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National Park Service Falls in "Best Places To Work" Rankings

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As an agency, the National Park Service is moving in the wrong direction in the annual Best Places To Work directory of federal agencies.

While the Park Service stood 139th among federal agencies in the 2010 rankings, the latest accounting shows the agency has slipped to 163rd out of 240 agencies.

When he was appointed director of the agency in 2009, among the pledges Jon Jarvis made was a commitment to improve the day-to-day life of Park Service employees.

"To help you succeed, we will provide the funding, training, succession planning, recognition, facilities, and policies you need to get your work done," he said at the time.

But the agency, struggling with funding in a sour economy, ranks poorly in its employees' view of pay, training, teamwork, work/life balance, diversity, and other areas, according to the latest rankings produced by the Partnership for Public Service, which relies on data from the Office of Personnel Management's Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey to rank agencies and their subcomponents.

In the category of work/life balance, the Park Service ranked 221 out of 229 agencies; under teamwork, it ranked 217 out of 229; under strategic management, it stood 212 out of 229; in terms of training and development, it stood 210 out of 229; in the category of support for diversity, it ranked 214 out of 229; in the category of effective leadership--supervisors, the agency stood 204th; in effective leadership--leaders it did a bit better, ranking 190th.

The Park Service did score relatively high when it comes to matching employees to their missions, as the agency stood 77th out of 229 agencies.

In comparison to some other agencies, the Park Service ranked better, overall, than the U.S. Forest Service, but more poorly than the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

Director Jarvis did not immediately respond to a request for his views on the latest rankings. However, the agency's program manager for workplace enrichment, Kate Richardson, attributed some of the agency's poor showing to the government's struggling fiscal standing.

"Uncertainty over jobs, operations, pay and benefits have made 2011 an especially difficult year and 2012 doesn’t appear that it will be any better," she said in a release. "However, 93 percent of NPS respondents believe the work they do is important and 99 percent are willing to put in extra effort to get a job done. On the flip side, only 42 percent are satisfied with the training they’ve received for their present job – a 5 percent drop from last year."

Here's how Ms. Richardson summed up the 2011 rankings:

* The NPS ranks 163 out of 224 agencies, a 4.3% decrease from 2010;

* For context, there was a governmentwide decline of 1.5% and DOI decline of 3.7%

* OPM survey administered to a random sample of employees from all federal agencies and should be viewed as interim assessment for the all employee survey in Spring 2012

* NPS has taken specific actions to address employee concerns since 2008 but trend is still declining

* Targeted action by NPS leadership can have a significant impact on improving the NPS ranking:

-- A 5 point increase would rank NPS in the top 100 federal agencies

-- A 10 point increase would rank NPS in the top 30 federal agencies

-- A 16 point increase would rank NPS in the top ten federal agencies

-- Actions need to occur in high impact areas as identified in the survey, primarily in the leadership subcomponent.

Looking at historically low scores and recent declines, the following specific actions are recommended for fostering change:

* NPS strengths in support of the mission should be sustained and leveraged.

* Senior leadership should fully engage and champion employee engagement:

-- Strengthen internal communication, personally engage in employee feedback activities, and initiate priority actions.

-- Establish performance measures around employee engagement and hold leaders, supervisors, and managers accountable to them.

* Supervisors and managers should be held accountable for effective leadership attributes and actions: 

-- Require individual development plans (IDPs) for every employee.

-- Ensure supervisors are receiving both mandatory training and continuing education.

-- Ensure regular and meaningful performance discussions. Utilize the performance and development discussion guide.

-- Improve recognition practices as identified in the award and recognition guidelines.

* Training offices and supervisors should work closely to ensure a full complement of development and training is available to employees:

-- Require first 40 supervisory training within first quarter of new supervisor's tenure.

-- Ensure that employee IDPs are used as a developmental tool, and as a means for establishing regular, ongoing dialogue about employee and organizational needs.

* NPS inclusion and diversity workforce strategy needs to be committed to and fully implemented:

-- Cultural assessment gets high visibility and support as baseline for cultural change

-- Cultural competencies training is deployed Servicewide.

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Comments

The National Park Service is an organization in decline due to poor priorities and decision making at the highest levels.  Management reflexively blames the budget, but the NPS is a lavishly funded organization.  Their budget has increased by around 50% since 2000.  Obviously costs have increased since then, but not at that level.  The problem is that instead of using that money for basic park operations, it is used for a whole array of peripheral programs and BS travel. 
 For instance, the NPS wants every permanent and some term employees to go to "fundamentals" training, which requires a trip to the Grand Canyon and a trip to DC. 
 While most everything is else is cut, Resource Management gets more money for ever larger staff to conduct expanded, over the top compliance, increasing project costs for everyone else.  They are also conducting a wide array of research projects that have little benefit to the public are better left to the universities. 
The emphasis on hiring "youth" is getting out of control.  While experienced employees are losing their jobs, the NPS is handing jobs to inexperienced, unskilled, and in some cases bone idle students, ignoring the pool of talented, adult, long term seasonals that have provided the backbone of this organization for years.  People are wasting their time applying for jobs that they don't have a chance at because they will be filled by student hires.  I have heard rumors that the student hiring authority is being taken away.  If this is true, and management is unable to find a way around it, it is great news.  Non competitive hiring of students for seasonal jobs is unseemly and counterproductive.  For permanent jobs, it is downright corrupt.
I have never seen morale so low, and with good reason.  We are being run into the ground by a pack of incompetent yes men.  The competent people are being run ragged covering for the rest, and then, if they even want to stay with the organization, are usually passed over for promotion in favor of yet more yes men.
I could go on at length, but I think that is enough.


Left NPS in 2009 after eight years because a career that started as a seasonal and eventually became a permanent position turned into a nightmare after about the sixth year. Ranger DIvision at small park out in SW Texas. Supts. coming and going like there was a turnstile; longtime key personnel taking buyouts and the new people hired to replace them; cronies of upper park management who were incompetent and certainly not fit for the position. My supv., COI, married to AO, kept loading my already overloaded plate with HIS responsibilties, ie., NEPA, Annual Surveys, etc, etc,. Straw that broke camel's back: new rookie Supt., inexperienced and paranoid, constantly insinuating that this particular ranger (me) was  engaged in "suspicious activities"! I really loved my job, the gray and green, and the park service as a whole, but alas, it has morphed from one of the most highly respected institutions in the world, into a mediocre, at best, and failed organization at it's worst, federal agency.


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