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Survey Says National Park Service Is Far from the Best Government Agency to Work For

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Employee survey shows there's a little tarnish on the NPS shield.

You'd think that waking up every day in places such as Yellowstone, Olympic, Acadia, Yosemite or Rocky Mountain national parks would be part of a dream job. But a survey of federal employees shows that those working for the National Park Service are far from being the most content with their jobs.

In fact, according to the 2009 Best Places to Work survey, the National Park Service ranks surprisingly close to the bottom of all federal agencies in terms of job satisfaction: out of 216 agencies, the Park Service stood 160th. Topping the list were the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and the Government Accountability Office.

Why? The respondents pointed to poor training and development, ineffective leaders, poor teamwork, a lack of strategic management, and poor quality of life when it comes to a work/life balance. Distressingly, the Park Service’s overall reputation as a good place to work has gotten worse in recent years, according to the survey, the fourth annual.

While the latest overall index score of 59.8 was a tad higher than last year's 58.2 overall score, it was down from 62.5 noted in 2005 and 64.1 recorded in 2003.

In some specific categories, the Park Service garnered a score of just 38.5 out of 200 on the question of effective leaders, 38.3 out of 185 in the "family friendly culture and benefits" category, and 40.1 out of 200 in "performance based rewards and advancement. While the highest score was a 78.3 out of 120 in "employee skills/mission match," that was down from both the 2005 score of 78.8 and the 2003 score of 81.0 in that category.

The Park Service's National Leadership Council, which is comprised of the agency's director, deputy directors, regional directors, associate directors and assistant directors, says it is working to reverse the trends, but that it won't happen overnight.

"A number of initiatives in the learning and development arena were initiated in 2008 in response to the 2007 ranking. We will continue to focus on carrying these through to completion, as well as identify further workplace enrichment initiatives in the coming months," the leadership council said. "Emphasis in areas such as communication, supervisory skills development, and work-life flexibilities will support the NPS goal of becoming a best place to work in the federal government.

"Combined with the prior survey results (we're having the analysis done right now that compares 2002 with 2004 with 2006 and now 2008), we take the trends seriously and the similarity of responses to certain questions seriously," added the council. "Our training and development revitalization efforts over the past year-and-a-half are a direct result of 2006 results and simply haven't had time to pay off yet in terms of morale impact.

"It is important to note that real change in morale takes sustained effort over a number of years to find out what are the biggest concerns among the large number identified and to come up with meaningful ways to redress those concerns that will result in noticeable differences in the way the workforce perceives the issue."

Some of the concerns, however, were pointed out to the agency back in 2006 when Julie Elmore, then a graduate student working on her master's degree at Duke University, did her thesis project on National Park Service Employee Satisfaction and Employee Retention. That project, in which Ms. Elmore received responses from more than 2,500 Park Service employees, pointed to a number of areas of employee discontent. Some of the comments were quite biting:

* "In my park, I've seen a job created to employ the girlfriend of upper management as well as to move her entire family stateside. ... I watched my former superintendent play solitaire on his office computer for hours as well as to print out reams of paper from the Internet on recipes and ads for buying a boat."

* "We continue to put out large fires but fail to prevent the fires or see the cause."

* "Today's reality is that NPS managers at all levels are forced to concentrate all their energies on 'putting out fires' all day, every day. 'Doing more with less' is no longer an option. If preservation and protection of park lands is still important to the American people, then the case must be made to increase budgets and to hire and retain quality personnel."

* "We need to show pride and recognition to those who do a good job. This motivation goes a long way. We need to build pride again in our mission and our agency. People will see the difference and want to be a part of it. We have to build it from within, person to person, not with a national campaign and button."

* "Quit pulling out leaders and filling with cronies. Hire good people and believe in them. Let them do their work without the fear that they could be removed if a stakeholder isn't happy."

* "I have a short time left before I am eligible for retirement, and cannot wait. I believe in the mission of the National Park Service and it is extremely difficult to watch how that mission has been purposely and effectively corrupted and derogated over the past six years. Ideologues have hired ideologies."

How might the Park Service improve its overall ranking? According to the Best Places to Work survey, effective leadership at the top of the agency is the ticket:

For the fourth time in a row, the primary driver of job satisfaction in the federal space is effective leadership. While this finding is no surprise, the reasons behind it are. In a first, the 2009 Best Places rankings break down which factors shape employees’ views of their leadership. Conventional wisdom holds that the greatest influence on an employee’s satisfaction is his or her immediate supervisor. However, the 2009 Best Places rankings reveal that it is actually the quality of an agency’s senior leadership that has the greatest bearing on employee views.

Comments

The National Park Service is still very much an elite agency in government, with all the modern challenges of a large organization. The NPS is trying to improve agency hiring, and in some quarters is gaining traction. The U.S. Park Police command under its current leadership is doing solid work. Yes our law enforcement rangers are still a closed and insular clique, but that too will change over time. I understand everything everyone else has said, it can be true at certain parks at certain times. But not everything is black and white. There is nuance, strengths and weaknesses even from those NPS leaders we see as being controversial. I was the biographer of many of the senior NPS leadership and saw what happened behind closed doors. It is a tough world for them too.


