Despite living and working in some of the most spectacular places on Earth, morale continues to fall for National Park Service employees/ NPS file
Nearly two years after Chuck Sams took over as director of the National Park Service with a determination to improve employee morale, workforce morale continues to fall, employee flight from the agency is growing, and the agency's directorate is failing to reverse those trends, according to Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility.
Citing internal Park Service documents and federal surveys it provided the Traveler with, PEER said the director has been slow to implement strategies that might reverse those trends. “National parks should be among the best places to work in government, not one of the worst," said Timothy Whitehouse, PEER's executive director.
National Park Service staff at agency headquarters in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond Tuesday when asked about PEER's claims.
During his confirmation hearing in October 2021, Sams told the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee that, "[T]he one thing I've always learned in leadership is it's the people that are most important. And therefore [he viewed a key role of his as director would be] helping to improve the morale, listening to the staff, the long-term staff, and figuring out exactly what needs to be done to support them out in the field in order to be the good interpreters they are, to be able to take care of the parks in an appropriate way."
But progress has largely been uneven and employee attrition has risen, reaching 28 percent in 2022, up from 17 percent in 2018, and Park Service pay levels and housing conditions — a key factor in employee satisfaction levels — depend on congressional appropriations, something out of Sams' control.
According to the 2020 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government survey, the Park Service ranked 353rd out of 411 agencies, and last year's survey dropped the agency to 371st out of 432 agencies when employees were asked if their agency was accomplishing its mission.
More recently, the latest Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey conducted by the federal Office of Personnel Management ranked the Park Service 371 out of 432 government agencies in 2022 (in the bottom 15 percentile) and 396th when it came to “the level of respect employees have for senior leaders," said PEER.
Digging into that survey's results reflect the challenges confronting Sams in his mission, with both positive and negative measures.
Overall workforce satisfaction of those surveyed [43 percent of eligible employees] with the Park Service, their job, and their pay dropped from a high of 60 percent in 2020 to 56 percent in 2022, lower than that found elsewhere in Interior Department bureaus and across the federal government.
The survey's authors attributed the drop in satisfaction to employee unhappiness over pay levels.
At the same time, however, the survey found improvement in "employee engagement" — a measure of how employees view their senior leadership, supervisors, and "elements of their work experience." That measure rose to 67 percent last year, up from 63 percent in 2019. And while the survey ranked NPS employees' views of senior leadership's "ability to motivate, communicate, and engender respect and integrity" lowest across government, it did note that "positive responses are trending upward" by 8 percent.
PEER also obtained a handful of pages from an internal Park Service "Work Environment Risk Factors" memo from late August that "highlighted slight improvement in some survey results but cited some ominous slippage on already poor results," the organization said. "Compared to the previous year’s survey, fewer employees rated NPS as a good place to work (down 6 percent), being satisfied with their job (down 1.8 percent), or satisfied with the organization (down 2.1 percent)."
Drilling down further, the report identified the following risk factors for the agency:
- Rising Attrition. In 2022, NPS experienced a 28 percent rate of attrition, up from 17 percent in 2018. Meanwhile, the overall NPS workforce has remained stagnant despite rising visitation and other workload measures, adding to low work/balance survey results;
- Unaddressed Harassment. A steady flow of harassment complaints, but less than 9 percent of such complaints “concluded with a finding of harassment," a plunge by more than half from the prior year; and
- Culture of Retaliation. In what was billed “as one of the top five positive shifts," fully 37 percent of respondents reported that they feared reprisal if they reported a suspected violation of law or policy.
Regarding harassment across the Park Service, a long festering problem, there were 206 complaints made in 2022, according to the document, down from 246 in 2021 but up from 175 in 2020. Just 18 of the 2022 complaints were found to be legitimate, though others still could be under investigation, the memo noted.
