions it held with employees from April through June 2014. We also 

interviewed current and former CFPB officials who were employed at 

CFPB in its first 2 years.

We obtained CFPB employees’ views on personnel management and 

organizational culture through interviews with current and former 

employees and two web-based surveys. To identify key issues and 

concerns related to CFPB’s personnel management practices and 

organizational culture and to inform survey development, we provided 

opportunities for all CFPB employees to meet or communicate with us 

individually in a confidential manner. We set up a GAO toll-free phone 

number and e-mail address for CFPB employees to use to arrange a 

meeting with our team or provide information. From August 2014 through 

May 2015, we held one-on-one interviews with 120 nonsupervisory and 
Page 3 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

supervisory staff. We implemented two web-based surveys of all 1,389 

nonexecutive employees and 57 executive employees as of January 31, 

2015.4 The survey response rates were 62 percent and 63 percent, 

respectively. For the nonexecutive survey, we carried out a statistical 

nonresponse bias analysis using available administrative data and 

determined that we could not assume the nonrespondents were missing 

at random. We found that the propensity to respond was statistically 

correlated with employee age and the CFPB division an employee 

worked in. Furthermore, we observed that responses to questions on the 

survey also correlated with employee age. For this reason, the results of 

the staff survey are presented as tabulations from a census survey. We 

do not make any attempt to extrapolate the findings to the 38 percent of 

eligible staff who chose not to complete our survey. Survey results that 

this report presents for CFPB employees who responded must not be 

taken to be representative of the proportion of the total CFPB population 

(or the total population of an office or demographic group) who would 

have agreed or disagreed with a survey question. For more information 

about the methodology for our surveys, see appendix I. We reviewed 

CFPB’s annual employee survey results for fiscal years 2013, 2014, and 

2015 to obtain additional perspectives from CFPB staff on the bureau’s 

personnel management-related issues. In addition, we reviewed 

documents and data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) 

and the Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) to provide information 

about the views of federal government employees on these issues.5 We 

assessed the reliability of these survey data by reviewing documentation 

of the methodology for these surveys and found these survey data to be 

reliable for our purposes.

To evaluate CFPB’s efforts to develop and strengthen its personnel 

management and organizational culture, we reviewed relevant CFPB 

reports, policies, procedures, and other documents. We used criteria from 

applicable federal regulations, leading practices for diversity and 

 4

For the purposes of this report, we defined CFPB executives as employees at pay grade 

80 or higher. According to CFPB officials, executive positions at pay grade 80 or above 

are comparable to positions in the Senior Executive Service at other federal agencies.

Based on this definition, CFPB executives include the Director, heads of divisions and 

offices, and their deputies. 

5

The Merit Systems Protection Board is an independent quasi-judicial agency in the 

executive branch that adjudicates employee appeals of personnel actions and conducts 

studies of the federal merit system. 
Page 4 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

managing organizational change identified in prior GAO reports, and GAO 

standards for internal control.6 To assess CFPB’s efforts to improve 

diversity and inclusion throughout the bureau, we reviewed the results of 

external reviews of CFPB’s diversity and inclusion efforts conducted by 

the Office of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the 

Federal Reserve System and CFPB (Inspector General) and a 

management consulting firm. We reviewed CFPB documentation and 

interviewed CFPB officials about efforts to strengthen personnel 

management and organizational culture, including the status of CFPB’s 

implementation of recommendations made by its OMWI and the Inspector 

General. To assess CFPB’s efforts to strengthen its processes for 

addressing employee complaints, we reviewed policies, procedures, and 

guidance related to EEO complaints and grievances. We also interviewed 

CFPB officials from the offices responsible for these complaint processes. 

For the parts of our work that involved the analysis of computerprocessed data, we assessed the reliability of these data and found that 

they were sufficiently reliable for our purposes. Data sets for which we 

conducted data reliability assessments include CFPB data on its 

workforce demographics and CFPB data on employee complaints. To 

assess the reliability of these data, we reviewed relevant documentation 

and conducted interviews with CFPB staff to review steps they took to 

collect and ensure the reliability of the data. In addition, we electronically 

tested data fields for missing values, outliers, and obvious errors. We 

determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for our purposes.

We conducted this performance audit from September 2014 to May 2016 

in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.

 6

GAO, Diversity Management: Expert-Identified Leading Practices and Agency Examples, 

GAO-05-90 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005), Aviation Acquisition: A Comprehensive 

Strategy Is Needed for Cultural Change at FAA, GAO/RCED-96-159 (Washington, D.C.: 

Aug. 22, 1996); Results Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and 

Organizational Transformations, GAO-03-669 (Washington, D.C.: July 2, 2003), and 

Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government, GAO/AIMD-00-21.3.1

(Washington, D.C.: November 1999).
Page 5 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

CFPB defines its mission as helping consumer finance markets work by 

making rules more effective, by consistently and fairly enforcing those 

rules, and by empowering consumers to take more control over their 

economic lives.

CFPB’s strategic plan articulates four broad goals:

• Prevent financial harm to consumers while promoting good practices 

that benefit them.

• Empower consumers to live better financial lives.

• Inform the public, policy-makers, and CFPB’s own policy-making with 

data-driven analysis of consumer finance markets and consumer 

behavior.

• Advance CFPB’s performance by maximizing resource productivity 

and enhancing impact.

CFPB was established as an independent bureau within the Federal 

Reserve System. According to CFPB data, CFPB had 646 employees as 

of September 30, 2011, and by March 31, 2015, had grown to 1,437 

employees. CFPB built its workforce by hiring employees with a range of 

backgrounds, including the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and the 

military. Under an employee transfer process outlined in the Dodd-Frank 

Act, CFPB hired more than 200 employees as transfers from six of the 

federal agencies from which it assumed some regulatory and 

enforcement responsibilities under the act.

7

 7

These agencies included the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Office of 

Thrift Supervision, Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, National Credit Union 

Administration, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and the Board of Governors of the 

Federal Reserve System, as well as Federal Reserve Banks. 

Background

CFPB’s Mission, 

Organizational Structure, 

and Workforce 

Demographics
Page 6 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

To fulfill its mission, CFPB was organized into six divisions, each with 

several offices (see fig. 1):

• Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending Division—Enforces 

compliance with federal consumer financial laws by supervising 

market participants and bringing enforcement actions.

• Operations Division—Builds and sustains CFPB’s internal 

infrastructure, such as technology and human capital; includes the 

Office of Consumer Response, which addresses consumer 

complaints and questions.

• Research, Markets, and Regulations Division—Conducts research 

to understand consumer financial markets issues, evaluates whether 

there is a need for regulation, and analyzes the costs and benefits of 

existing regulations.

• Legal Division—Monitors and helps to ensure CFPB’s compliance 

with all applicable laws and provides advice to CFPB’s director and 

other divisions.

• Consumer Education and Engagement Division—Provides 

information to consumers of financial products and services to help 

them make better-informed decisions.

• External Affairs Division—Manages CFPB’s relationships with 

external stakeholders; collects input from these stakeholders and 

informs them on matters related to CFPB’s work.
Page 7 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Figure 1: Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Organizational Chart

Note: As of April 2016, the individual who serves as the OMWI head was also the head of the Office 

of Equal Opportunity and Fairness.
Page 8 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

The Supervision, Enforcement, and Fair Lending (SEFL) division is the 

largest of CFPB’s divisions with 670 employees, as of March 2015 (see 

fig. 2). The supervision function in this division is carried out by CFPB’s 

Office of Supervision Examinations, which includes four component 

regional offices (the Midwest Region, the Northeast Region, the 

Southeast Region, and the West Region), and the Office of Supervision 

Policy. Also located within this division, the Office of Enforcement and the 

Office of Fair Lending and Equal Opportunity carry out responsibilities for 

enforcing consumer financial laws and promoting fair access to credit, 

respectively.

Figure 2: Total Number and Percentage of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Employees by Division and Location, as of 

March 2015

Note: In the chart on the right showing the breakdown of total employees by division, “Other” includes 

employees in the Office of the Director, the Office of Equal Opportunity and Fairness, the Director’s 

Financial Analysts program, and the Ombudsman office.

As of March 2015, according to CFPB data, about 69 percent of its nonHispanic workforce had identified themselves as white, about 18 percent 

had identified as black, and the remainder had identified as another race 

or two or more races (see fig. 3). As of this date, CFPB data indicated 

that 6 percent of its employees identified as Hispanic.
Page 9 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Figure 3: Percentage of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Employees by Race and Ethnicity, as of March 2015

Note: The “Other” category includes employees who selected American Indian, Alaska Native, Native 

Hawaiian, or Pacific Islander as their race.

Figure 4 shows the breakdown of CFPB’s workforce by gender and age, 

as of March 2015.

Figure 4: Percentage of Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Employees by 

Gender and Age, as of March 2015
Page 10 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Organizational culture is the underlying assumptions, beliefs, values, 

attitudes, and expectations shared by an organization’s members that 

affect their behavior and the behavior of the organization as a whole. We 

have previously reported that organizations with more constructive 

cultures generally perform better and are more effective. Within 

constructive cultures, employees also exhibit a stronger commitment to 

mission focus, accountability, coordination, and adaptability.8

In recent years, organizations in both the private and public sectors have 

strived to build diverse and inclusive workplaces, including an 

organizational culture that values diversity and inclusion. In a January 

2005 report, we defined diversity management as a process intended to 

create and maintain a positive work environment that values individuals’

similarities and differences, so that all can reach their potential and 

maximize their contributions to an organization’s strategic goals and 

objectives.9 We also identified a set of nine leading diversity management 

practices that should be considered when an organization is developing

and implementing diversity management.

• Top leadership commitment—a vision of diversity demonstrated 

and communicated throughout an organization by top-level 

management.

• Diversity as part of an organization’s strategic plan—a diversity 

strategy and plan that are developed and aligned with the 

organization’s strategic plan.

• Diversity linked to performance—the understanding that a more 

diverse and inclusive work environment can yield greater productivity 

and help improve individual and organizational performance.

• Measurement—a set of quantitative and qualitative measures of the 

impact of various aspects of an overall diversity program.

 8

GAO, Aviation Acquisition: A Comprehensive Strategy Is Needed for Cultural Change at 

FAA, GAO/RCED-96-159 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 22, 1996) and Securities and 

Exchange Commission: Improving Personnel Management Is Critical for Agency’s 

Effectiveness, GAO-13-621 (Washington, D.C.: July 18, 2013).

9

GAO, Diversity Management: Expert-Identified Leading Practices and Agency Examples, 

GAO-05-90 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005). 

Organizational Culture and 

Diversity Leading 

Practices
Page 11 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

• Accountability—the means to ensure that leaders are responsible for 

diversity by linking their performance assessment and compensation 

to the progress of diversity initiatives.

• Succession planning—an ongoing, strategic process for identifying 

and developing a diverse pool of talent for an organization’s potential 

future leaders.

• Recruitment—the process of attracting a supply of qualified, diverse 

applicants for employment.

• Employee involvement—the contribution of employees in driving 

diversity throughout an organization.

• Diversity training—organizational efforts to inform and educate 

management and staff about diversity.

The following CFPB offices partner together in leading CFPB’s efforts to 

promote diversity, inclusion, and equal employment opportunity:

• Office of Minority and Women Inclusion (OMWI). The Dodd-Frank 

Act required CFPB and other federal financial regulators to create an 

OMWI within each agency to deal with matters relating to diversity in 

management, employment, and business activities.10 CFPB created 

its OMWI office in January 2012. Among other things, CFPB’s OMWI 

is responsible for developing standards for equal employment 

opportunity and the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of the 

workforce and senior management of the agency. CFPB’s OMWI also 

has statutory responsibility for developing standards to encourage the 

use of minority- and women-owned businesses in CFPB 

procurements and for developing standards to assess the diversity 

and inclusion practices of entities CFPB regulates.

• Office of Civil Rights. From CFPB’s inception until February 2013, 

the Department of the Treasury (Treasury) directed CFPB’s Equal 

Employment Opportunity (EEO) program. In February 2013, CFPB 

established its Office of Equal Employment Opportunity to administer 

 10Pub. L. No. 111-203, § 342(a), 124 Stat. 1376, 1541 (2010) (codified at 12 U.S.C. § 

5452(a)).

CFPB Offices Responsible 

for Diversity and Inclusion 

Issues
Page 12 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

its EEO program.11 In November 2014, CFPB’s director renamed this 

office the Office of Civil Rights to better reflect the office’s oversight of 

not only compliance with EEO protections for CFPB employees, 

former employees, and applicants, but also protections for members 

of the public seeking to access CFPB programs and services. EEO 

programs are concerned with adherence to applicable federal statutes 

and regulations and Management Directives.12 The Equal 

Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) provides policy 

guidance and standards to federal agencies for establishing and 

maintaining effective EEO programs.

• Office of Human Capital. The Office of Human Capital is part of the 

Operations division and is led by the Chief Human Capital Officer. The 

Office of Human Capital developed CFPB’s Human Capital Strategic 

Plan for fiscal years 2013-2015 to provide a roadmap of human 

capital initiatives and priorities. CFPB’s Office of Human Capital has 

collaborated with the OMWI on implementing steps to promote 

diversity and inclusion through human capital policies and practices, 

such as in the areas of recruiting, hiring, training programs, and 

performance management.

 11This office is responsible for administering CFPB’s EEO program pursuant to federal 

sector equal opportunity regulations, 29 C.F.R. pt. 1614. 

12Applicable federal statutes include, but are not limited to, the Equal Pay Act of 1963, the 

Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967, and the 

Notification and Federal Employee Antidiscrimination and Retaliation Act of 2002 (No 

FEAR Act). The No FEAR Act imposed new requirements on federal agencies related to 

their longstanding obligation to provide a workplace free of discrimination and retaliation.

For example, section 301 of the act requires agencies to publicly disclose summary 

statistical data pertaining to employee complaints of employment discrimination. Pub. L. 

No. 107-174, § 301, 116 Stat. 566, 573 (codified at 5 U.S.C. § 2301 note).
Page 13 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

As CFPB leaders and employees worked to establish a new government 

agency, they faced pressure to quickly produce substantive results and 

meet challenging statutory deadlines. CFPB employees who were at the 

bureau in its first 2 years reported that they felt a strong desire to quickly 

and effectively put in place new protections for consumers. CFPB 

assumed some existing functions from other government agencies and 

began developing new examination, enforcement, and consumer 

education capabilities. For example, the Dodd-Frank Act charged CFPB 

with examining both large depository institutions and credit unions—which 

had previously been subject to federal oversight—and certain 

nondepository providers of financial products—which had not—to ensure 

that all of these entities comply with federal consumer financial laws.

