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
the park service is the most abusive hostile workplace I have ever seen I can understand why people leave mostly me and other employees wonder how emissions so good has been distorted so bad by those in power.
the amount of victims of abuse that I have met in my career is insane, and the lack of accountability for management is even worse. They're more likely to benefit and be promoted up for treating seasonal and lower grade employees badly.
NPS employee morale in Sequoia NP is frankly horrible from what i've seen and heard, and not mentioned is the AirBnB factor in entrance towns such as Three Rivers, where there aren't any longer term rentals available, and instead NPS employees have to live in Visalia, 40 miles from the action, and fern feeler types don't want to live in cities, so just filling in jobs here has been toug
Maybe if it was renamed 'Ukraine National Park' the money would flow like honey, and the Mission 66 really tired employee housing that is old, cramped and not anywhere near sufficient could all be replaced?
One of the biggest problems at the Smokies that I have seen is being overrun by 14 million tourists! This park is staffed for maybe 7 million! Everyday you are asked to go out and do your best but you can't because of time constraints you have due to traffic! Management is not willing to close picnic areas or campgrounds down because of local and political pressure. If you can't properly maintain something such as restroo cleaning, trail maintenance, road side mowing and litter pickup you need to take steps to either her lots more staff or cut out what's available to visitors!
Working in a park that's gets millions of visitors is a lot different then working in a park with a lot less. Those employees working in parks that are overun by tourists should get more pay then someone doing the same job at a less visited park! I know that would have helped me feel better! Stress Stress Stress caused by tourists!
Every few years the nps comes up with a new catchphrase and "feel good" name for some program that's going to improve morale, harassment, etc. They come up with all of these bullet statements to go along with the program name. And they force employees to attend a training session. It's all a waste of time and money because nothing ever changes! They keep adding upper level positions, even in small parks where they are not needed. And cutting essential positions, like maintenance and visitor services, and even using contracted concessions to fulfill these duties, which is not the same as having uniformed employees who feel ownership. They need to cut the covid work at home mentality for admin positions...it doesn't work.
In 2023 this article is surprising...but sadly not that surprising. After 20 years of experiencing exactly what this article refers to in addition to physical threats, management retaliation, nepotism and cronyism, and an indifferent regional and Washington directorate...I left and never looked back. I know of former employees who filed formal complaints years AFTER they left a job because of continued harrassement in the community by other NPS employees. Serial abusers are never fired, but are protected or moved on to unsuspecting parks where they continue the same behavior. NPS has been under Congressional scrutiny for workplace harrassement and bullying for 35 years and has little will to change.
I'd like to point out that these stats are skewed high because seasonals are not invited to take the employee surveys. They were also not invited to the NPS "All-staff" morale meeting in January of 2024.
There was this manager once at a National Park who would regularly undercut their direct report in front of the direct report's staff. They also did it behind their back. Anyways, after nearly a year of this the direct report got a job elsewhere and the manager and direct report's staff harassed them so badly they had to take leave until the new job started.
When the direct report got to the next job the manager used contacts there to harass the employee until they had to leave that job too.
That manager did get reported for making comments about how the direct report wasn't a very "tough man." But the manager never got punished. They still work for the NPS.
Empty platitudes and unfulfilled promises are all the NPS leadership has the offer. They've known the problems for years now - It's upper management and their undue ruthlessness towards anybody who dares question them. I was blacklisted by my supervisor, who was a bad reference for me BEHIND MY BACK for months before a hiring manager finally notified me of this happening. Before I left that supervisor, we had a chummy conversation, got a good rating for that year, and thought I was moving on from a regular season. It almost ended my career, and he shows no remorse in the slightest for what he's done to me or the many others he grifted.