Outlining steps that will be taken to root out sexual harassment across the National Park Service, the agency's leadership team has laid out its zero tolerance policy to employees, who will be anonymously surveyed this fall to determine how extensive the problem might be.
"Some have asked what it means for the National Park Service to have a zero tolerance policy for sexual harassment," Park Service Director Jon Jarvis said Wednesday in memo emailed system-wide. "I want to clearly state that this means that when incidents of harassment are reported, I expect NPS managers to follow up on those allegations. Specifically, in situations involving alleged harassment, including sexual harassment, I expect NPS managers to initiate an investigation of the allegations and to act promptly to ensure that the harassment, if confirmed, does not continue. I also expect appropriate disciplinary action to be taken if any allegations are verified. To ensure that this can happen consistently across our organization, I have asked a leadership team in Washington, with input from regions, parks and programs, to develop a roadmap that will guide these efforts."
The move to assess the extent of sexual harassment stems from a sordid, long-running episode in Grand Canyon National Park's River District in which male employees pawed and propositioned female workers, some of who at times exhibited their own risqué behavior. An investigation by the Interior Department's Office of Inspector General turned up a tawdry list of inappropriate behavior, from male employees taking photographs up under a female co-worker's dress and groping female workers to women dancing provocatively and bringing a drinking straw "shaped like a penis and testicles" to river parties. The incidents, a September 2014 letter to Interior Secretary Sally Jewell charged, "demonstrated evidence of 'discrimination, retaliation, and a sexually hostile work environment.'”
Back in March, Director Jarvis sent an email to all Park Service employees stating that "no employee has the right or the power by nature of their position to inflict their will or to subject co-workers, regardless of their status, to abuse." He further acknowledged that across the National Park System many employees "have expressed shock and dismay that the serious behavior and practices described have occurred for so long."
While he added that personnel matters and pending Equal Employment Opportunity cases require confidentiality, the director wrote that he wanted to "assure you that we are taking active steps in response to this situation."
In his memo Wednesday, Director Jarvis wrote:
Creating a more inclusive and respectful culture that will not accept incidents of discrimination, harassment, or retaliation requires a combination of actions. As first steps in this emerging roadmap, we will:
Better Understanding the Issue: The National Park Service is finalizing a request for proposals for a company or organization that will conduct a nationwide survey of NPS employees to determine the prevalence of harassment across the bureau. It will be a comprehensive and anonymous survey that measures the prevalence of harassment at all levels of the bureau. We will spend the next month soliciting and reviewing proposals and plan to begin the employee survey by October.
Raise Awareness: As a first step in a broader training effort, every NPS employee should take an existing online training class in DOI Learn that includes the definitions and reporting process for sexual harassment. Supervisors should take Sexual Harassment Prevention for Federal Managers, and all other employees should take Sexual Harassment Prevention for Federal Employees. Building on these basic courses, additional NPS-specific training products and guides will be developed and shared with employees.
Support Victims: The NPS is creating a confidential hotline for individuals who may have witnessed or experienced sexual or other forms of harassment. This confidential hotline will allow individuals to both report harassment and receive support. Employees will be able to speak confidentially to hotline representatives, who can provide counseling and advice on reporting. In addition, employees and managers can also contact their Manager, their Union representative, the Equal Employment Opportunity Office, the Human Resources Office, the Inspector General’s Office, and/or a CORE PLUS neutral.
Empower the Equal Employment Opportunity Office: The NPS Equal Employment Opportunity Office now reports directly to me in the Director’s Office, allowing me to empower the Equal Employment Opportunity Office in their efforts to maintain a robust equal employment opportunity program.
Institutionalize Culture Change: To ensure continued focus on ensuring that employees have a workplace that is free of harassment, discrimination, and retaliation, and to support the development of more inclusive and respectful work environments, I asked a leadership group to develop a short and long term strategy to guide the National Park Service’s response to harassment and to help institutionalize the reforms we are undertaking by utilizing our Operational Leadership and the NPS Safety Strategy management models.