13 In 

addition, the Dodd-Frank Act set forth a number of statutory deadlines for 

CFPB related to required rulemakings and reports to Congress. 

According to CFPB, it had issued or updated 23 rules by September 

2013.

Pressure to produce early results before CFPB had fully developed its 

operational infrastructure created what CFPB officials have described as 

a “start-up environment.” Similar to the environment at a private start-up 

company, CFPB employees were tasked with building new operational 

functions—including some government functions that had not existed 

before—and doing so in an environment in which project teams were 

short on resources and policies and processes were still being developed.

As CFPB employees worked to stand up the bureau and meet demanding 

deadlines, they faced challenges related to building the organizational 

and personnel infrastructure for a new agency. For example, as CFPB 

grew its workforce rapidly (see fig. 5), it had to integrate new employees 

coming from very different professional backgrounds. According to data 

from a December 2012 CFPB report on its progress in building its human 

capital about 60 percent of CFPB’s total workforce after its first year of 

operating consisted of employees from other federal government 

agencies and about 39 percent of its employees came from the private 

 13CFPB is authorized to supervise certain nonbank financial companies and large banks 

and credit unions with over $10 billion in assets and their affiliates for consumer protection 

purposes. See 12 U.S.C. §§ 5514 - 5515. 

As a New Agency, 

CFPB Faced 

Personnel 

Management 

Challenges While 

Meeting MissionRelated Goals and 

Deadlines
Page 14 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

sector, nonprofit sector, or other nongovernment employment.14 A July 

2011 CFPB report identified the need for CFPB to integrate employees 

coming from many different agencies and other backgrounds into a team 

with a cohesive organizational culture and noted that this had been a 

point of failure in other mergers of federal agencies.15 In addition, CFPB 

had to develop and strengthen personnel management practices, while 

trying to meet mission-related goals and deadlines. CFPB began setting 

up its key operational infrastructure, before it formally began operations in 

July 2011, and it continued to develop some policies and personnel 

management functions after it began operating. In its first few years, 

CFPB continued to work towards developing more robust processes for 

workforce planning, recruiting, and hiring and to expand and strengthen 

its personnel management practices in other areas, such as training and 

employee development. CFPB faced competing priorities related to 

meeting challenging statutory deadlines and devoting time and resources 

to building its organizational culture and providing staff development for 

its growing employee population. During this period, CFPB also leveraged 

existing operational infrastructure at Treasury to support some personnel 

management functions. For example, in fiscal years 2011 and 2012, 

CFPB contracted with Treasury to provide EEO complaint processing 

services.

 14According to this CFPB report, of the employees from other federal government 

agencies, 232 transferred to CFPB from the six agencies from which it assumed 

regulatory and enforcement responsibilities under the Dodd-Frank Act.

15CFPB, Developing Our Human Capital, Annual Report to Congress (July 21, 2011). 
Page 15 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Figure 5: Total Number of CFPB Employees, March 31, 2011 through March 31, 2015

In addition, CFPB took steps from its inception to promote a diverse and 

inclusive workforce, but it did not implement important elements of its 

current diversity efforts until 2015. CFPB established its OMWI in January 

2012, and appointed its first OMWI director on April 30, 2012. In OMWI’s 

first year, its efforts included working with the Office of Human Capital to 

support diversity in recruiting and hiring and analyzing employee survey 

results to identify opportunities to maintain and grow an inclusive 

workforce. An Inspector General analysis found that at the end of CFPB’s 

first few fiscal years (2011, 2012, and 2013), CFPB’s workforce was more 

diverse than a benchmark of external labor market diversity, but the level 

of diversity by race and ethnicity was lower at the senior management 

level (pay grades 80 and above) compared to lower pay grades during 

this period.16 In 2013, CFPB provided interactive diversity awareness 

 16Specifically, for fiscal years 2011, 2012, and 2013, the percentage of nonwhite 

employees in CFPB’s workforce was higher than the average percentage in the external 

labor market for 2006 through 2010, which the Inspector General measured using data 

from the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey. Office of the Inspector General 

of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the Consumer Financial 

Protection Bureau, The CFPB Can Enhance Its Diversity and Inclusion Efforts, 2015-MOC-002 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 4, 2015).
Page 16 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

training to employees, opened its in-house EEO office, and introduced 

guidance for managers on using structured interviews to avoid bias in 

hiring. As discussed later in this report, however, CFPB did not implement 

additional important elements of its current diversity efforts, such as 

mandatory diversity training and the creation of employee diversity 

groups, until 2015.

In 2013 and 2014, CFPB identified areas for improvement in its diversity 

and inclusion efforts and concerns about disparate outcomes in its 

performance management system. In spring 2013, CFPB’s OWMI 

contracted with a private consulting firm to conduct an initial baseline 

assessment of the state of diversity and inclusion at the bureau in order to 

inform its strategic planning process. In fall 2013, the firm reported its 

findings that the bureau’s overall workforce was diverse and it 

recommended a number of steps the bureau could take to enhance 

diversity and inclusion. Among other findings, the consulting firm’s review 

identified disparities in employee performance ratings for fiscal year 2012 

by race and gender. For example, the firm’s report found that black 

employees were more likely than white employees to receive a rating of 3 

out of 5, and that white employees were more likely to receive higher 

ratings of a 4 or 5 on this rating scale. It also found that female 

employees received higher ratings than men. In December 2013, CFPB 

completed its own analyses of employee performance ratings for fiscal 

year 2013 and also identified disparities by race, age, and location 

(between employees located in the field and those located in CFPB’s 

headquarters), among other factors, and it did not identify disparities by 

gender. CFPB shared the results of these analyses with CFPB’s 

employee union in January 2014.

From November 2013 through early 2014, CFPB also experienced a high 

volume of grievance filings and an increase in EEO complaint activity.17

 17CFPB has multiple employee complaint processes that provide employees the 

opportunity to have their complaints heard and investigated. For example, employees and 

applicants may file an EEO complaint if they believe they have been discriminated 

against, harassed, or retaliated against. Employees may file a grievance to pursue one of 

CFPB’s grievance processes to raise concerns about discrimination and retaliation or 

resolve disputes over performance ratings and other personnel matters. CFPB officials 

noted that CFPB employees can report complaints of harassment and inappropriate 

conduct to the Office of Human Capital for an inquiry. Further, CFPB employees may file a 

complaint with the U.S. Office of Special Counsel or the Merit Systems Protection Board

depending on the nature of the complaint.
Page 17 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

With respect to grievances, in June 2013 CFPB and its employee union 

reached an interim agreement to establish a negotiated grievance 

process.18 Under this process, a CFPB employee or union representative 

could first file an informal grievance to management and CFPB’s Office of 

Human Capital. If the matter was not resolved informally, the employee 

could then submit a formal grievance (or a “step one” grievance to begin 

the formal grievance process). By September 30, 2013, CFPB employees 

had filed 24 informal grievances under this process. In fiscal year 2014, 

CFPB employees filed a total of 125 informal grievances. Quarterly filings 

of informal grievances peaked at 80 in the 3 months ended December 31, 

2013 (the first quarter of fiscal year 2014). The number of formal 

grievance filings also peaked in this quarter at 35. According to CFPB 

data, the majority of grievances filed in the period from late 2013 through 

mid-2014 were related to dissatisfaction with performance ratings or 

written feedback given to employees in October 2013 for fiscal year 2013.

With respect to EEO complaint activity, in the 3 months ended December 

31, 2013, the number of CFPB employees contacting its EEO office to 

pursue the informal EEO complaint process increased to 15 from 6 the 

previous quarter. The number of formal EEO complaints filed increased 

from 9 in fiscal year 2013 to 25 in fiscal year 2014.

In April 2014, following a congressional hearing on allegations of 

discrimination and retaliation within CFPB, CFPB’s director e-mailed all 

CFPB employees to emphasize his commitment to diversity and inclusion 

and to inform them that he had asked the OMWI to lead a series of 

listening sessions to seek employees’ views on issues of diversity and 

inclusion at CFPB. OMWI invited all CFPB employees to participate in the 

listening sessions and provided ways for employees to provide input 

confidentially.19 OMWI conducted 48 listening sessions with more than 

300 employees between April and June 2014 and issued a report with its 

findings and recommendations in August 2014. The report identified 

participant concerns and made recommendations in three areas: (1) 

perceptions of unfair treatment in personnel practices and concerns about 

diversity and inclusion; (2) complaints about lack of experience and 

 18In May 2013, CFPB employees voted to join the National Treasury Employees Union, a 

federal union that also represents employees of other federal financial regulatory 

agencies. 

19As discussed at the beginning of this report, in March 2014, press reports brought public 

and congressional attention to these ratings disparities and allegations of other personnel 

challenges at CFPB, including discrimination and retaliation against CFPB employees.
Page 18 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

accountability for managers; and (3) confusion around personnel 

processes and structures in the bureau’s hiring, pay-setting, and other 

areas. According to CFPB officials, CFPB shared this report with all 

employees. In addition to the OMWI-led listening sessions, CFPB took 

other immediate steps to address concerns related to diversity, inclusion, 

and fairness. For example, in January 2014, CFPB management reached 

agreement with the employee union to develop a new performance 

management system. In May 2014, CFPB and its employee union agreed 

to temporarily replace the old system with a two-tier (or “pass-fail”) rating 

system. Also in May 2014, CFPB announced that it would retroactively 

compensate all employees (except for senior leaders) who had received 

an average performance rating of at least “3” as if they had received the 

highest rating of “5” for fiscal years 2012 and 2013. In August 2014, 

according to CFPB officials, CFPB’s director approved the expenditure of 

funds for these adjustments, and CFPB made remediation payments 

exceeding $4 million in the fall of 2014.

In response to a March 2014 congressional request, the Office of the 

Inspector General of the Federal Reserve and CFPB began a review of 

diversity and inclusion issues at CFPB.20 The scope of this review 

covered CFPB’s recruiting and hiring practices, performance 

management, succession planning, tracking of employee complaints, and 

the efforts of the OMWI office. In March 2015, the Inspector General 

issued its report, which included recommendations to further strengthen 

its diversity and inclusion efforts.21 Among other recommendations, the 

Inspector General recommended making diversity and inclusion training 

mandatory, finalizing and implementing a diversity and inclusion strategic 

plan, and implementing a formal succession planning process to help 

 20On March 24, 2014, concurrent to requesting that CFPB’s Inspector General review 

diversity and inclusion issues, members of the House Financial Services Committee also 

sent letters to Offices of Inspectors General of other federal financial regulatory agencies 

requesting that they review similar issues. These agencies included the Board of 

Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, 

the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office 

of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Securities and Exchange Commission. 

21Office of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The CFPB Can Enhance Its 

Diversity and Inclusion Efforts, 2015-MO-C-002 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 4, 2015). 
Page 19 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

ensure that CFPB has a sufficient and diverse pool of candidates for its 

senior management positions.22

CFPB employees who responded to our survey for nonexecutive 

employees identified strengths and areas for improvement related to 

personnel management and organizational culture at CFPB.23 Most 

respondents (more than 80 percent) agreed that employees in their office 

generally are enthusiastic about the bureau’s mission and had positive 

views on question items about their supervisors.24 Overall, respondents 

also had positive views on survey items related to valuing and promoting 

diversity, but dissatisfaction on some of these items was higher among 

black, female, and older respondents. In addition, respondents’ views 

indicated heightened concerns related to perceptions of unfair treatment, 

experiences with employee complaint processes, employees’ level of 

trust that they can raise concerns without negative consequences, and 

other issues. For several questions in these areas, more than 25 percent 

of respondents had unfavorable views and the proportion of unfavorable 

responses was above 35 percent in some CFPB offices and for some 

minority respondents, female respondents, respondents 40 years of age 

and over, and respondents who did not specify a race. As is common in 

similar surveys of federal employees, CFPB executives, who responded 

to a separate survey, consistently provided more favorable responses 

than nonexecutives.

As previously discussed, the response rates for our surveys of 

nonexecutive and executive employees were 62 percent and 63 percent, 

 22As of April 2016, the Inspector General had closed 10 of the 17 recommendations it had 

made to CFPB in its report. 

23In this report section, unless otherwise noted, we use the phrase “employees who 

responded to our survey” and the term “respondents” to discuss the results of our survey 

of nonexecutive employees. For the purposes of our survey and this report, we defined 

nonexecutive CFPB employees as employees below pay grade 80. This group excludes 

the 57 CFPB executives who received a separate GAO survey. According to CFPB 

officials, executive positions at pay grade 80 or above are comparable to positions in the 

Senior Executive Service at other federal agencies. Based on this definition, CFPB 

executives include heads of divisions and offices and their deputies.

24Our survey for nonexecutive employees included question items that collected 

respondents’ views on immediate supervisors, managers, the head of their office, and 

senior leaders. Our survey defined managers as individuals who supervise one or more 

supervisors or managers and do not include first-line supervisors.

Employees Reported 

Positive Aspects 

about CFPB but Also 

Concerns about 

Personnel 

Management, 

Fairness, and Trust
Page 20 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

respectively. We do not make any attempt to extrapolate the findings to 

the eligible employees who chose not to complete our surveys. The 

results of our surveys provide measures of employees’ views at the time 

they completed the survey in April, May, or June 2015. Where 

appropriate, we have included information about relevant governmentwide survey data to provide additional context for our survey results.

However, because of limitations in comparing our results to these other 

surveys, we did not attempt to draw conclusions about the extent to which 

CFPB has performed better or worse than other agencies in these 

areas.25 The full set of questions and results for both surveys is available 

on GAO’s website as an e-publication supplement to this report, 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Survey Results from Employees 

and Executives on Personnel Management and Organizational Culture 

(GAO-16-138SP, May 2016).

As shown in table 1, more than 80 percent of CFPB employees who 

responded to our survey had favorable views of employee enthusiasm for

the bureau’s mission and items related to their immediate supervisors and 

inclusion by their work teams. Some of these areas also emerged as 

strengths in CFPB’s annual employee survey for fiscal year 2015.26 For 

example, our survey found that 84 percent of respondents agreed that 

employees in their office or division are generally enthusiastic about 

CFPB’s mission. Similarly, in CFPB’s annual employee survey, 

employees also expressed positive views about the bureau’s work, with 

92 percent agreeing with the statement, “The work I do is important.”27

CFPB’s OMWI also identified employee enthusiasm for the mission as a 

strength in listening sessions it led with over 300 employees between 

April and June 2014.

 25Factors that limit the comparability of our survey results to other surveys include 

differences in the survey time period, the respondent population, and the phrasing of 

questions. 

26CFPB reported a response rate of 79.3 percent (1,173 out of 1,479 employees 

participated). 

