Acting FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in an interview Tuesday that his agency earned its score because its clearly defined mission to insure bank deposits gives workers a sense of purpose.
“It’s terribly important for employees to understand the mission of the agency and how the work they do relates to it,” he said. “If you can make it clear and apparent, I think that’s enormous motivation for people.”
Best places to work in the federal government
At the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, Chairman Gregory B. Jaczko said his agency’s drop “is a reflection of a very challenging year, not just at NRC, but for the federal workforce in general.”
The rankings matter so much to top agency bosses that Jaczko, attending meetings in India, rearranged his schedule Tuesday to call and discuss NRC’s slippage.
Though the NRC scored high — 79.1 percent — survey data show that worker concerns with pay and year-end bonuses dragged it down. Year-end performance bonuses at the NRC can supplement an employee’s income by as much as 9 percent, according to Dale Yeilding, president of the National Treasury Employees Union chapter representing about 3,000 NRC workers. But the agency is attempting to curtail such awards amid government-wide guidance from the Obama administration to limit them.
“I’m basically negotiating for about $2 million” to make up for cuts in bonuses, Yeilding said Tuesday, adding that extra paid time off is likely to supplement for the losses.
Pay is a growing concern across the government, and the survey showed that the most senior career federal employees are most upset. Overall satisfaction with pay dropped to 59 percent — a six-point fall from last year and one of the largest drops in any category measured.
Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, said declining support for federal salaries should come as no surprise amid talk of further cutbacks.
“If you’re just taking money out of the system, you will clearly do damage to the system,” he said. And despite growing concerns, Stier said, federal workers are still more satisfied than they were when the survey began in 2003.
“In a market without jobs, it makes you pretty appreciative of yours,” said Nikki Scott of Maryland, who works for the U.S. Agency for International Development.
Worker perceptions of top agency bosses also depressed survey results, according to Stier. For example, the Office of Personnel Management improved by about 5 percentage points overall and earned its best rankings ever thanks to high scores for Director John Berry and his team. But just five Cabinet secretaries earned leadership scores above 50 percent, the survey said.
Among large agencies, there appears to be growing trouble at the Securities and Exchange Commission, where workers once again gave poor scores and dropped the agency from third place overall in 2007 to 27th this year.
“I thought we would be lower than that, frankly,” said Greg Gilman, president of the Treasury union chapter representing 2,800 SEC employees.
Collective bargaining negotiations over a new performance-management system are going poorly, Gilman said, adding that his colleagues are “becoming increasingly concerned that low morale may have a negative impact on mission readiness.”
In a statement, the SEC said its workers are “doing far more than we have ever been asked to do, in an organization that is undergoing significant and rapid change.”
This year’s rankings are based on the opinions of more than 276,000 federal employees, the most ever. Scores are determined by analyzing data collected in the OPM’s annual Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, conducted April 4 through May 31.
An additional 10,000 employees at about a dozen agencies not participating in the OPM’s survey also submitted questionnaires for analysis by the partnership, which has a content-sharing relationship with The Washington Post. Full results will be available
starting Wednesday at www.
bestplacestowork.org.
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