Poor teamwork. Miserable balance of work and your life. Little success with strategic management. Doesn't sound like the best place to work, does it?
But those are some of the findings of life within the ranks of the National Park Service, according to this year's Best Places to Work in the Federal Government.
The rankings are compiled by the Partnership for Public Service and American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation through surveys of more than 263,000 government workers.
Agencies and subcomponents are ranked according to a Best Places to Work index score, which measures overall employee satisfaction, an important part of employee engagement and, ultimately, a driver of organizational performance. The Best Places to Work score is calculated both for the organization as a whole and also for specific demographic groups.
While this year's rankings show a slight improvement for the Park Service over recent years' surveys, they also reflect that the agency is far from being considered a good employer.
Overall, the Park Service ranked 139th out of 224 agencies. Its combined score of 63.7, compiled from surveys that looked at such things as management, empowerment, diversity, pay, training, and "family friendly culture," was up from 59.8 last year, 58.2 in 2007, and 62.5 in 2005.
In 2003 the Park Service's score was 64.1.
The latest survey found that teamwork in the Park Service is about the worst in any federal agency, with the Park Service's score ranking it 206 out of the 223 ranked. Even worse is the agency's work/life balance quotient, which placed the Park Service 220 out of the 223. Also poor was the perception of the agency's "strategic management," which earned the Park Service a ranking of 203 out of the 223.
The Park Service's best score, 97 out of 223, came in the category of "employee skills/mission match."
A request for a reaction from Park Service Director Jon Jarvis was not immediately granted. However, last September, the day after he was confirmed by the Senate as director, Mr. Jarvis dispatched a system-wide memo outlining his priorities, and topping them was a desire to strengthen the workforce.
"I come to Washington, in part, as your representative, your voice, and your advocate. The day-to-day operation of the parks and the work of our community assistance programs is accomplished by the dedicated men and women (including amazing volunteers) of the NPS who empty the trash, enter the payroll, rescue the lost, clear the trails, help communities, sample the air and water, and tell our compelling stories," he wrote. "Your welfare and safety will always be my top priority. To help you succeed, we will provide the funding, training, succession planning, recognition, facilities, and policies you need to get your work done."
The latest rankings would seem to indicate that Mr. Jarvis has a lot of work to accomplish in this arena.
Here's a look at the breakdown:
Best in Class Scores.........................Score.............Rank (out of varied totals)
Employee Skills/Mission Match........................78.9................97 of 223
Strategic Management.................................50.0................203 of 223
Teamwork.............................................59.6................206 of 223
Effective Leadership.................................51.0................183 of 223
Effective Leadership - Empowerment...................45.5................176 of 223
Effective Leadership - Fairness......................48.7................185 of 223
Effective Leadership - Leaders......................43.8................186 of 223
Effective Leadership - Supervisors..................62.2................180 of 223
Performance Based Rewards and Advancement...........43.7................177 of 223
Training and Development............................53.3................198 of 223
Support for Diversity...............................52.5................194 of 223
Pay.................................................62.4................179 of 223
Family Friendly Culture and Benefits................31.0................188 of 223
Work/Life Balance...................................51.4................220 of 223
Scores by Demographic..........................Score...........Rank (out of varied totals)
Female..........................................65.4................119 of 222
Male............................................64.3................161 of 221
40 and over.....................................64.6................146 of 223
Under 40........................................65.5................134 of 204
Asian...........................................68.0................54 of 79
Black or African-American.......................58.6................148 of 193
Hispanic or Latino..............................66.9................69 of 133
Multi-racial....................................60.3................24 of 42
White...........................................65.8................149 of 222
American Indian or Native American..............61.1................10 of 17
Comments
I can't speak to the internal workings of the NPS but the rangers I have encountered have been some of the nicest, friendliest, knowledgeable people I have ever encountered.
In November of last year, the Director and NLC endorsed and supported the creation of a Workplace Enrichment Committee. WE (get it?) is made up of 25+ field employees, NLC members, and lead by a full-time program manager (me). I have 30 years of field experience, most recently as Superintendent at SF Maritime NHP and have long been invested in helping our workplace environment. WE are working in collaboration with many others on focusing and prioritizing our efforts to improve these rankings.
WE have folks looking at recruitment, retention, leadership capacity, training & development, diversity, internal communications, and other aspects that will engage our employees in a healthier way. Our employees are incredibly passionate about the work they do - just disappointed in many of the processes and systems that they need to do those jobs.
I'm encouraged by the improved rankings and the attention and commitment of our employees, leaders, and managers have to meeting these challenges. Building higher levels of employee satisfaction and engagement isn't easy - but few things that are worthwhile are - but it is doable.
They're definitely the best "places" to work, I mean your office is some of the most beautiful land in the world, but this doesn't surprise me. Besides the stated reasons just think of the isolation from the outside world at some of the parks. It may take you one to two hours just to get out of Yosemite. My friend who is a S&R Ranger at the Grand Canyon has to do all of his major grocery shopping in Flagstaff (or Williams) which means he goes once a month and fills his truck to the brim.
That being said, I agree with Anonymous. I've never met a ranger who hasn't been kind and knowledgeable and incredibly helpful and I deal with them on a daily basis throughout the country.
Our culture continues to be: pay our folks as little as we can get away with considering human resource policies and hope that the fact that we live and work in beautiful places will make up for it. Well, it does, to some extent - I have lived and worked in some of the most beautiful places on the planet. But I can't eat rainbows and I can't send my kids to college with sunsets. I can get another job for more money, yes, but since we are talking about subjective workforce happiness it is a valid discussion about paychecks, perhaps best expressed in terms of parity.
That being said, the thing that most affects my job satisfaction in this organization is workload. After more than a decade here I see a wide discrepancy in managing workload factors. There is no consistency in applying well-established benchmarks for span-of-control and assigning work. the field folks have it pretty good. Workload for first-line supervisors and mid-level managers is very inconsistently applied with "punish the competent" being very much the rule not the exception. In the private sector this can be addressed through awarding bonuses and raises. In the government...not so much. Small merit awards are all we can do.
My two cents.
For those who misunderstand: Punish the competent = Pile work on your most effective employees until they reach their breaking point while ignoring your average and poor performers. I guess it does come down to leadership around here after all.
I know two very effective friends who have left the NPS recently becuase they were fed up with being fed more work because they were competent and their coworkers were not. Too bad.
Kate, I hope your WE committee does a commendable job and that Mr. Jarvis pays close attention to your recommendations. There was a time when the NPS was the most prestigious organization to work for in all of the Federal Government. I'd like to see it back at the top.
Owen
i had the best summer of my life working at mt.rushmore(seasonal maintenance)pay was not that great,the people i worked for were.i am 68 yrs. old ,and would go back there to work if i could.it sure as heck beats any job in d.c.
Unfortunately, this image that "your office is some of the most beautiful land in the world," is part of the problem. Most NPS employees do not work in the west and do not work in remote areas. There are more than 1500 employees in Washington DC, 500 in and around New York City, 300 in San Francisco/Oakland, many others in Atlanta, Omaha, and Denver. There are large parks near Cleveland, Chicago, Boston, and San Antonio. Most parks are small areas with insufficient staff to handle the workload of visitors, resource protection, law enforcement, maintenance, IT systems, data processing, etc. You have to look past the image of what people think working for the NPS is like to the reality of what it is like in order to understand these rankings. The results are not suprising. And what is the solution - as noted above - another task force. By my own counting, as a 30 year employee, this is at least the 12th such task force dealing with workforce improvement that I have seen.