27For this item, “The work I do is important,” CFPB’s bureau-wide survey result was about 

the same as the government-wide favorable result of 90 percent reported by Office of 

Personnel Management in its summary of the fiscal year 2015 results for the Federal 

Employee Viewpoint Survey. 

Views on CFPB’s Mission 

and Supervisors
Page 21 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Table 1: Positive Survey Responses Related to Views on CFPB’s Mission, Supervisors, and Work Teams from GAO Survey of 

Nonexecutive CFPB Employees

Survey statement 

Strongly/ 

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither 

Agree nor 

Disagree

Somewhat/ 

Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis to 

Judge

My immediate supervisor treats me fairly. (n=851) 84.5% 6.2% 7.6% 1.6%

Employees in my office generally are enthusiastic about CFPB’s 

mission. (n=852)

84.4 7.0 7.7 0.8

My immediate supervisor respects and values differences among 

individuals. (n=854)

81.1 8.4 6.9 3.5

My immediate supervisor appreciates and values the experiences 

and perspectives I brought to the bureau from previous employment. 

(n=856)

80.8 5.8 11.6 1.8

My work team (i.e., others you work with on projects or 

assignments) makes me feel included. (n=855)

80.6 8.3 10.3 0.8

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

Most employees who responded to our survey—85 percent—agreed that 

their immediate supervisor treats them fairly. In addition, about 81 percent 

of respondents agreed that their immediate supervisor respects and 

values differences among individuals and that their work teams make 

them feel included. Similarly, in CFPB’s 2015 annual employee survey, 

more than 85 percent of employees agreed that their supervisor treats 

them with respect and that their colleagues share information and help 

each other out.

In addition to expressing positive views of supervisors’ support for 

diversity, at least 65 percent of employees responding to our survey had 

positive views on other survey items related to valuing and promoting 

diversity at CFPB.28 However, levels of respondent satisfaction varied 

across demographic groups. As shown in table 2, while 73 percent of all 

respondents agreed that differences among individuals are respected and 

valued, higher rates of disagreement were reported by black respondents 

(24 percent compared to 8 percent for white employees), female 

respondents (17 percent compared to 9 percent for men), and 

 28A higher percentage of respondents agreed that differences are valued and respected 

by their immediate supervisor (81 percent) compared to a similar question item about their 

office head (64 percent). However, more respondents responded “No Basis to Judge” for 

the question item on their office head (15 percent) compared to the question item on their 

immediate supervisor (4 percent).

Views on Valuing 

Differences and Promoting 

Diversity
Page 22 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

respondents 40 years of age and over (16 percent compared to 10 

percent for employees under 40).29 CFPB’s 2015 annual employee 

survey also showed higher dissatisfaction among black respondents.

Table 2. Survey Responses about Diversity and Inclusion for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Employees

Survey Statement: Differences among individuals 

(e.g., gender, race, national origin, religion, age, 

cultural background, disability, sexual orientation) are 

respected and valued.

Strongly/ 

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither Agree 

nor Disagree

Somewhat/Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis to 

Judge

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=860) 72.6% 11.6% 13.1% 2.7%

Asian (n=49) 73.5 8.2 18.4 0.0

Black (n=123) 58.5 14.6 24.4 2.4

Hispanic (n=51) 64.7 15.7 19.6 0.0

White (n=460) 82.4 8.5 7.6 1.5

No Race Specified (n=213) 60.6 16.4 16.9 6.1

Female (n=332) 70.5 11.1 16.6 1.8

Male (n=408) 77.9 10.5 9.3 2.2

Under 40 (n=387) 76.0 11.4 9.8 2.8

40 years of age and above (n=436) 70.9 10.8 15.8 2.5

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

In addition, 65 percent of nonexecutive employees responding to our 

survey agreed that policies and programs promote diversity in the 

workplace. However, responses were less favorable among some 

minority groups and female employees. Specifically, higher rates of 

disagreement were reported by Asian and black respondents (35 percent 

and 27 percent, respectively, compared to 11 percent for white 

employees), as well as female respondents (25 percent compared to 10 

percent for men). Compared to the government-wide results for this item 

from OPM’s 2015 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (“Policies and 

programs promote diversity in the workplace”), CFPB respondents 

reported greater overall satisfaction (65 percent versus 56 percent 

government-wide). The government-wide results for this item also 

 29Survey respondents self-reported their race and ethnicity. Respondents were able to 

select more than one race, so it is possible that some respondents are represented in 

more than one race and ethnicity group. In tables where we summarize results by race 

and ethnicity, we include data for respondents who did not identify their race or ethnicity.

In addition, we exclude data for racial and ethnic groups for which there were fewer than 

20 respondents.
Page 23 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

showed greater dissatisfaction among black employees compared to 

white employees (24 percent compared to 12 percent) and female 

employees compared to male employees (18 percent compared to 13 

percent).

Our survey collected responses from CFPB employees about their 

perceptions of personal favoritism and discrimination at CFPB.30 The 

Merit Systems Protection Board (MSPB) has surveyed federal employees 

on their perceptions of discrimination and favoritism and data from these 

surveys provide context for the possible extent of such perceptions in 

other parts of the federal government.31 In December 2013, the MSPB 

reported that about 28 percent of federal employees surveyed in 2011 

believed that their supervisor demonstrated favoritism by treating some 

employees better than others and 53 percent believed that other 

supervisors within their agency engaged in favoritism.32 A 2007 MSPB 

survey found that the percentage of federal employees who responded 

that they believed that they had been personally discriminated against on 

the basis of race or ethnicity ranged between 10 percent and 20 percent 

for nonwhite federal employees.33

As shown in table 3, about a third of all respondents disagreed that 

success at CFPB is based more on merit than on personal connections to 

managers or favoritism. Disagreement was higher among black 

respondents (41 percent compared to 26 percent for white respondents), 

 30It is important to note that our survey collected employees’ subjective perceptions of 

whether or not they had experienced discrimination or observed favoritism and we did not 

take steps to substantiate individual claims of discrimination or favoritism. 

31See, for example, U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, Preserving the Integrity of 

Federal Merit Systems: Understanding and Addressing Perceptions of Favoritism 

(Washington, D.C.: December 2013). MSPB defines favoritism as occurring when 

supervisors base decisions regarding current or prospective employees on personal 

feelings and/or relationships and not on objective criteria, such as assessments of ability, 

knowledge, and skills.

32MSPB administered this survey, called the Federal Merit Systems Survey, to 52,620 

federal employees at 24 government agencies between July and October 2011. MSPB 

reported a 33 percent response rate for this survey. 

33U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board, The Federal Government: A Model Employer or a 

Work in Progress? Perspectives from 25 Years of the Merit Principles Survey

(Washington, D.C.: September 2008). 

Views on Favoritism and 

Discrimination
Page 24 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

respondents who did not identify their race (46 percent) and female 

respondents (37 percent compared to 25 percent for men). In addition, 

within the Office of Consumer Response and the Office of Human Capital 

in the Operations division, and two of CFPB’s four regional offices and 

two other offices in the SEFL division, 40 percent or more of respondents 

disagreed.34 In open-ended responses to our survey, several employees 

cited specific instances of a colleague appearing to be selected for a 

more senior position or other opportunity based on a personal connection 

to a manager.

Table 3: Survey Responses on Favoritism in Personnel Management for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees

Survey Statement: Success at CFPB is based more on merit 

than on personal connections to managers or favoritism.

Strongly/ 

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither 

Agree nor 

Disagree

Somewhat/

Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis to 

Judge

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=856) 50.0% 9.7% 33.3% 7.0%

Asian (n=48) 60.4 8.3 29.2 2.1

Black (n=123) 36.6 12.2 40.7 10.6

Hispanic (n=50) 52.0 12.0 32.0 4.0

White (n=459) 58.8 9.6 25.9 5.7

No Race Specified (n=211) 36.0 8.5 46.0 9.5

Female (n=332) 46.4 7.8 36.7 9.0

Male (n=406) 58.4 11.6 25.1 4.9

Under 40 (n=387) 53.2 9.6 30.5 6.7

40 years of age and above (n=433) 49.9 9.7 33.3 7.2

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

Through the listening sessions led by its OMWI, CFPB identified 

perceptions of favoritism as one of multiple factors for concern and 

concluded that lack of employee understanding of existing policies may 

have contributed to perceptions of unfair treatment. In our survey, more 

than a third of respondents in three of the regional offices in the SEFL 

division who reported having experience with the hiring process 

disagreed that hiring policies are clear. In addition, more than a third of 

respondents in these three regional offices disagreed that criteria for 

promotions in their current office are clearly communicated. Many 

 34The total number of respondents for this question was 80 for the Office of Consumer 

Response and 35 for the Office of Human Capital; 50 and 75 for the two regional offices; 

and 21 and 23 for the two other offices in the SEFL division.
Page 25 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

respondents also disagreed that the process for staffing assignments in 

their office was fair and transparent. In two regional offices and a small 

office in the SEFL division, at least 40 percent of respondents indicated 

unfair assignment allocations compared to 31 percent overall.

About 18 percent of employees who responded to our survey reported 

that they felt they had experienced discrimination at CFPB, and 

perceptions of discrimination were around 25 percent or more for some 

demographic groups and in the Office of Consumer Response and in a 

small office in SEFL.35 As shown in table 4, the percentage of 

respondents who reported that they had personally experienced 

discrimination at CFPB was highest among black respondents (27 

percent compared to 12 percent for white employees), Asian respondents 

(25 percent), respondents who did not identify their race (22 percent) and 

female respondents (25 percent compared to 11 percent for men). Of the 

survey respondents who reported that they believed they had 

experienced discrimination, the most commonly reported bases for 

discrimination were race or ethnicity (47 percent), gender (47 percent) 

and age (41 percent).

Table 4: Survey Responses on Discrimination for Nonexecutive Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Employees

Survey Question: Do you feel you have 

personally experienced discrimination at 

CFPB? Yes No

Don’t 

know

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=860) 17.6% 67.2% 15.2%

Asian (n=49) 24.5 53.1 22.4

Black (n=123) 26.8 57.7 15.4

Hispanic (n=51) 15.7 68.6 15.7

White (n=459) 12.4 76.7 10.9

No Race Specified (n=214) 22.4 54.7 22.9

Female (n=331) 24.8 59.5 15.7

Male (n=408) 10.5 76.7 12.7

Under 40 (n=387) 14.2 71.1 14.7

40 years of age and above (n=436) 20.2 64.4 15.4

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

 35The total number of respondents for this question item was 81 for the Office of 

Consumer Response and 23 for the small office in SEFL. 
Page 26 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Most survey respondents (83 percent) agreed that they understood 

available avenues to pursue a complaint. However, among the subset of 

respondents who reported having experience with the EEO complaint 

process or grievance process, many expressed dissatisfaction with 

certain aspects of these processes (see table 5). Specifically, 

respondents with experience with these complaint processes expressed 

dissatisfaction with management’s willingness to resolve complaints 

informally, CFPB’s efforts to protect the privacy of complainants, and the 

independence of the EEO office from management.36 For example, of 

those respondents who filed a grievance, 71 percent (55 out of 77 

respondents) disagreed that CFPB management made a good faith effort 

to resolve the complaint informally. In addition, complainants reported a 

lack of confidence that managers, Human Capital employees, and others 

with a need to know about the grievance or complaint did not 

inappropriately share information about the complaint with others without 

a need to know. In open-ended responses to the survey, several 

employees cited examples of cases in which a complainant’s privacy was 

compromised when information about the complaint was shared by 

managers, the EEO office, or the Office of Human Capital with individuals 

without a need to know about the complaint. In open-ended responses to 

the survey, a few employees also said that CFPB managers seemed 

unwilling to resolve issues through the informal complaint resolution 

processes. One respondent said that a representative from the Office of 

Human Capital indicated that if the employee wanted the issue resolved, 

the employee would have to file a formal EEO complaint or grievance.

CFPB officials noted that, by regulation, certain forms of relief (including 

retroactive pay adjustments or retroactive promotions) can be provided 

only if a formal complaint has been filed. In some cases, therefore, 

informal processes cannot provide the requested relief, and proceeding 

directly to formal complaints may be the best option to resolve the matter.

We discuss CFPB’s efforts to strengthen and evaluate its management of 

its complaint processes later in this report.

 36CFPB provides mechanisms to resolve complaints informally, when possible. Informal 

resolution of employee complaints can provide faster and less contentious results than 

resolution through the formal EEO or grievance processes. 

Views on Complaint 

Processes
Page 27 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Table 5: Percentage of Survey Responses on Complaint Processes for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees Who Reported Having Experience with One of These Processes

Percent Disagreement among Respondents Who Reported That They Had Filed 

or Assisted with a Complaint

EEO Complaints

(% dissatisfied)

Grievances

(% dissatisfied)

CFPB management made a good faith effort to resolve the complaint(s) informally, such 

as through Alternative Dispute Resolution.

71.7%

(33 of 46)

71.4%

(55 of 77)

I have confidence that managers, Human Capital employees and others with a need to 

know about the EEO complaint(s)/grievance(s) did not inappropriately share information 

about the complaint(s) with others without a need to know.

55.3%

(26 of 47)

43.6%

(34 of 78)

Managers and supervisors respected the rights of employees to use official time to work 

on [the complaint process].

54.3%

(25 of 46)

32.5%

(25 of 77)

CFPB’s EEO office is a neutral party in the complaint process which is independent of 

CFPB’s Legal Division and others in CFPB who have conflicting or competing interests. 

51.1%

(23 of 45)

N/Aa

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

a

This question item asked about the perceived independence of the EEO office and is not applicable 

to the grievance process.

On survey items about employees’ confidence that they could raise 

concerns or file a complaint without fear of negative consequences or 

reprisal by a manager, more than a quarter of respondents provided 

unfavorable responses. In the Office of Human Capital, two regional 

offices, and two other small offices in SEFL, more than 35 percent of 

respondents reported that they did not feel comfortable raising concerns 

or filing a complaint. About 10 percent of respondents reported that they 

had observed retaliation, and perceptions of retaliation among these 

respondents may have contributed to their lack of trust that they can raise 

issues with management.