Well put RoadRanger and spot on as my British friends would say. The reorganization of 1995 was a joke in poor taste and completely ineffective. Just witness the fact that we have morphed back to essentially the same kind of organization that existed before 1995 just one with three fewer regional offices (in theory at least). As an agency we tried to reorganize without ever re-engineering the work and oh my, guess what, it was a failure. Roger Kennedy decried our militaristic command style of leadership so he crippled us with decisions by committees. The old guard has all retired and as an agency we did little to nothing to prepare future leaders based on merit. It comes as no surprise that the survey highlights the lack of effective leadership.

Our senior "leadership" is dismal. Never in a 30+ year career has there been such shallow field experience at both WASO and in most of the regional offices. Regions have reverted back to the bloated entities that they once were and yes, jobs still get created out of thin air for the spouses of regional office employees. In the Intermountain Region only one of the senior leaders has any kind of recent field experience and many of them fail to even get out to at least one park a year. Is it any wonder these people lack credibility among park staffs?

We have become an agency seemingly obsessed with process over progress, tethering our field employees to their computers in order to feed meaningless databases that force you to report the same information across several different platforms. Rather than expend the time and energy at central offices to extract the information that is already available in one system or another it's just easier to have the parks report on it again in some slightly modified form. The time wasted is incredible - especially since we fail to make the IT investments necessary to provide the field with the necessary bandwidth to feed these resource greedy computer applications - sure, they work well in central offices but please remember that in remote park areas the information highway often turns into a badly-rutted dirt road. We have nearly destroyed our contracting capabilities and are well on the way to doing the same with personnel. At times it seems as if we are consciously trying to make our administrative functions as ineffective as possible and as far removed from the parks as we can possibly get them.

So why do some of us old dogs still hang on? Because at the end of the day for us it's still about protecting park resources and serving park visitors. The mission of the agency hasn't changed and it's still an incredibly important mission. I wouldn't trade my career in the NPS for anything but I do long for the days of effective leaders that came up through the ranks and who actually did understand park operations. I long to have a Director like Geroge Hartzog again - someone who could and did walk the halls of Congress and be recognized and welcomed. Perhaps it's all just wishful thinking or wistful reminiscing - but please, give us our agency back.


Some great comments here folks. Thanks! I can understand how seasonals might feel like second class
citizens, but it's often almost as bad for rank & file permanents. Congress's capture of the NPS for its pork barrel schemes has evolved a class of managers more interested in agency growth and personal careers than
preserving the Parks or assisting their employees. Most of my supervisors were most talented at managing the
egos of those above them; some had only the vaguest idea what their employees did and what problems they
faced.

Anonymous of June 26 makes an important point about the lack of accountability of NPS management. Every Park I worked at seemed to have an Assistant Superintendent or three who had seriously screwed up at some other unit. The system for wayward managers seems remarkably similar to that of the Catholic church for pedophile priests.

Beamis hits the nail on the head, both with his comment and his wickedly funny and only slightly exaggerated
park circus site. I wish he'd resume work on it. He may be wrong about the lack of opportunity for 'the go getters of the world' though. Here's a snippet from http://www.doioig.gov/upload/APR2009SAR.txt , the most recent DOI Inspector General's Report to Congress:

"After a confidential source alleged a possible conflict of interest over a real estate transaction between a
park superintendent and a park concessioner, the OIG investigated the case. We determined that the
superintendent bought a parcel of land in 1992 for $84,000, sold it in December 2002 for $425,000, and
financed the sale of the property to a concessioner over the course of 63 months."

"Based on the appearance of a conflict-of-interest, we reviewed documents submitted by the superintendent.
This review determined that he made false statements or concealed material facts on his Office of Government
Ethics form 450, as well as in an e-mail he sent to the NPS reviewing official who had requested additional
information concerning the nature of the transaction. The superintendent also signed the conflict of interest
certification for the contract process, further complicating his position."

"Our findings were presented to the local U.S. Attorney’s Office, which declined to prosecute the NPS employee because his case did not meet its criminal threshold. Our office was notified in March 2009 that the superintendent had been transferred to another national park and given a Letter of Reprimand."

It will be interesting to see if Mr. Jarvis and the new team can turn this once proud agency around, or if Obama's talk of accountability and transparency are mere rhetoric.


With two wars, the economy, and instability in Iran, it's hard for me to see just how the White House will have time to focus on the plight of NPS employees.

I only worked seasonally for the NPS as a uniformed park ranger-naturalist (Crater Lake, Zion, and Yosemite 1966-71). During that time, I found myself to be a member of a highly motivated and respected organization. Many of my colleagues were university professors and professional educators. Some performed research while carrying out their duties presenting programs and engaging in visitor contact.

