The Hill: Lawmaker Pushes DHS for Timeline in Improving Employee Satisfaction

By Lydia Wheeler - 04/27/16 03:44 PM EDT

 

Rep. Mick Mulvaney (R-S.C.) pressed an official at the Department of Homeland Security for a timeline on when the agency will improve its employee satisfaction scores.

 

The agency came in last in a 2015 ranking of the best large places to work in the federal government.

 

“If I wanted to skip all the rhetoric and get to the bottom line, when is it going to get better?” Mulvaney asked during a House Oversight and Government Reform Committee hearing Wednesday. “When can we expect you to be in the top half?”

 

Testifying before the committee, Angela Bailey, the chief human capital officer at the DHS, said leadership officials have taken steps in the past year to improve agency scores.

 

“We’ve made a concerted effort to get out and listen to the employees,” she said.

 

But Mulvaney pressured her for a more specific timeline, asking when the agency’s actions will start to have an impact.

 

“If I may sir, everybody does not hate coming to work at DHS,” she said, defending the agency. “If fact, most of the men and women at DHS are incredibly proud to work at DHS. When things get better actually is when we’re able to make concrete changes that effect their lives positively.”

 

Mulvaney assured Bailey that the committee was not trying to beat up on her.

 

"All we want to know is when is it going to get better?” he said. “If it’s a year, fine. If it’s three years, fine. But if you’re going to tell me it’s three years, what is the penalty if it doesn’t?”

 

Bailey said she believes the agency will be able to make incremental improvements this year.

 

Rep. Gerald Connolly had stressed at the beginning that the pupose of the hearing was not to “brow beat,” but rather to gain a better understanding of why federal employees may be dissatisfied and what lawmakers can do to help.

 

“We must not forget the tremendous difficulties federal employees have faced over the last few years,” he said. “Sequestration cuts by Congress caused nearly 1 million federal employees to be furloughed for some time and the uncertainty and anxiety that created; a budget standoff led by some in this body forced a 16-day government shutdown in 2013, the first in 17 years; federal employee pay was frozen three consecutive years; retirement benefits were reduced for new employees and training budgets were slashed.”

 

In all, he said, federal employers were hit with more than $180 billion in compensation cuts — the only group of American targeted by Congress to contribute to deficit reduction explicitly.

 

“It’s no surprise employees felt unappreciated and demoralized,” he said.

 

According to the rankings from the Partnership for Public Service, which used the results of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey administered by the Office of Personnel Management, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) was named the best place to work in 2015 out of 19 large agencies for a fourth year in a row, while the Department of Labor came in eighth place.

 

For mid-size agencies, the Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) ranked 21 out of 23, with the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation coming in on top and the Small Business Administration coming in at the bottom.