About 27 percent of employees who responded to our survey disagreed 

that employees in their office generally feel comfortable that they can 

raise concerns or disagree with superiors without worrying about negative 

consequences (see table 6). The percentage of respondents who were 

concerned about negative consequences was higher among black 

respondents (30 percent compared to 23 percent for white employees), 

female respondents (29 percent compared to 20 percent for men), and 

respondents 40 years of age and over (29 percent compared to 23 

percent for employees under 40) and in the Office of Human Capital and 

Views on Trust and 

Perceptions of 

Management Retaliation
Page 28 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

two regional offices and two small offices in SEFL (above 35 percent).37

Similarly, 28 percent of respondents disagreed that they had confidence 

that they could pursue a complaint through informal or formal channels 

without fear of reprisal. Concerns were higher among the same groups:

black respondents (33 percent compared to 23 percent for white 

respondents), respondents who did not identify their race (36 percent), 

female respondents (31 percent compared to 22 percent for male 

respondents), the Office of Human Capital, two regional offices, and a 

small office in SEFL (above 35 percent).38

Table 6: Survey Responses on Comfort Level in Raising Concerns for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau 

(CFPB) Employees

Survey Statement: Employees in my office generally feel 

comfortable that they can raise concerns or disagree with 

superiors without worrying about negative consequences.

Strongly/ 

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither 

Agree nor 

Disagree

Somewhat/

Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis 

to Judge

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=852) 56.2% 12.7% 27.0% 4.1%

Asian (n=47) 57.4 19.1 19.1 4.3

Black (n=122) 53.3 16.4 29.5 0.8

Hispanic (n=51) 72.5 3.9 21.6 2.0

White (n=456) 63.4 10.1 23.0 3.5

No Race Specified (n=212) 40.1 16.5 35.8 7.5

Female (n=328) 55.8 10.7 29.0 4.6

Male (n=405) 63.0 14.3 20.2 2.5

Under 40 (n=385) 58.2 14.8 22.6 4.4

40 years of age and above (n=430) 57.7 10.2 28.6 3.5

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

About 9 percent of respondents reported that they have personally 

experienced retaliation by a supervisor or manager and about 10 percent 

reported that they observed retaliation against another employee. Of 

those who reported experiencing or observing retaliation, the most 

commonly reported forms of retaliation were lower performance ratings 

(51 percent) and removal or reassignment of job duties (59 percent). In 

fiscal year 2014, 16 of 25 (64 percent) formal EEO complaints filed by 

 37The total number of respondents for this question item was 80 for the Office of 

Consumer Response, 35 for the Office of Human Capital, 50 and 75 for the two regional 

offices, and 21 and 23 for the two small SEFL offices.

38The total number of respondents for this question item was 35 for the Office of Human 

Capital, 49 and 77 for the two regional offices, and 23 for the small office in SEFL.
Page 29 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

CFPB employees included “reprisal” as at least one of the bases for filing 

a complaint under the No FEAR Act.39 For 6 of these complaints, reprisal 

was the sole basis cited for the complaint.

Bureau-wide, over a third of employees who responded to our survey 

disagreed that a culture of accountability exists in which employees at all 

levels are held accountable for their actions (see table 7). In addition, 

female respondents reported greater concerns about accountability than 

men (39 percent for women compared to 29 percent for men).

Respondents who did not identify their race also reported higher 

disagreement (46 percent). Some employees’ remarks in open-ended 

responses to our survey suggested that unfavorable responses to this 

question may have been influenced by their view that the temporary 

“pass-fail” rating system does not hold poor performers accountable. On a 

survey item about manager accountability, 23 percent of respondents 

disagreed that managers are held accountable with respect to how they 

manage people and personnel issues and disagreement was higher in 

the Office of Consumer Response (33 percent), the Office of Human 

Capital (49 percent) and a small office in SEFL (52 percent).40 In openended responses, several employees expressed concerns that managers 

who they believed to have engaged in discrimination, favoritism, or other 

wrongdoing had not been held accountable. Accountability for managers 

was also among the issues identified as an area for attention in the 

OMWI-led listening sessions. An official from CFPB’s Office of Human 

Capital noted that CFPB does not announce actions taken against 

managers about whom employees have complained and this presents a 

challenge to addressing negative perceptions about manager 

accountability. Officials explained that in situations where the Office of 

Human Capital Labor and Employee Relations team identifies recurring 

issues with a particular manager within an office or division, it 

communicates the concerns to the senior manager of that office or 

division along with recommendations for addressing them. In addition, 

according to CFPB officials, the Office of Civil Rights tracks when there is 

 39According to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, of the EEO complaints 

filed in fiscal year 2014, the basis most commonly cited among federal agencies was 

reprisal/retaliation.

40The total number of respondents for this question item was 81 for the Office of 

Consumer Response, 35 for the Office of Human Capital, and 23 for the small office in 

SEFL.

Views on Management 

Accountability and 

Commitment to 

Addressing Concerns
Page 30 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

more than one complaint against a management official and alerts the 

appropriate executive in those cases. In cases of allegations of 

harassment or other inappropriate conduct, the Labor and Employee 

Relations team investigates the complaint. As of September 2015, 

officials told us that there had been three managers with multiple 

allegations of misconduct, and the Labor and Employee Relations team 

recommended counseling for the manager in those cases. We discuss 

CFPB’s efforts to strengthen management accountability later in this 

report.

Table 7: Survey Responses on Accountability for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) Employees

Survey Statement: Across the bureau, a culture of 

accountability exists in which employees at all levels are held 

accountable for their actions.

Strongly/

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither 

Agree nor 

Disagree

Somewhat/

Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis 

to Judge

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=856) 39.4% 14.7% 36.4% 9.5%

Asian (n=48) 45.8 12.5 39.6 2.1

Black (n=124) 34.7 19.4 35.5 10.5

Hispanic (n=51) 41.2 13.7 33.3 11.8

White (n=459) 44.0 13.3 32.7 10.0

No Race Specified (n=211) 27.5 16.6 46.4 9.5

Female (n=331) 35.3 14.2 38.7 11.8

Male (n=406) 47.5 15.3 29.3 7.9

Under 40 (n=385) 40.0 15.3 35.8 8.8

40 years of age and above (n=435) 40.9 13.8 35.2 10.1

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

In addition, while most respondents (58 percent) agreed that senior 

leaders have taken meaningful steps to manage the transition from a 

start-up agency to a more mature agency, 35 percent disagreed that

leaders are committed to addressing concerns that may affect employee 

retention, and 30 percent disagreed that senior leaders promote a culture 

in which problems and solutions are openly discussed. As shown in table 

8, concerns about leaders’ commitment to addressing problems were 

higher among female respondents (39 percent compared to 28 percent 

for men).
Page 31 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Table 8: Survey Responses on Employee Retention for Nonexecutive Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)

Employees

Survey Statement: Leaders and managers in my division and office 

are committed to addressing concerns that may lead talented 

employees to leave CFPB. 

Strongly/

Somewhat 

Agree

Neither 

Agree nor 

Disagree

Somewhat/

Strongly 

Disagree

No Basis 

to Judge

CFPB-wide (all respondents, n=854) 45.1% 12.1% 34.7% 8.2%

Asian (n=49) 49.0 8.2 32.7 10.2

Black (n=123) 40.7 22.8 30.9 5.7

Hispanic (n=51) 54.9 5.9 33.3 5.9

White (n=458) 50.7 9.8 31.9 7.6

No Race Specified (n=209) 33.5 13.4 44.0 9.1

Female (n=331) 42.3 11.8 38.7 7.3

Male (n=406) 51.7 11.1 28.1 9.1

Under 40 (n=385) 43.6 13.0 36.6 6.8

40 years of age and above (n=434) 47.9 10.8 31.6 9.7

Source: GAO. | GAO-16-62

While about 65 percent of respondents agreed that their morale is good, 

in some offices in the SEFL and Operations divisions, more than 30 

percent of employees disagreed. Rates of disagreement were also higher 

among female respondents (28 percent compared to 18 percent for men).

Respondents in some offices that reported lower morale also expressed 

greater dissatisfaction with CFPB’s efforts to retain talented employees.

For example, in some offices in the SEFL and Operations divisions, more 

than 30 percent of respondents disagreed that their morale is good and 

more than 45 percent disagreed that their office retains its talented and 

qualified employees. About a third of respondents indicated that their 

morale had improved in the last 12 months, while another third reported 

their morale had decreased in that period. Respondents in some offices, 

including two offices in the Operations division, two regional offices, and a 

small office in SEFL, showed more decline than the bureau overall.

In addition to areas of concern highlighted in the survey results discussed 

earlier, some employee groups who responded to the survey identified 

specific concerns in other areas that may have affected their morale.

These other areas of concern include the following:

• Pay equity. Employees who responded to our survey indicated 

concerns about unfair treatment in salary-setting at the time of hire. A 

third (33 percent) of respondents indicated that they felt that their 

starting salary at CFPB did not provide what they believed to be fair 

Views on Employee 

Morale and Related Issues
Page 32 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

compensation for their skills, work experience, and education. More 

than 40 percent of respondents in two regional offices expressed 

dissatisfaction with their starting salary. In addition, among the 28 

percent of respondents who said they raised concerns about their 

salary with a superior or Office of Human Capital representative, 

about 74 percent (176 out of a total of 239 respondents) were 

dissatisfied with CFPB’s response to their concerns. CFPB officials 

noted that CFPB has undertaken efforts to review compensation for a 

number of employees to determine if adjustments to starting salaries 

were appropriate. While our survey asked employees about their 

satisfaction with their initial salary, in response to a different question 

in CFPB’s annual employee survey for fiscal year 2015, about 67 

percent of respondents indicated that they were satisfied with their 

pay. This result compared favorably to a 57 percent level of pay 

satisfaction government-wide.

• Opportunities for advancement and the examiner commissioning 

process. More than 35 percent of respondents reported 

dissatisfaction with their opportunity to get a better job in the bureau 

and disagreed that criteria for promotions are clearly communicated to 

employees. Government-wide employee survey results from the 2015 

Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey also showed a level of 

dissatisfaction above 35 percent with the opportunity to get a better 

job. Many respondents in the SEFL division expressed dissatisfaction 

with the new process for commissioning examiners CFPB finalized in 

late 2014, following negotiation with CFPB’s employee union.41 For 

example, 22 respondents commented that they were dissatisfied that 

this new commissioning process included new requirements for 

advancement that had not existed when they were hired. Several 

respondents expressed dissatisfaction with aspects of the new 

commissioning process, such as a requirement to pass a final casestudy exercise.

We administered a separate survey to CFPB executives, and 36 out of 

the 57 executives who received the survey provided responses. CFPB 

executives who responded to this survey generally provided favorable 

responses on most survey items (with at least 65 percent selecting a 

 41Similar to other federal financial regulators, CFPB has a commissioning program

through which it trains and assesses examiners to achieve commissioned examiner 

status. The criteria for this process are described in an October 2014 policy memorandum.

Views of CFPB Executives
Page 33 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

response in one of the top two positive categories for all but two question 

items). As is common in similar surveys of federal employees, CFPB 

executives consistently provided higher rates of favorable responses than 

nonexecutive employees on similar questions that were included in both 

surveys. For example, 32 of 36 executive respondents (91 percent) 

agreed that success at CFPB is based on merit rather than personal 

connections and 34 out of 36 executive respondents (97 percent) agreed 

that employees in their division or office feel comfortable raising 

concerns. In comparison, agreement among nonexecutive respondents 

on these items ranged from 50 percent to 56 percent.

As part of ongoing efforts to strengthen its personnel practices and 

through the internal and external reviews discussed earlier in this report, 

CFPB identified specific challenges related to promoting a diverse, 

inclusive, and fair work place and actions to address them.42 These 

challenges and related actions can be grouped into three areas: (1) 

perceived fairness in personnel management practices; (2) diversity, 

inclusion, and culture efforts; and (3) practices for managing employee 

complaints. In the last 2 years, CFPB has taken a number of steps to 

address challenges in these areas, such as expanding training, improving 

communication on policies and procedures, enhancing diversity and 

inclusion efforts, and strengthening management of employee complaint 

processes. However, CFPB does not comprehensively report on its 

implementation goals and progress for the full range of its diversity, 

inclusion, and fairness initiatives. In addition, while CFPB is in the 

process of developing new tools to collect employees’ feedback on their 

experiences with the EEO complaint process, it has not created similar 

tools for its grievance processes.

 42These reviews included a 2013 review of diversity and human capital practices by an 

external consulting firm, the listening sessions held by OMWI in 2014, and the Inspector 

General review of diversity and inclusion practices, with findings and recommendations 

reported in March 2015.

CFPB Has Taken 

Steps to Address 

Challenges, but 

Lacks Some 

Mechanisms to 

Support Sustained 

Commitment and 

Accountability
Page 34 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Partly in response to employees’ expressed concerns about favoritism or 

unfair treatment in certain personnel practices—such as hiring, 

performance management, promotions, and detail opportunities—as well 

as recommendations from the Inspector General and other external 

reviews, CFPB has taken steps to review and strengthen its policies and 

practices in these areas.43 Specifically, during 2014 and 2015 CFPB took 

steps to improve training, communication, policies, and guidance and to 

review underlying factors that may have contributed to disparities in 

ratings under the prior performance management system and differences 

in employee perceptions of other personnel practices. The overall effect 

of these changes and reviews on employee views and bureau culture is 

difficult to determine at this time, in part because some changes, such as 

the adoption of a new performance management system, have not yet 

been implemented and others have been implemented only recently.

• Expanding management training related to personnel practices.

In OMWI’s 2014 listening sessions discussing employee views on 

diversity and inclusion at CFPB, employees expressed concerns 

about managers’ lack of management experience, and noted some 

managers lacked effective communication skills and either 

micromanaged or undermanaged employees. In the past 2 years, 

CFPB has identified opportunities to enhance its manager training 

programs and expanded training for managers on leadership and 

management topics. For example, in 2014, CFPB began holding 

Leadership Excellence Seminars at which it provided training for 

managers and supervisors on a range of leadership and management 

topics, such as a leader’s role in developing employees, addressing 

performance issues, and providing feedback as part of the 

performance management process. In May 2014, CFPB made equal 

employment opportunity training mandatory for all managers and 

supervisors. In a separate review of CFPB’s performance 

 43As discussed previously, in March 2015, CFPB’s Inspector General reported on CFPB’s 

efforts to promote diversity through its personnel practices and to ensure compliance with 

laws and regulations related to promoting a diverse, inclusive, and fair workplace. In its 

report, the Inspector General made 17 recommendations in areas such as hiring practices 

and performance management. As of April 2016, 10 of these recommendations were 

closed and the rest were still open. In addition, in August 2015, the Inspector General 

reported on its findings from its review of CFPB’s hiring practices and made 2 

recommendations in this area related to its internal controls and monitoring efforts. Office 

of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and 

the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The CFPB Can Further Enhance Internal 

Controls for Hiring Processes, 2015-MO-C-013 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 26, 2015). 