Just as Operational Leadership has empowered employees to speak out when they or their colleagues face a decision that might compromise safety, we must empower employees to speak out, report, and help prevent any form of discrimination, bullying, harassment, or inappropriate comments or actions based on race, color, national origin, religion, sex (including pregnancy and gender identity), age, marital or parental status, disability, sexual orientation, or genetic information. To that end, the National Park Service will not tolerate acts of retaliation against individuals who report discrimination, harassment, or any acts of misconduct or unethical behavior.
The National Park Service enjoys a world-wide reputation for its stewardship of natural and cultural resources and its high standards of public service. I know we can show that same degree of professionalism and respect to each other in the work place.
Comments
It is a common misconception that Human Resources has some allegiance to employees.
They serve one master: management.
That is as it should be. Their task is to put workers in jobs, maximizing efficiency and minimizing cost.
In the cold business world of personnel, management is best served by delaying, deflecting or minimizing any inconvenient matter.
If you want an advocate for you, hire an attorney.
Human Resources is not your friend.
My NPS career experience was that Human Resources was the most corrupt office in the parks I worked in. Besides sexual harrassment, they also 'delayed. deflected, and minimized inconvenient' matters such as as racial, age, and disability discrimination, where the system was rigged to protect management rather than employees.
Hiring irregularities were even more common. My first seasonal job at Rainier was as a replacement for John Erlichmann's no-show son; my roommate's dad ran the border patrol in Texas. Locals had seen so much favoritism in hiring and awarding small contracts that their shorthand phrase for park management was "those crooks". For many years, Olympic managers avoided the national seasonal hiring lists and used special seasonal hiring authorities to create lists only their friends and relatives knew to get on. Whistleblowers were routinely and ruthlessly retaliated against at both parks.
I agree with both responses to my post. The NPS Personnel Officer who broke a promise of confidentiality 30 years ago, and went straight to the person who I had serious concerns about taught me a valuable lesson, never trust them. I add that this person was later caught in the act (This is quite a story in itself) of shredding documents requested by the OPM, probably under orders of Park Management, and took the fall for it. This flagrant misconduct ("Loyalty") was rewarded with a promotion to a coveted Park.
I disagree with the opinion that this is how it should be. Integrity should be expected from employees in all positions, and if this isn't so with Personnelists as a rule, then the organizational model itself needs to be changed. The NPS is so inbred that it shoud be done from outside the agency. This is the real institutional culture change the National Park Service needs, not a corrupt Director's empty promises.
Many years ago, a kind Employee Relations Specialist in the late, lamented Pacific Northwest Region told me - when I went to talk to him about my supervisor, who once said that he had to have women on staff so that the "homo-gene" would not be passed if we were needed to give CPR to male individuals - that he wanted me to be very clear on his role: He could advise me. He would explain process to me. But the moment I tried to pursue anything, he was - in effect - the representative and attorney for management. Whatever I had told him would be available to management and I would be on my own. He wanted me to know that the system was always rigged against the employee and in favor of management. It remains that way today.
At least Also Anonymous's Human Relations Specialist was honest, and not pretending to be the employee's friend and confidant like mine was. Like Also Anonymous, I asked for advice on how to handle my supervisor, who among other things was drinking on duty. Nothing was done about this for years because the Superintendent liked him. It took an incident in which he failed to respond to an emergency backup request, because of inebriation, for corrective action to begin. By this time, I had left the NPS.
Some would consider the degree of collusion between NPS Human Resources (HR) and Management to be consistent with the HR profession. However, this may not be the case across the board. The 2015 comprehensive employee survey "The Best Places to Work in the Federal Government" gave the NPS HR Dept. a horrible score. This very issue was discussed in the Traveler last December. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's HR Dept. received one of the best ratings in the entire government. Why this drastic difference between fairly similar agencies, in a job with such importance to the credibility of an agency? Along with the amazingly low and declining employee ratings for the Director's senior leadership team, this indicates that the National Park Service has some unusually acute organizational issues. The Director wants to conduct yet another employee survey, but the results are already in.
NPS procedures make it impossible for seasonal workers to complain. Process take so long and emphasizes long term solution, and seasonal folks who complain just won't be hired by the supervisor they complained about. Totally disfunctional.
I wish they would ask former employees as well. I was told which men I had to avoid and when I did complain I was told to "just ignore it, he'll be retiring soon."