Our guided walks and evening programs were very well attended, and they were frequently audited by peers, supervisors, and park administrators (and their families). Sometimes, unannounced audits would be conducted by staff from the Regional Office.

My direct supervision was highly educated, trained and motivated. Many contributed to the overall knowledge base of the park through publications. Standards for performance of duty were set high. Recruiting and hiring of a professional, high-quality staff was taken seriously and given a very high priority. Most seasonal employees, who were not already employed full time during the off-season, aspired towards permanent NPS status.

In my day, the NPS was considered to be among the very best places to work within the Federal Government. How is it possible that today that the NPS now ranks much lower than other Federal Agencies, like the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, EPA, or even the US Dept. of Commerce?

Given the recent history of depressing survey results as summarized in the article above, and the description of major employee morale issues confirmed by comments made by several with more recent NPS experience than I have had, I can only ask, what has changed? What are some of the root causes that have allowed the NPS to slip so dramatically from the organization I remember from my youth?

I look forward to reading more comments on this important topic.

Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830


With all this negative flow about quality work issues regarding the NPS, I sure hope this doesn't deter the younger generation from going into resource management...especially when we need the very best and the brightest in the field of resource & wildlife management. Why does the NPS get the dipstick in the job pool with mediocre talent? Who's lowering the totem pole for supervisory talent? It's understandable, why the younger generation doesn't look towards the NPS as prestigious employment. The cronyism that forestalls the rewarding of those who display their intellectual mantle for a job well done, is a prime example of structural interdepartmental family nepotism that stifles the creativity of the best and the brightest. Yes, seasonal workers must earn those brownie points for advancement by doing the job of of a glorified custodian that wipes toilet bowl clean. You pay your dues college boy! There's a lot of blame to go around with the NPS and starts at the very top...the President and down. The last administration didn't give a living hoot how the NPS was run...as long as there was rape, greed and pillage on the drawing boards. Put the right people in who could careless about the proper direction of the NPS and it's natural resources and care, borderlines on defunct administration that's hell bent towards failure. Sure looked like it over the past eight years. A complete overhaul is needed and let's kick in some young talent for change. The old school is dead! Let's start afresh and it's NOW!


I agree with Tahoma. Beamis should write us another chapter of Park Circus! Because the NPS has a chronic disease and laughter is the best medicine.

Owen, be grateful for your memories. I'm not sure so much has changed. For example, Harry Yount resigned under pressure and frustration after only 14 months and a young Carl Sharsmith endured reassignment by managers jealous and threatened by his talents. Also, with all due respect, five summers in a short season park is a honeymoon.


Yes, it's true, there was a time when Dr. Carl Sharsmith was reassigned to a duty station other than Tuolumne Meadows. This was during the late 1950's. Carl had been working summers in Yosemite since 1931. He was the only naturalist at Tuolumne Meadows until 1946. Will Neely joined him at Tuolumne Meadows in 1950. By the late 1950's, he and Will had become very popular with return Tuolumne campers. Many of these return campers purposefully sought them out for walks and evening programs. Less experienced staff had difficulties competing. But, part of Carl's re-assignment was to perform a special ecological survey for the NPS on visitor impact of High Sierra lakes and meadows of Kings Canyon National Park. He and Will Neely were eventually reinstated at Tuolumne Meadows, and the ranger-naturalist programs there continued to prosper.

In the years prior to his "reassignment" Carl had been awarded the Department of Interior medal for meritorious service, after he had completed 25 seasons of service. He went on to serve the NPS each summer at Tuolumne for another three and one-half decades, completing his last season in 1994 at the age of 91.

Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830


Frank,

The Stoneman Meadow Riot of July 4, 1970 occurred long before the time of commissioned, professional-grade law enforcement rangers in the NPS. Prior to and during the riots, however, the NPS was being advised by the FBI. This event, which was perhaps the single most important event that spawned the law enforcement specialty in the NPS, is the subject of ongoing research by former NPS historians.

With respect to how the NPS compares with other government agencies, I wonder if it doesn't simply come down to average salary per person. I don't think the Nuclear Regulatory Agency has many lower-salaried "seasonal" employees. The highly specialized and technical nature of their work probably commands more highly-paid employees than any other branch of government. For example, I'm willing to bet that the Nuclear Regulatory Agency has more GS-14 to GS-18 salaried employees (per full-time equivalent employee) than any other Federal Agency. Each individual's job assignment and measures of performance would also be highly defined.

By contrast, I wonder how job definitions, assignments, and measures of performance are apportioned for seasonal and career NPS'ers? To what extent did the NPS survey even consider seasonal employees? To what extent is there a clear connection between excellence in performance of duty and salary/career advancement?

Unless this Federal employment survey is highly affected by salary per person, I cannot fathom how it is possible for the Nuclear Regulartory Commission to be ranked higher than the NPS.

Owen Hoffman
Oak Ridge, TN 37830


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