CFPB Has Taken Steps to 

Improve Personnel 

Practices in the Past 2 

Years, but It Is Too Soon 

to Assess Their Effect
Page 35 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

management system, a June 2015 consultant report noted that some 

CFPB managers did not have prior experience with performance 

management and additional manager training was needed. CFPB 

mandated that all employees take performance management training 

in February 2015.

• Improving communication of existing policies and new 

initiatives. CFPB officials with whom we spoke said that employee 

comments about unfair treatment suggested that many employees 

were not aware of existing policies and procedures related to 

personnel management. CFPB has taken steps to simplify its 

communications about policies and make important information more 

accessible to employees. In early 2015, CFPB hired two 

communications experts who have worked with staff in Human Capital 

and other CFPB offices to simplify communications about CFPB 

policies, initiatives, and resources for employees. CFPB staff reported 

that these experts helped revise existing CFPB communications and 

create new tools to inform managers and supervisors of relevant 

developments and provide them with guidance on managing staff. In 

addition, staff from the Office of Human Capital reported that they 

developed a web page on CFPB’s intranet that provides and 

consolidates resources on career planning in one place.

• Developing new policies, tools, and guidance on promotions, 

detail assignments, and career paths. To help provide more 

transparency around promotion processes and career development, 

CFPB issued new promotion policies and career development 

guidance. For example, CFPB developed a new tool for managers to 

advertise detail opportunities on the home page of CFPB’s intranet so 

they would be accessible to all employees to address employee 

concerns about the fairness and transparency of selections for detail 

assignments. This tool is intended to promote greater transparency 

and encourage more employees to apply to these opportunities. 

CFPB completed a review of this tool in August 2015. The review

found it was well-received by both managers and employees, and 

CFPB planned to make some changes based on stakeholder 

feedback. In addition, in September 2014, CFPB issued a Career 

Path Guide that provided an overview of types of jobs and guidance 

on how to navigate different career paths within CFPB to respond to 

feedback from employees who were concerned about or unaware of 

career options within the bureau.

• Reviewing factors related to differences and potential differences 

in certain personnel practices. As discussed previously, both CFPB 
Page 36 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

and a private firm hired by the Inspector General identified 

discrepancies in performance management ratings by race. The 

Inspector General’s report recommended that CFPB conduct a more 

comprehensive assessment of factors that may have contributed to 

disparities in performance ratings.44 In September 2014, CFPB 

contracted with two third-party firms to review its performance 

management, compensation, and hiring practices. In June 2015, one 

of the consulting firms issued a report that identified potential root 

causes of ratings disparities and described steps CFPB is taking to 

address these root causes, such as the need for additional 

performance management and manager training discussed 

previously.45

• Developing a new performance management system. In 

September 2014, CFPB established a joint Labor-Management 

Performance Management Working Group to design a new 

performance management rating program. This working group 

included representatives from CFPB’s employee union, CFPB 

management, and subject-matter experts from OMWI, the Office of 

Civil Rights, the Legal division, and the Office of Human Capital. In 

April 2016, CFPB’s director sent an e-mail to CFPB employees 

announcing that the working group had reached consensus on 

recommendations for improving CFPB’s performance management 

program. The working group outlined five guiding principles it 

considered in developing these recommendations. Specifically, the 

performance management program should be (1) mission and culture 

driven, (2) developmentally focused, (3) minimally burdensome, (4) 

fair and equitable, and (5) supported by clear management 

accountability. In fiscal year 2016, CFPB is continuing to use the 

performance management competencies previously in place with the 

pass/fail rating system negotiated with the employee union. CFPB 

plans to phase in new performance standards for managers and 

nonsupervisory employees to give employees time to adapt to the 

new performance standards and coaching guidelines. CFPB expects 

to introduce new performance standards for managers in fiscal year 

2017 and nonsupervisory employees in fiscal year 2018. CFPB’s 

 44See Inspector General report, 2015-MO-C-002.The private firm is a different company 

from the consultant that analyzed ratings for CFPB.

45The authors of the report also evaluated CFPB’s efforts to understand or address the 

potential cause and found them reasonable and sufficient. 
Page 37 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

performance management program policy states that CFPB will 

continue to use a two-level rating scale (with ratings of “Unacceptable” 

or “Accomplished Performer”) through fiscal year 2019.

As previously discussed, in prior work, we have identified leading 

practices for diversity management.46 CFPB has implemented initiatives 

that correspond to several of these leading practices, including initiatives 

begun during the past 2 years in the areas of top leadership commitment, 

strategic planning, diversity linked to performance, recruitment, employee 

involvement, diversity training, and measurement. CFPB has also taken 

some steps to address recommendations from the Inspector General 

related to its diversity and inclusion practices.

• Top leadership commitment. Since CFPB identified performance 

rating disparities in late 2013, CFPB leadership has taken steps to 

emphasize their commitment to supporting diversity and inclusion. In 

prior work, we have noted that leadership commitment expressed by 

commitment of time and resources and the communication of the 

importance of diversity by top leadership is a fundamental element of 

diversity management initiatives.47 In April 2014, CFPB’s director 

expressed support for diversity and equal employment opportunity 

through a bureau-wide e-mail communication. He also announced 

that CFPB’s OMWI, which had been located in CFPB’s Operations 

division, would be elevated to the Office of the Director to facilitate 

greater access and communications between the two offices.48

CFPB’s OMWI director issued additional statements in 2015 about the 

importance of diversity and inclusion and CFPB leadership’s 

commitment to improving the culture at the bureau. In addition, CFPB 

recently issued standards for equal employment opportunity and 

diversity pursuant to requirements in the Dodd-Frank Act that became 

 46See GAO-05-90.

47See GAO-05-90.

48The EEO office was also moved from the Operations division to the Office of the 

Director and renamed the Office of Civil Rights. The new Office of Civil Rights works with 

OMWI under a new office called the Office of Equal Opportunity and Fairness to address 

diversity and inclusion and EEO issues together. The OMWI director is the head of the 

Office of Equal Opportunity and Fairness.

CFPB Has Taken Steps to 

Expand Its Diversity and 

Inclusion Efforts
Page 38 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

effective October 1, 2015.49

• Diversity as part of CFPB’s strategic plan. CFPB recently has 

implemented changes to more fully incorporate diversity and inclusion 

into its strategic planning efforts. Integrating diversity management 

into an organization’s strategic planning efforts is a leading diversity 

management practice that helps to ensure sustained top leadership 

commitment to progress on diversity management initiatives, even 

when senior leaders change or agency priorities shift. CFPB’s 

agency-wide strategic plan for fiscal years 2013 to 2017 includes a 

goal related to its workforce that states it plans to develop a strategy 

to recruit and retain a high-performing, diverse staff with the right skills 

and abilities to meet mission-driven goals and objectives.50 In 

subsequent reports reviewing the status of its strategic planning 

efforts, CFPB identified specific measures (based on CFPB’s annual 

employee survey results) that it would use to track its progress toward 

this goal.51 In accordance with CFPB’s strategic planning process and 

with support from its OMWI, each CFPB division has adopted diversity 

and inclusion goals.

On October 2, 2015, CFPB finalized its diversity and inclusion 

strategic plan for 2016 to 2020.52 CFPB developed this plan in part to 

meet the OPM directive that agencies develop a specific diversity and 

inclusion strategic plan that outlines the actions agencies plan to take 

to achieve the priorities in the 2011 Government-Wide Diversity and 

Inclusion Strategic Plan and the responsible agency official for each 

 49Dodd-Frank Act section 342(b)(2)(A) requires CFPB’s OMWI director to develop 

standards for equal employment opportunity and the racial, ethnic, and gender diversity of 

the workforce and senior management of the agency. Pub. L. No. 111-203, § 342(b)(2)(A), 

124 Stat. 1376, 1541 (2010)(codified at 12 U.S.C. § 5452(b)(2)(A)).

50Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Strategic 

Plan FY2013-FY2017 (Washington, D.C.: April 2013).

51Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Strategic Plan, Budget, and Performance Plan 

and Report (Washington, D.C., March 2014); and The CFPB Strategic Plan, Budget, and 

Performance Plan and Report, (Washington, D.C.: February 2015). For example, these 

reports identify the “Inclusion Quotient,” an index of survey items that measures employee 

satisfaction with CFPB’s efforts on five workplace attributes (fair, open, cooperative, 

supportive and empowering) that together help to enable a diverse and inclusive 

workplace.

52Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Diversity and Inclusion Strategic Plan, 2016-

2020 (Washington, D.C.: October 2015). The Inspector General recommended that CFPB 

implement a diversity and inclusion strategic plan in March 2015.
Page 39 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

action.53 OPM’s guidance describes three goals of the governmentwide effort—workforce diversity, workforce inclusion, and 

sustainability—and the steps agencies can take to address these 

goals. CFPB’s plan addresses the priorities and actions it plans to 

take under each of these three goals. These include efforts described 

in this report, such as expanding recruitment efforts, developing 

leadership training, and creating an employee diversity and inclusion 

council. The plan also states that CFPB plans to ensure that all CFPB 

leaders and staff have performance measures in place to ensure 

proper execution of the plan and that CFPB will develop and widely

distribute a set of diversity and inclusion measures to track CFPB’s 

efforts both bureau-wide and for each division.

• Diversity linked to performance. CFPB has taken steps to link 

diversity goals to organizational performance by communicating the 

business case for diversity to its employees.54 In June 2015, CFPB’s 

OMWI director issued a memorandum to all employees stating that 

diversity and inclusion are important to bring new perspectives to 

CFPB’s work and foster an environment where all employees feel 

valued and empowered to share their views and ideas. The 

memorandum also noted the importance of workforce diversity given 

CFPB’s mission to develop financial solutions relevant to all groups of 

consumers and craft policies that ensure women and minorities fairly 

benefit from economic recovery.

• Recruitment. As discussed earlier, in OMWI’s first year, its efforts 

included working with the Office of Human Capital to support diversity 

in recruiting and hiring and analyzing employee survey results to 

identify opportunities to maintain and grow a diverse workforce. A 

leading diversity practice is to partner with a wide selection of schools 

and multicultural professional organizations to reach out to diverse 

pools of talent.55 In April 2014, both offices published a document that 

 53“Establishing a Coordinated Government-Wide Initiative to Promote Diversity and 

Inclusion in the Federal Workforce” Exec. Order No. 13,583, 76 Fed. Reg. 52, 847 (Aug. 

23, 2011). CFPB reports that in addition to the OPM requirements, it also based its 

diversity and inclusion strategic plan on Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

regulations and guidance and Dodd-Frank Act requirements (under section 342). 

54We discuss steps to hold individuals accountable for diversity performance later in this 

report.

55See GAO-05-90.
Page 40 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

formalized a diversity recruiting strategy that had been in place since 

fiscal year 2013, according to CFPB officials. CFPB also developed a 

recruitment and outreach plan to inform managers of their strategies 

to use career expos, student symposiums, and partnerships with local 

and national diversity organizations to attract diverse job applicants in 

June 2015. In September 2015, CFPB officials reported that the 

strategy had not changed since the document was published in April 

2014.

56

• Employee involvement. In 2014 and 2015, CFPB took steps to 

increase the number of opportunities employees have to provide input 

into diversity and inclusion efforts and further develop a diverse and 

inclusive workforce. Our work on diversity management has noted

that involving employees at all levels in diversity management is a 

leading practice that helps them contribute to an organization’s efforts 

to improve diversity and inclusion throughout the organization.57 As 

part of this effort, many organizations have diversity advisory councils 

to initiate and manage diversity and inclusion progress. In 2014, 

CFPB launched its Diversity and Inclusion Executive Advisory 

Council, consisting of 12 executives from throughout CFPB, including 

the Assistant Director of OMWI, the Chief Human Capital Officer, and 

the Chief Financial Officer. The council is a leadership advisory group 

that provides strategic guidance to the director and senior leaders 

about ways to improve diversity and inclusion.

Also in 2015, CFPB launched several other employee-involvement 

initiatives. On September 7, 2015, CFPB’s director announced plans 

to start a staff-level Diversity and Inclusion Council of Employees to 

serve as a platform for employees to contribute their ideas, implement 

CFPB-wide initiatives, and provide feedback to leadership on diversity 

and inclusion initiatives. According to CFPB officials, members of the 

council have been selected and initial meetings have been held.

According to its charter, this council is also to serve as a means

through which employees can voice concerns about diversity and 

inclusion to management, help in communicating initiatives to other 

employees, and measure the results of initiatives. Members of the 

 56The March 2015 Inspector General report recommended that CFPB take additional 

steps to analyze its hiring data to enhance its efforts to diversify recruiting. As of 

September 2015, this recommendation was still open. 

57See GAO-05-90.
Page 41 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

council plan to meet with the director twice a year and with the 

Executive Advisory Council quarterly. In addition, CFPB officials 

reported that they have drafted a policy and guidance for employees 

to establish employee resource/affinity groups. In the summer of 

2015, OMWI also announced the start of a pilot mentoring program, 

focused on employees in two divisions and mentors throughout CFPB 

management, and with a stated purpose to help CFPB build a more 

diverse, experienced, and inclusive workforce. According to CFPB 

officials, CFPB conducted the pilot mentoring program in fall 2015 and 

obtained feedback from participants. Based on the feedback received 

from mentors and mentees who participated, CFPB plans to make 

improvements to the program.

• Training. In accordance with the leading diversity management 

practice, CFPB has expanded its offerings of diversity and inclusion 

training—and made certain trainings mandatory—to help its 

management and staff increase their awareness and understanding of 

diversity and inclusion. In 2013, CFPB contracted with a diversity 

expert to provide training designed to examine issues of diversity and 

inclusion and how they affect people in the workplace for employees 

at all levels. In February 2015, CFPB made this training mandatory.

In 2014, CFPB began offering a 2-day leading diversity and inclusion 

workshop specifically for managers and supervisors developed by an 

external consultant. This training, developed to address ways to give 

appropriate consideration of staff differences in managerial or 

supervisory decisions and actions, was made mandatory in July 2015. 

In June 2014, CFPB also began requiring managers to take a 2-day 

course led by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 

Training Institute on equal employment opportunity laws and 

managerial responsibilities. CFPB officials said that training on EEO 

principles and unconscious bias has been provided to hiring 

managers and has helped to reinforce earlier efforts to promote 

greater fairness in hiring, such as providing guidance to managers on 

using the same set of structured interview questions for all job 

candidates.

• Measurement. CFPB has adopted several practices that are 

consistent with leading diversity management practices for 

measurement. It is a leading practice for organizations to collect 

quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate the effectiveness of their 

diversity management efforts. In addition, CFPB’s diversity and 

inclusion strategic plan cites the need for performance measures and 

for CFPB to communicate its progress and effectiveness on its 

diversity and inclusion initiatives. CFPB has developed some agency-
Page 42 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

wide metrics, division-specific goals, and processes related to 

diversity and inclusion. These metrics include the following:

• Inclusion indices based on the annual employee feedback results.