A crisis of sexual harassment in the agency came to national attention in 2015 when an investigation by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General discovered that for roughly 15 years life deep in the Inner Gorge of Grand Canyon National Park at times reflected rowdy, sexually charged scenes from a frat party for some Park Service employees, with male employees pawing and propositioning female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior.
Jeff Ruch, PEER's Pacific director, said Tuesday that "you would think that parks would be a great place to work, and [Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey] doesn't reflect that. And ever since the Voices Report, where they sort of made an effort [to address harassment], it seems like the whole agency has been in a spin cycle without really addressing these issues."
The Voices Report came out in 2018 and was based upon interviews with Park Service employees in an effort to uncover the extent of harassment across the agency.
Sams this year launched an effort dubbed RISE, for "Respectful, Inclusive, Safe, and Engaged" to improve culture and work conditions across the park system, said PEER.
"The RISE vision forms the cornerstone of our efforts to encourage a culture that embraces fairness, accessibility, diversity in its many forms, and the value of creating a sense of belonging and safety for our employees. NPS employees have a deep and abiding dedication to public service and the mission of this organization. We owe it to them to nurture an environment and culture worthy of the commitment employees have made to the NPS and the passion that employees have to work here," reads the opening of the RISE document.
PEER called the strategy a "numbing laundry list of bureaucratic objectives,' 'actions,' and 'milestones.' However, the status for most of these items is described as 'Not Started,' with no timeline for either initiation or completion."
"The idea that they sort of are just starting again with a new program [shifting from the Voices Report to the RISE effort] would be discouraging to me if I was a field level employee," Ruch said.
Looking out across the National Park Service and its issues, Whitehouse said "the Park Service is failing to address issues of low morale and workplace harassment. While more assessment tools to measure workplace work culture may provide some useful information, what the Park Service really needs is bold leadership that is willing to take immediate steps to improve working conditions."
Comments
Left the NPS do to the NE Regional Office and multiple parks in the NE committing Federal and State level crimes, nepotism by the Regional Director (handing her husband a Superintendent position w/o conducting any interviews for equally if not more qualified candidates), lack of support from the regional office as well as the verbal and sexual harrassment that I saw first hand at several parks in the NE. With multiple parks complaing and filing reports to the regional office and/or to the park management, nothing appeared to be done to rectify these violations (in one case a promotion was granted to one violator).
An example: One park wanted to fire an employee for endangering the life of a visitor but the NE regional office told the supervisor that that would be too much paperwork for them and it would be easier to simply give the employee a 3 out of 5 on their year end evaluation.
Was told by park management at a previous park I worked at that she was told by the regional director that congress knows that the NPS is one of the most dedicated agencies in the federal government and that is why the NPS is not properly funded. Congress knows that the employees will pick up the slack and get the daily tasks completed for positions that are not filled. This is one of the reasons why NPS employees are overworked and constantly on the verge of burn out.
For anyone that thinks working for the NPS is a dream job, please think twice and apply to any other agency as you will be treated with more respect, higher pay, and a lot less stress.
I've been retired from the NPS for more than 20 years and I would have to say bullying and harrassment were at the top list. At one point in our careers my wife and I worked in the same park (different supervisors, locations, work, etc.) After several years she transfered to the BLM to save her sanity. She found it a much more dedicated and receptive work environment. I was one of those "odd ball" employees whose family history was part of the park so I probably missed out on some of the worst of the culture of interactions. I was a District Supervisor with 40 miles between me and HQ and I never had a serious desire to climb the ladder, so to speak. I was somewhat insulated by distance from manay things. It was more important to come to work and serve the public with dedication and integrity and go home with a clear conscience. But I still had to maintain an after work hobby that had nothing to do with the park to keep my sanity. I attribute my chronic high blood preasure to 30 years with the Park Service. My wife and I had our retirement date down to the day and the hour. Over the years an employee union came to the park, not to bargain for anything but to have management "follow the rules, regulations and policies of "civil service." I thought over the years the emphasis on correcting the bullying and harrassment would have resulted in at least some improvement........evidently not ? ?