In 2013, OMWI added an OPM-developed measure—the 

Inclusion Quotient—to its analysis of CFPB’s annual employee 

survey results to facilitate measurement of CFPB employees’

views on inclusiveness at CFPB.58 OMWI has begun analyzing 

employee responses to these questions in terms of five 

categories: fair, open, cooperative, supportive, and empowered. 

Using the annual employee survey data results, CFPB has 

compared its overall inclusiveness scores to those of other 

government agencies, and has started comparing the five scores 

across different divisions.

• Division-level diversity and inclusion goals and objectives. CFPB’s 

OMWI director reported that OMWI staff have met with division 

leaders and provided them suggestions for diversity and inclusion 

goals for each division. OMWI also has developed demographic 

data on race and gender (including by pay grade) for each division 

at CFPB, and these data are incorporated into the division’s 

quarterly performance review with senior management. Starting in 

fiscal year 2015, CFPB has used its quarterly performance review 

meetings to hold discussions among senior leaders about 

progress toward achieving division-specific diversity and inclusion 

goals.59 According to CFPB officials, at these quarterly 

performance reviews—which include the director of the Office of 

Equal Opportunity and Fairness, the Deputy Director, Chief of 

Staff, and Chief Strategy Officer—the CFPB Director asks division 

leaders questions regarding their diversity and inclusion goals and 

about divisional efforts to promote diversity and enhance the 

employee experience. They also reported that certain divisions 

have specific annual employee survey indices in their division 

 58CFPB calculates the Inclusion Quotient scores using a subset of 20 items from its 

annual employee survey that are also found on OPM’s Federal Employee Viewpoint 

Survey. 

59These quarterly performance reviews are part of CFPB’s strategic planning efforts and 

according to officials, are designed to fulfil their obligations under the GPRA 

Modernization Act of 2010. This act included a provision for agency leaders to conduct 

quarterly, data-driven performance reviews. Pub. L. No. 111-352, § 6(b), 124 Stat. 3866, 

3875 (codified at 31 U.S.C. § 1121(b)).
Page 43 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

strategic plans and quarterly performance review metrics.

• Succession Planning. CFPB has taken steps to develop a formal 

succession planning process for identifying and developing a diverse 

pool of talent for its future. Succession planning is a comprehensive, 

ongoing strategic process that provides for forecasting an 

organization’s senior leadership needs; identifying and developing 

candidates who have the potential to be future leaders; and selecting 

individuals from among a diverse pool of qualified candidates to meet 

executive resource needs. Succession planning is a leading practice 

that allows federal agencies the opportunity to change the diversity of 

the executive corps through new appointments. In its March 2015 

report, the Inspector General recommended that CFPB develop and 

finalize a formal succession planning process and noted that without 

such a process, CFPB may not be able to ensure that it will have a 

sufficient number of qualified executives or will be able to retain highperforming staff in mission-critical positions.60 Furthermore, the

Inspector General noted that a succession planning process could 

help to ensure diversity in CFPB’s senior management.

In response to the Inspector General’s recommendation, a CFPB 

official noted that CFPB has used a succession management guide it 

issued in October 2014 to help shape the design of its succession 

planning process. Although this guide outlines a process by which 

CFPB leaders are to review senior workforce needs, it is not a formal 

plan that identifies those needs and the strategies CFPB plans to use 

to achieve its leadership goals. After publishing the guide, CFPB 

developed a list of key leadership and technical positions that are 

most critical to CFPB’s ongoing success, one of the first steps in the 

guide. In addition to this guide, CFPB officials noted that CFPB has 

taken other steps toward developing a formal succession planning 

process. For example, according to CFPB officials, in February 2016, 

CFPB developed a 3-year approach (fiscal years 2016 through 2018) 

to formalizing its succession management and strategic workforce 

planning programs.

• Management Accountability. Our work on leading practices has also 

pointed to the importance of having means to hold managers 

responsible for diversity by linking their performance assessment to 

 60See Inspector General report, 2015-MO-C-002.
Page 44 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

diversity and inclusion goals. While CFPB has taken some steps to 

promote diversity and inclusion within its performance management 

system, its current system provides limited means to hold managers 

accountable for promoting a diverse and inclusive workplace. CFPB 

currently has a temporary pass/fail performance management rating 

system, which applies to managers as well as employees. In March 

2015, the Inspector General found that CFPB’s performance 

management competencies at that time for supervisors and managers 

did not adequately measure diversity and inclusion efforts. 

Specifically, the Inspector General found that the performance 

management competencies in place for senior managers did not 

sufficiently connect the managers’ performance assessments with 

progress towards CFPB’s diversity and inclusion initiatives. The 

Inspector General noted that, as a result, CFPB could miss 

opportunities to ensure that supervisors and managers are held 

accountable for helping CFPB achieve its diversity and inclusion 

initiatives. The Inspector General recommended that CFPB create 

specific supervisor and manager performance competencies related 

to diversity and inclusion.

In September 2015, the Inspector General closed this 

recommendation based on CFPB’s efforts to enhance individual 

manager accountability through the performance management system 

in place for fiscal year 2016. In closing this recommendation, the 

Inspector General noted that CFPB’s fiscal year 2016 performance 

competencies for supervisors and senior managers included 

measures related to promoting diversity and inclusion. In developing a 

new performance management system, CFPB has incorporated

standards specifically related to diversity and inclusion into their 

performance competencies for managers and, as discussed earlier, 

these standards will be in effect beginning in fiscal year 2017. CFPB 

officials also told us that the quarterly performance reviews (described 

previously) are another tool CFPB leadership uses to hold leaders 

accountable for making change. In addition, CFPB can use its 
Page 45 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

disciplinary policy to hold employees accountable for misconduct, 

such as engaging in discrimination or harassment.61

In addition, in January 2015, CFPB launched an initiative called 

Workforce of the Future to build a stronger organizational culture.62 This 

initiative is intended to define and shape organizational norms, such as 

positive employee behaviors, and effective management practices, 

including promoting diversity and inclusion throughout the bureau. This 

initiative has been aimed at making people—not just the mission—a 

priority at CFPB and establishing bureau-wide norms to improve 

employees’ experiences. According to CFPB officials, steps taken to 

achieve the objectives of the Workforce of the Future initiative include, but 

are not limited to, developing and communicating norms to guide 

communications between individual employees; conducting a survey to 

assess progress made in creating awareness of the norms and modeling 

the norms; and holding outreach sessions with employees from across 

CFPB to obtain their input on ideas for improving CFPB’s culture and 

addressing employee concerns.

CFPB’s efforts to address employee concerns about diversity, inclusion, 

fairness, and culture together represent a significant change management 

initiative. As we have previously reported, significant change 

management initiatives can take years to complete and therefore must be 

carefully and closely managed and monitored to achieve success.63

Specifically, our research on significant change initiatives found that it is 

essential to establish and track implementation goals and establish a 

 61According to CFPB’s policy, actions to address misconduct can range from informal 

counseling to formal disciplinary actions, such as letters of reprimand, suspension, and 

termination. CFPB officials also told us that in some cases, where miscommunication or 

challenging interpersonal dynamics are occurring, the Labor and Employee Relations 

team recommends mediation through the bureau’s Alternative Dispute Resolution process 

or team-building or coaching services available through third-party vendors procured by 

the Office of Human Capital.

62According to CFPB officials, the Workforce of the Future initiative is led by a steering 

committee of CFPB’s senior leadership, including CFPB’s director. 

63GAO, Results Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and 

Organizational Transformations, GAO-03-669 (Washington, D.C.: July 2, 2003). 

CFPB Does Not 

Comprehensively Report 

on Progress Related to Its 

Diversity, Inclusion, 

Fairness, and Culture 

Initiatives
Page 46 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

timeline to pinpoint performance shortfalls and gaps and suggest 

midcourse corrections. Furthermore, providing transparency around 

results and processes used to achieve results can help an organization to 

build the employee enthusiasm and momentum needed to help ensure 

that change management initiatives are successful.

CFPB has developed implementation goals and timeframes for some of 

its initiatives and mechanisms to measure and communicate progress.

However, it does not have a comprehensive reporting mechanism to 

communicate its implementation goals and progress across its full range 

of initiatives, including those intended to strengthen personnel practices, 

diversity and inclusion initiatives, and its organizational culture. CFPB 

officials noted that the bureau has not explored options to report on its 

progress across these areas in a more comprehensive and integrated 

manner and that doing so would require attention to how to leverage 

existing mechanisms without creating undue burdens. As discussed, 

CFPB has developed some measures related to diversity and inclusion. 

CFPB officials told us they also plan to collect and respond to employee 

feedback by using CFPB’s existing process for evaluating employee 

survey results and through its Workforce of the Future initiative. A 

comprehensive reporting mechanism for showing progress would allow 

CFPB to (1) better track new and ongoing employee concerns and 

organizational plans to address them and (2) report on implementation 

goals and progress across its various initiatives and any outcomes to all 

employees. A comprehensive approach to reporting on progress across 

the various initiatives could help to make employees more aware of the 

status and timeframes for the full range of its initiatives, how these 

initiatives relate to intended results, and how CFPB is using measures 

and employee feedback mechanisms to assess its progress. CFPB’s 

actions and initiatives on diversity, inclusion, and fairness have been 

wide-ranging. They have included new policies, guidance, and training; 

efforts to enhance communication about personnel practices; several 

enhancements to diversity and inclusion efforts; and the new Workforce 

of the Future initiative to strengthen the organizational culture, among 

others. However, without a strategy for comprehensively reporting on its 

progress across these initiatives, CFPB may miss opportunities to provide 

greater transparency and build the employee commitment needed to 

sustain progress.
Page 47 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

CFPB has taken steps to improve its management of employee complaint 

processes, such as offering new training to managers and addressing 

problems with its tracking of complaints, However, our survey indicated 

that as of spring 2015, over half of the respondents who reported 

experience with at least one of CFPB’s complaint processes had 

concerns that could affect employees’ confidence in using the processes.

CFPB has three employee complaint processes that provide employees 

the opportunity to have their complaints heard and investigated:64

• EEO complaints. If a current employee, former employee, or 

applicant believes that he or she has been discriminated or retaliated 

against on the basis of a protected class or for prior EEO activity, he 

or she may file an EEO complaint with the Office of Civil Rights.

• Negotiated grievances. CFPB employees covered by the employee 

union’s bargaining unit may file a grievance under CFPB’s negotiated 

grievance process, as described in the collective bargaining 

agreement. The Office of Human Capital is responsible for managing 

this process.

• Administrative grievances. CFPB employees who are outside of the 

bargaining unit may file an administrative grievance under CFPB’s 

Open Door and Administrative Grievance Policy. Employees can 

initiate this process through the Office of Human Capital.

As discussed earlier, CFPB experienced increases in the filings of EEO 

complaints and grievances at a time when its processes for managing 

these complaints were relatively new. More recently, in fiscal year 2015, 

the total number of formal grievances filed fell to 31 (from 68 in fiscal year 

2014) and the total number of formal EEO complaints fell slightly to 22 

(from 25 in fiscal year 2014). The total number of informal EEO 

complaints (which are prerequisites for formal EEO complaints) declined 

from 52 in fiscal year 2014 to 29 for fiscal year 2015, reflecting a 44

percent decrease. CFPB officials told us that one reason grievances 

 64CFPB employees have some additional options for seeking resolutions of complaints 

related to whistleblower reprisal, among other factors, that were not within the scope of 

this report. Employees who believe that they have been subject to retaliation for 

whistleblower activity can file a complaint with the Office of Special Counsel. Alternatively, 

an employee can file a whistleblower retaliation complaint directly with the MSPB. 

CFPB Has Strengthened 

Its Complaints Processes, 

but Feedback 

Mechanisms Do Not Fully 

Address Employees’

Concerns
Page 48 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

declined is because of a reduction in complaints about ratings because 

CFPB has been using a pass-fail system.

In 2014 and 2015, CFPB took steps to strengthen its management of 

employee complaints. In 2014, the Office of Civil Rights developed a 

more complete operations manual that provides more detailed guidance 

to staff to help better ensure that staff process EEO complaints in 

compliance with federal EEO laws, regulations, and CFPB policies. The 

April 2015 version of the manual is a working draft that CFPB continues 

to update, and officials told us they secured contractor support in fiscal 

year 2015 to assist in writing standard operating procedures to 

supplement the operations manual and further enhance uniformity and 

efficiency. CFPB officials also told us that they have added staff to the 

Office of Civil Rights, including an attorney with EEOC appellate 

experience and a new administrative position (shared with OMWI) and 

have authorized positions for a dispute prevention/resolution expert and a 

data analyst shared with OMWI. The Office of Civil Rights also has 

obtained detailee support from EEOC’s Office of Federal Operation in 

2015 and 2016. In September 2015, the Office of Civil Rights requested 

and worked with an organizational consultant available to all CFPB offices 

to work with staff members to identify opportunities for improvement in 

office operations. The Office of Civil Rights and Office of Human Capital 

have also taken steps to improve tracking of EEO complaints and 

grievances in response to Inspector General recommendations from a 

2015 report.65 CFPB implemented new standard operating procedures for 

reconciling the EEO complaints and grievances data. They also said they 

have recently awarded a contract to implement a commercial software 

tracking and reporting system that is expected to enhance data quality 

and reporting.

CFPB has taken steps to encourage informal solutions through greater 

use of alternative dispute resolution—an alternative approach to filing a 

formal grievance or complaint, such as using mediation to resolve a 

dispute or employee complaint. As noted in CFPB’s policy, alternative 

 65See Inspector General report, 2015-MO-C-002. Among other things, the report 

recommended that CFPB take steps to ensure the accuracy and completeness of EEO 

complaint data and negotiated grievance data. As of April 2016, the Inspector General 

had closed the recommendation related to duplicate EEO and grievance filings and two 

recommendations related to grievance data. The Inspector General continues to monitor 

CFPB actions to address two recommendations related to managing EEO complaint data.
Page 49 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

dispute resolution can provide faster and less contentious results in 

workplace disputes, including claims of discrimination and retaliation. In 

addition, according to CFPB’s policy, confidentiality in alternative dispute 

resolution proceedings must be maintained by the parties, subject to the 

limited exceptions imposed by statute or regulation. CFPB policy states 

that alternative dispute resolution can only be used if an employee with a 

complaint agrees to it. CFPB makes alternative dispute resolution 

available through its EEO program as well as through its negotiated and 

administrative grievance policies, and on an ad hoc basis to address any 

workplace dispute. CFPB has publicized information about alternative 

dispute resolution, such as through its wiki on the bureau’s intranet and 

newsletters sent to managers and employees. In addition, in 2015, the 

Office of Civil Rights created an in-house training module on Alternative 

Dispute Resolution to supplement the EEO training managers and 

supervisors receive and to provide to nonsupervisory employees.

While CFPB has made progress in strengthening its management of 

complaint processes, employee views collected through our survey and 

interviews suggest that many employees with experience with CFPB’s 

complaint processes lack confidence and trust in CFPB’s management of 

these processes. EEOC officials told us that it is critical that employees 

have confidence in the complaint process and agencies should try to 

address perceptions, such as beliefs that their complaints will not be 

treated appropriately or fairly, which could discourage employees from 

using the EEO process. As discussed previously, 33 of the 46 employees 

(72 percent) who reported experience with the EEO complaint process 

and 55 of 77 employees (71 percent) who reported experience with the 

grievance process disagreed that CFPB management made a good faith 

effort to resolve complaints informally. As discussed previously, CFPB 

has taken steps to encourage and support informal resolution. CFPB 

officials also told us that in some cases the remedy the employee is 

seeking may require a formal process. For example, if the employee 

requests a rating change within 60 days of receiving the rating, the 

request may be resolved informally, but if the issue is raised after this 

period, the agency may only revise the rating as the result of a complaint 

or other formal proceeding that results in a determination or settlement 

that the rating must be changed.66

 66See 5 C.F.R. § 430.208(i)(1)-(2).
Page 50 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Our survey results also suggested that some employees do not trust the 

EEO complaint process or grievance process to respect the confidentiality 

of their complaint. For example, of the employees who reported 

experience with the EEO complaint process, over half (26 of 47)

responded that they did not have confidence that managers and others 

with a need to know about specific complaints did not inappropriately 

share information with others without a need to know, and 34 of 78 

employees had a similar view of the grievance process. Some employees 

(16 of 47) also lacked confidence that CFPB’s Office of Civil Rights 

maintained confidentiality of their EEO complaint. CFPB officials 

acknowledged that respecting confidentiality is key to maintaining 

employees’ trust in these processes, and CFPB’s EEO guidance to 

supervisors and managers emphasizes the importance of confidentiality. 

CFPB officials told us they were aware of a few instances where 

information was inadvertently shared beyond a “need to know” basis and 

that those staff had been counseled on the importance of protecting the 

privacy of employees using the EEO process. In October 2015, the Office 

of Civil Rights also invited CFPB privacy experts to a staff meeting to 

conduct training that emphasized the importance of protecting personally 

identifiable information.

In addition, 23 of the 45 survey respondents who reported experience 

with the EEO complaint process disagreed that CFPB’s Office of Civil 

Rights is a neutral party in the complaint process and is independent of 

CFPB’s Legal division and others in CFPB who may have conflicting or 

competing interests. For example, one employee thought that CFPB’s 

Legal division, which represents CFPB in EEO complaints, advises the 

Office of Civil Rights. CFPB officials told us the Office of Civil Rights 

operates independently from the Legal division and has its own legal staff 

to conduct legal reviews and research following EEOC guidance for 

federal agencies, including, for example, accepting and dismissing formal 

complaints for investigation, defining legal claims, and issuing final 

agency decisions related to whether or not illegal conduct occurred. The 

Office of Civil Rights developed frequently asked questions and added 

information to its training modules to explain the office’s neutral role and 

its independence from the Legal division and the Office of Human Capital.

The updated training module was included in all new employee 

orientation sessions in March 2016. 

CFPB’s policies state that the Office of Civil Rights is responsible for 

assessing the EEO program and monitoring trends and the Office of 

Human Capital is responsible for monitoring the grievances processes. 

The Office of Civil Rights has taken some steps to assess employees’
Page 51 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

experiences with the process through feedback surveys. Initially, it 

developed a short feedback survey for employees who had attended EEO 

training or gone through mediation as part of an alternative dispute 

resolution process, but officials told us that most employees declined to 

complete the feedback surveys. The Office of Civil Rights has drafted a 

new survey specifically soliciting feedback about all stages of the EEO 

process, including the counseling and investigation stages in addition to 

the use of alternative dispute resolution, and has improved the design of 

the survey instrument to include a five-level rating scale instead of yes/no 

questions. The draft survey includes questions about (1) whether the 

parties involved in alternative dispute resolution acted in good faith, (2) 

confidence that confidentiality was maintained during the informal 

process, (3) fairness of the counseling and investigative processes, and 

(4) the fairness and impartiality of EEO counselors and investigators.

CFPB officials told us they plan to roll out the surveys uniformly in 

calendar year 2016. They also noted that the Office of Civil Rights has an 

open door policy and receives feedback from participants in the EEO 

process through informal mechanisms such as e-mails, phone calls, and 

office visits. EEOC officials told us that conducting surveys to obtain 

feedback and perceptions about the complaint process is a good practice.

The new survey has the potential to provide valuable information that 

CFPB can use to improve its EEO complaints process, but it will not 

capture the views of employees who used either of the two grievance 

processes. CFPB’s Office of Human Capital’s monitoring and evaluation 

efforts have not incorporated mechanisms to solicit employee feedback 

on experience with the negotiated and administrative grievance 

processes. Furthermore, although CFPB includes questions in its annual 

employee viewpoint survey about tolerance for prohibited personnel 

practices and respect for differences among individuals, this mechanism 

is not sufficient for assessing whether employees perceive that they can 

use the complaint processes without fear of reprisal. Without a broader 

assessment of factors that may be contributing to negative perceptions 

and experiences with its complaint processes, CFPB may not succeed in 

meeting its goal to be supportive of employees’ use of these processes.

Since early 2014, when CFPB shared information with employees about 

racial disparities in performance ratings, CFPB has undertaken numerous 

efforts to improve personnel management and promote a more diverse, 

inclusive, and fair workplace. Many of CFPB’s initiatives have been 

implemented only recently, and because changing employee perceptions 

and behaviors can take time, it is too soon to know the effectiveness of 

Conclusions
Page 52 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

CFPB’s efforts in these areas. For example, our spring 2015 survey 

results indicate that employees in some parts of the bureau and in some 

demographic groups continued to have heightened concerns about unfair 

treatment, retaliation for raising issues, accountability, and other matters.

Negative perceptions about fairness, trust, and accountability can take 

years to address, and it will be important for CFPB to provide ongoing 

attention to the effectiveness of its efforts to address these perceptions 

and related personnel challenges. While CFPB has developed 

mechanisms to measure and communicate progress on its diversity, 

inclusion, and culture initiatives, it does not comprehensively report on its 

implementation goals and progress across the full range of these 

initiatives. As we have previously reported, providing transparency around 

results and processes used to achieve results can help an organization to 

build and sustain the commitment and momentum needed to ensure that 

change initiatives are successful. In particular, because CFPB’s initiatives 

have been wide ranging, a more comprehensive and integrated approach 

to reporting progress could make it easier for CFPB employees to 

understand the status and timeframes for various actions, their intended 

results, and CFPB’s progress in achieving these results. In addition, as 

bureau leadership and priorities can shift over time, a comprehensive 

approach could help to ensure sustained commitment to progress and 

accountability among CFPB leaders.

Finally, an important part of ensuring a diverse, inclusive, and fair 

workplace is promoting employees’ confidence that they can pursue 

resolution of problems through available channels, such as alternative 

dispute resolution, the formal EEO process, and the grievance processes.

While CFPB has taken steps to improve its management of complaints—

particularly with respect to EEO complaints—our survey results 

highlighted concerns among employees who have had experience with 

these complaint processes. CFPB is in the process of developing new 

tools to collect employees’ feedback on their experiences with the EEO 

process, but has not done something similar for the employee grievance 

processes. Taking additional steps to understand and remedy factors that 

may reduce employee confidence in its complaint processes, such as 

implementing tools to collect more comprehensive employee feedback, 

will be an important part of CFPB’s ongoing efforts to promote a more 

diverse, inclusive, and fair workplace.
Page 53 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

In order to ensure sustained leadership commitment to and accountability 

for CFPB’s efforts to promote a diverse, inclusive, and fair workplace, we 

recommend that the Director take the following two actions:

• Develop and implement a strategy for comprehensively reporting on 

the bureau’s implementation goals and progress on its range of 

initiatives related to promoting diversity, inclusion, fairness, and a 

stronger organizational culture.

• In coordination with representatives of CFPB’s employee union, 

develop tools to collect more comprehensive employee feedback on 

the grievance complaint processes to understand and remedy factors 

that may reduce employee confidence in these processes.

We made copies of this draft report and the accompanying e-supplement 

(GAO-16-138SP) available to CFPB for its review and comment. In its 

written comments, reproduced in appendix II, CFPB concurred with our 

two recommendations. CFPB also provided technical comments that 

were incorporated, as appropriate. We also provided an excerpt of the 

draft report to EEOC for technical comment. EEOC did not provide any 

comments.

In concurring with our first recommendation to comprehensively report on 

its goals and progress on its range of diversity, inclusion, fairness, and 

organizational culture initiatives, CFPB cited examples of mechanisms it 

currently uses to both track individual initiatives and monitor progress 

across its many programs and offices. CFPB noted that consolidating and 

augmenting its existing monitoring efforts for these initiatives will provide 

a fuller picture of progress and opportunities for efficiency and further 

innovation.

In concurring with our second recommendation on feedback tools for the

grievance complaint process, CFPB noted that our survey results on 

CFPB employees’ views of CFPB’s complaint processes reflect 

responses from a small group of employees and in some cases the 

negative views appear to reflect employee misunderstanding. CFPB

noted that this group was smaller because it represented employees 

responding to our survey that had experience with one or more of the 

complaint processes. However, our report did not conclude that these 

employees’ views were merely due to misunderstandings. We do not 

know if the concerns were based only on misunderstandings or other 

reasons. Furthermore, as we noted in the report, EEOC told us that

Recommendations for 

Executive Action

Agency Comments 

and Our Evaluation
Page 54 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

negative perceptions need to be addressed so that employees have 

confidence in using a complaint process. CFPB agreed that gathering 

feedback on its complaint processes could help detect and correct 

employee misunderstandings and identify opportunities for process 

enhancements. With respect to negotiated grievances, CFPB said it 

plans to work with its employee union to develop feedback mechanisms 

that provide it with useful information while respecting the distinct roles 

that CFPB management and the union play in that complaint resolution 

process. 

In its written comments, CFPB highlighted some differences between our 

survey results and the results of CFPB’s 2015 annual employee survey. 

For example, CFPB suggested that some of GAO’s survey results 

contrast with the favorable score (66 percent) and lack of statistically 

significant differences among demographic groups on CFPB’s Inclusion 

Quotient (an index based on 20 questions from CFPB’s survey). In 

addition, CFPB asserted that strong survey results on certain of its own 

survey questions related to prohibited personnel practices contrast with 

more negative results on different (but related) questions in our survey of 

nonexecutive employees. We note that differences in wording and topics 

between the relevant GAO and CFPB survey items limit the usefulness of 

such comparisons. Furthermore, the Inclusion Quotient CFPB refers to 

provides an index of 20 separate survey items, about half of which cover 

topics that were not covered in our two surveys. While noting these 

differences in the survey results, CFPB said that our survey results 

provide additional data on these issues and that it looks forward to 

analyzing them further and incorporating insights drawn from them into its 

ongoing work.

On April 12, 2016, CFPB provided via e-mail technical comments on the 

draft report that included updated information on various personnel 

management efforts, among other comments. We summarize their most 

significant comments and our responses below.

• CFPB provided technical comments and supporting documentation 

related to additional progress on its efforts discussed in our report’s 

third objective. As appropriate, we made edits to the report to reflect 

this new information. Among other examples, we updated the report’s 

discussion to reflect CFPB’s April 2016 announcement of agreement 

on a new performance management program, the closure of 

additional Inspector General recommendations in March 2016, and 

additional steps CFPB has taken in response to Inspector General 

recommendations related to succession planning and incorporating 
Page 55 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

diversity and inclusion into performance competencies for supervisors 

and managers. In addition, we incorporated additional information 

about CFPB’s efforts to strengthen its management of employee 

complaint processes.

• CFPB noted that while our draft report presented selected results from 

CFPB’s 2015 annual employee survey, it did not discuss the positive 

trends in this survey’s results compared to the prior year. CFPB 

suggested that further discussion of its 2015 employee survey results 

would provide a more accurate snapshot of organizational culture at 

CFPB. In presenting CFPB employees’ views on organizational 

culture, the primary focus of our report is the results of our own 

surveys of CFPB employees. We conducted our surveys between 

April and June 2015, before the administration of CFPB’s 2015 annual 

employee survey in July and August 2015. Where appropriate, our 

report provides comparisons to similar questions from CFPB’s own 

2015 survey but many of our survey questions were different from 

CFPB’s survey questions and therefore are not comparable. 

Furthermore, it was beyond the scope of this GAO review to analyze 

and draw conclusions about trends in CFPB’s employee survey 

results over time (including both positive and negative trends 

observed in recent year-over-year comparisons).

As agreed with your offices, unless you publicly announce the contents of 

this report earlier, we plan no further distribution until 30 days from the 

report date. At that time, we will send copies of this report to CFPB, 

interested congressional committees, members, and others. In addition, 

the report will be available at no charge on the GAO website at 

http://www.gao.gov. 
Page 56 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

If you or your staffs have any questions regarding this report, please 

contact me at (202) 512-8678 or GarciaDiazD@gao.gov. Contact points 

for our Offices of Congressional Relations and Public Affairs may be 

found on the last page of this report. GAO staff who made major 

contributions to this report are listed in appendix III.

Daniel Garcia-Diaz

Director, Financial Markets

 and Community Investment
Page 57 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

List of Requesters

The Honorable Jeb Hensarling

Chairman

Committee on Financial Services

House of Representatives

The Honorable Sean Duffy

Chairman

Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations

Committee on Financial Services

House of Representatives

The Honorable Randy Neugebauer

Chairman

Subcommittee on Financial Institutions and Consumer Credit

Committee on Financial Services

House of Representatives

The Honorable Patrick McHenry

House of Representatives
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 58 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

This report examines (1) the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s 

(CFPB) early efforts as a new agency to establish personnel practices 

and organizational culture and challenges it encountered in promoting a 

diverse, inclusive, and fair workplace; (2) employees’ views on personnel 

management and organizational culture at CFPB; and (3) CFPB’s efforts 

to strengthen its personnel management practices and organizational 

culture.

To describe CFPB’s early efforts as a new agency to establish personnel 

practices and an organizational culture, we reviewed CFPB reports and 

documents, and testimony and public statements by CFPB officials. To 

describe CFPB’s efforts to grow its workforce and meet statutory and 

mission-related goals, we reviewed CFPB’s annual reports to Congress 

for fiscal years 2012 through 2014, including reports on the Office of 

Human Capital’s efforts to build its workforce and develop its processes 

for hiring, training, performance management, and other human capital 

functions; the Office of Minority and Women Inclusion’s (OMWI) efforts to 

promote diversity and inclusion; and CFPB’s overall progress in delivering 

results for consumers. We obtained and analyzed CFPB workforce data 

for fiscal years 2011 to 2015 to describe the growth and level of diversity 

in CFPB’s workforce. We also reviewed data and documentation related 

to CFPB’s initial efforts to identify and address specific personnel 

challenges. For example, we reviewed a 2013 report by a management 

consulting firm on CFPB’s diversity and inclusion efforts and CFPB’s 

internal analysis of disparities in performance ratings by race and other 

factors for fiscal year 2013. In addition, to describe trends in the number 

and basis of employee complaints, we obtained and analyzed CFPB data 

for fiscal years 2011 to 2015 on Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) 

complaints and grievances. To describe employee perspectives on 

challenges CFPB faced as a new agency, we reviewed the report by 

CFPB’s Office of Minority and Women Inclusion on listening sessions it 

held with employees from April through June 2014.1 We also interviewed 

current and former CFPB officials who were employed at CFPB in its first 

2 years.

 1

Between April and June 2014, OMWI conducted 48 listening sessions with more than 

300 employees and issued a report with its findings and recommendations in August 

2014. 

Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 59 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

We obtained CFPB employees’ views on personnel management and 

organizational culture through interviews with current and former 

employees and two web-based surveys:

Interviews. To identify key issues and concerns related to CFPB’s 

personnel management practices and organizational culture and to inform 

survey development, we provided opportunities for all CFPB employees 

to meet or communicate with us individually in a confidential manner. We 

set up a GAO toll-free phone number and e-mail address for CFPB 

employees to use to arrange a meeting with our team or provide 

information. From August 2014 through May 2015, we held one-on-one 

interviews with 120 nonsupervisory and supervisory staff.

Surveys. From April through June 2015, we conducted two separate selfadministered web-based surveys: one survey of all 1,389 CFPB 

employees (nonsupervisors and supervisors below executives) who were 

employed as of January 31, 2015, and another survey of 57 senior CFPB 

executives.2 We chose to survey all staff instead of a sample in order to 

provide the largest possible number of CFPB employees a chance to 

voice their opinions. The nonexecutive survey included questions on (1) 

hiring, compensation, and retention; (2) employee opportunities, 

development and performance management; (3) employee complaint 

processes; (4) leadership, management, and communication; (5) diversity 

and inclusion efforts; (6) organizational culture and climate; and (7) 

employee demographic information. The separate survey of all CFPB 

executives covered the same topic areas, but omitted many questions not 

relevant for executives. The full set of questions and results for both 

surveys is available as an e-publication supplement to this report, 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Survey Results from Employees 

and Executives on Personnel Management and Organizational Culture 

(GAO-16-138SP, May 2016). Furthermore, we report results for groups of 

respondents by race, ethnicity, gender, and age, but we do not attempt to 

extrapolate the findings within each of these groups to the broader group.

Survey respondents self-reported their race and ethnicity. Respondents 

were able to select more than one race, so it is possible that some 

 2

For the purposes of this report, we defined CFPB executives as employees at pay grade 

80 or higher. According to CFPB officials, executive positions at pay grade 80 or above 

are comparable to positions in the Senior Executive Service at other federal agencies. 

Based on this definition, CFPB executives include heads of divisions and offices and their 

deputies.
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 60 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

respondents are represented in more than one race and ethnicity group.

In tables where we summarize results by race and ethnicity, we include 

results for the group of respondents who chose not to identify their race or 

ethnicity. In addition, in tables in this report and the e-supplement, we 

exclude results for groups with fewer than 20 respondents.

A total of 863 employees responded to our nonexecutive survey for a 

response rate of 62 percent. A total of 36 senior executives responded to 

our executive survey for a response rate of 63 percent. For the 

nonexecutive survey, we carried out a statistical nonresponse bias 

analysis using available administrative data and determined that we could 

not assume the nonrespondents were missing at random. We found that 

the propensity to respond was statistically correlated with employee age 

and the CFPB division an employee worked in. Furthermore, we 

observed that responses to questions on the survey also correlated with 

employee age. For this reason, the results of the staff survey are 

presented as tabulations from a census survey. We do not make any 

attempt to extrapolate the findings to the 38 percent of eligible staff who 

chose not to complete our survey.

To minimize other types of errors, commonly referred to as nonsampling 

errors, and enhance data quality, we employed recognized survey design 

practices in the development of the questionnaires and the collection, 

processing, and analysis of the survey data. To develop our survey 

questions, we drew on information from the one-on-one interviews, prior 

GAO-administered personnel management surveys, and the Office of 

Personnel Management’s Federal Employment Viewpoint Survey. We 

pretested the nonexecutive questionnaire with nine CFPB employees and 

the executive questionnaire with three executives. During survey 

development, we reviewed the survey to ensure the ordering of survey 

sections was appropriate and that questions in each section were clearly 

stated and easily comprehended. A GAO survey expert reviewed and 

provided feedback on our survey instrument. To reduce nonresponse, 

another source of nonsampling error, we undertook an intensive follow-up 

effort that included multiple e-mail reminders to encourage CFPB 

employees and executives to complete the questionnaire. We minimized 

processing errors by having a second independent data analyst conduct 

an accuracy check of the computer programs used for data analysis. 

Also, having the respondents complete questionnaires online eliminated 

errors associated with manual data entry. On the basis of our application 

of these practices and follow-up procedures, we determined that the data 

were of sufficient quality for our purposes.
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 61 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

In addition to our own surveys and interviews with CFPB employees, we 

reviewed CFPB’s annual employee survey results for fiscal years 2013, 

2014, and 2015 to obtain additional perspectives from CFPB staff on the 

bureau’s personnel management-related issues. In addition, we reviewed 

documents and data from the Office of Personnel Management (OPM)

and the Merit Systems Protection Board to provide information about the 

views of federal government employees on these issues.3 We assessed 

the reliability of these survey data by reviewing documentation of the 

methodology for these surveys and found these survey data to be reliable 

for our purposes.

To evaluate CFPB’s efforts to develop and strengthen its personnel 

management and organizational culture, we reviewed relevant CFPB 

reports, policies, procedures, training programs, planning documents, and 

external reviews. We used criteria from applicable federal regulations, 

leading practices for diversity and managing organizational change

identified in prior GAO reports, and GAO standards for internal control.4

We also interviewed CFPB officials from the OMWI, the Office of Human

Capital, the Legal division, and the Strategy Office. To learn more about 

CFPB’s personnel management changes, we reviewed CFPB’s hiring, 

promotions, and commissioning policies and procedures and 

communications and guides CFPB created to enhance career 

development. We reviewed training programs developed for managers 

and CFPB’s plans for developing its new performance management 

system, including a research firm’s report on the identification and 

development of new performance competencies.5 We also reviewed a 

 3

The Merit Systems Protection Board is an independent quasijudicial agency in the 

executive branch that adjudicates employee appeals of personnel actions and conducts 

studies of the federal merit system. 

4

GAO, Diversity Management: Expert-Identified Leading Practices and Agency Examples, 

GAO-05-90 (Washington, D.C.: Jan. 14, 2005), Aviation Acquisition: A Comprehensive 

Strategy Is Needed for Cultural Change at FAA, GAO/RC ED-96-159 (Washington, D.C.: 

Aug. 22, 1996), Results Oriented Cultures: Implementation Steps to Assist Mergers and 

Organizational Transformations, GAO-03-669 (Washington, D.C.: July 2, 2003), and 

Internal Control: Standards for Internal Control in the Federal Government GAO/AIMD-00-

21.3.1 (Washington, D.C.: November 1999).

5

PDRI, The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Development of Competency Models 

for Team Members and Leaders, Technical Report No. 848 (Arlington, VA: March 2015).
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 62 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

consultant’s review of possible factors contributing to disparities in 

performance management ratings under its current system.6

To assess CFPB’s efforts to improve diversity and inclusion throughout 

the bureau, we reviewed challenges identified in reports by CFPB 

summarizing listening sessions with employees, by the Office of the 

Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve 

System and the CFPB (Inspector General) and by Deloitte, a 

management consulting firm.7 We assessed CFPB’s efforts to implement 

recommendations from these reports by reviewing memorandums from 

leadership, employee trainings, and internal documents describing new 

employee groups as well as recruitment, strategic planning, and 

succession planning efforts. In addition, we interviewed CFPB and 

Inspector General staff about the status of CFPB’s efforts to implement 

recommendations made by the Inspector General. We analyzed CFPB’s 

efforts to track progress related to diversity and inclusion through their 

internal analysis of annual employee survey results, management’s 

quarterly performance reviews from 2014 through mid-2015, and 

documents describing the goals and outcomes of employee groups 

associated with the Workforce of the Future initiative. We also discussed 

the development of CFPB’s new performance management system and 

competencies through interviews with CFPB officials. To assess manager 

accountability mechanisms, we examined CFPB’s current competency 

models, updated guidance for these models, and interviewed relevant 

officials. We also reviewed CFPB’s disciplinary policy.

To assess CFPB’s efforts to strengthen its processes for addressing 

employee complaints, we reviewed policies, procedures, and guidance 

related to Equal Employment Opportunity complaints and grievances. We 

reviewed survey instruments that the Office of Civil Rights uses or plans 

 6

Charles River Associates, “Report on the Review of the Performance Management 

Process Used at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau,” (Boston, MA: June 12, 

2015). 

7

Office of the Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System 

and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The CFPB Can Enhance Its Diversity and 

Inclusion Efforts, 2015-MO-C-002 (Washington, D.C.: Mar. 4, 2015); Office of the 

Inspector General of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System and the 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, The CFPB Can Further Enhance Internal Controls 

for Hiring Processes, 2015-MO-C-013 (Washington, D.C.: Aug. 26, 2015); and Deloitte, 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Office of Minority and Women Inclusion, Diversity 

and Inclusion, Final Assessment, 2013.
Appendix I: Objectives, Scope and 

Methodology

Page 63 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

to use to obtain feedback from employees using the EEO process. We 

also reviewed CFPB’s efforts to improve tracking of EEO complaints and 

grievances as recommended by the Inspector General in 2015. We 

interviewed officials from the Office of Civil Rights who are responsible for 

CFPB’s EEO program and from the Office of Human Capital, which is 

responsible for CFPB’s grievance processes. We also interviewed 

officials from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) 

about the EEO complaint process and how agencies can evaluate their 

program and address negative employee experiences and perceptions.

For the parts of our work that involved the analysis of computerprocessed data, we assessed the reliability of these data and found that 

they were sufficiently reliable for our purposes. Data sets for which we 

conducted data reliability assessments include CFPB data on its 

workforce demographics and on employee complaints. To assess the 

reliability of these data, we reviewed relevant documentation and 

conducted interviews with CFPB staff to review steps they took to collect 

and ensure the reliability of the data. In addition, we electronically tested 

data fields for missing values, outliers, and obvious errors. We 

determined that these data were sufficiently reliable for our purposes.

We conducted this performance audit from September 2014 to May 2016 

in accordance with generally accepted government auditing standards. 

Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain 

sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our 

findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that 

the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and 

conclusions based on our audit objectives.
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 64 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 65 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 66 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 67 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 68 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 69 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 70 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 71 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix II: Comments from the Consumer 

Financial Protection Bureau

Page 72 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues
Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

Page 73 GAO-16-62 CFPB Personnel Issues

Daniel Garcia-Diaz, (202) 512-8678, GarciaDiazD@gao.gov

In addition to the contact named above, Kay Kuhlman (Assistant 

Director), John Fisher (Analyst in Charge), Carl Barden, Bethany Benitez, 

Lisa Brown, Heather Chartier, Rudy Chatlos, Thomas C. Corless, Kate 

Bittinger Eikel, Cathy Hurley, Andrew Kurtzman, Jill Lacey, Ying Long, 

Carl Ramirez, Jennifer Schwartz, and Chad Smith made key contributions 

to this report.

Appendix III: GAO Contact and Staff 

Acknowledgments

GAO Contact

Staff 

Acknowledgments

(250797)
The Government Accountability Office, the audit, evaluation, and 

investigative arm of Congress, exists to support Congress in meeting its 

constitutional responsibilities and to help improve the performance and 

accountability of the federal government for the American people. GAO 

examines the use of public funds; evaluates federal programs and 

policies; and provides analyses, recommendations, and other assistance 

to help Congress make informed oversight, policy, and funding decisions. 

GAO’s commitment to good government is reflected in its core values of 

accountability, integrity, and reliability.

The fastest and easiest way to obtain copies of GAO documents at no 

cost is through GAO’s website (http://www.gao.gov). Each weekday 

afternoon, GAO posts on its website newly released reports, testimony, 

and correspondence. To have GAO e-mail you a list of newly posted 

products, go to http://www.gao.gov and select “E-mail Updates.”

The price of each GAO publication reflects GAO’s actual cost of 

production and distribution and depends on the number of pages in the 

publication and whether the publication is printed in color or black and 

white. Pricing and ordering information is posted on GAO’s website, 

http://www.gao.gov/ordering.htm. 

Place orders by calling (202) 512-6000, toll free (866) 801-7077, or 

TDD (202) 512-2537.

Orders may be paid for using American Express, Discover Card, 

MasterCard, Visa, check, or money order. Call for additional information.

Connect with GAO on Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and YouTube.

Subscribe to our RSS Feeds or E-mail Updates. 

Listen to our Podcasts and read The Watchblog.

Visit GAO on the web at www.gao.gov.

Contact:

Website: http://www.gao.gov/fraudnet/fraudnet.htm

E-mail: fraudnet@gao.gov

Automated answering system: (800) 424-5454 or (202) 512-7470

Katherine Siggerud, Managing Director, siggerudk@gao.gov, (202) 512-

4400, U.S. Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 

7125, Washington, DC 20548

Chuck Young, Managing Director, youngc1@gao.gov, (202) 512-4800

U.S. Government Accountability Office, 441 G Street NW, Room 7149 

Washington, DC 20548

GAO’s Mission

Obtaining Copies of 

GAO Reports and 

Testimony

Order by Phone

Connect with GAO

To Report Fraud, 

Waste, and Abuse in 

Federal Programs

Congressional 

Relations

Public Affairs

Please Print on Recycled Paper.