Only 47 percent of employees at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) consider their department a good place to work, down a percent from 2014, according to an annual government-wide survey by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM).
The Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) seeks to reflect how employees view their jobs and who they work for. Overall on the global satisfaction index, which measures job, organizational, and pay satisfaction and whether an employee would recommend their agency as a good place to work, the government-wide score was 60 percent, up a percent from 2014.
Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement on Monday that “I am deeply disappointed that our efforts to improve employee satisfaction at DHS were not reflected department-wide in this year’s results.” Still, he said, he is not “discouraged,” and pointed to a number of agencies and offices where results were equal or better than the government-wide increase, including United States Citizenship and Immigration Services, the National Protection and Programs Directorate, the Management Directorate, the Science and Technology branch, and the Office of the Secretary.
Johnson also said that the Transportation Security Administration, and Immigration and Customs Enforcement stabilized after years of decline. Employee satisfaction at the Coast Guard remains well above the government-wide average, he said.
The Defense Department scored 61 percent on its employee global satisfaction index, up 2 percent from last year, according to survey results.
On another metric, employee engagement, which measures the potential of an agency’s work environment, including three sub-factors of Leaders Lead, Supervisors, and Intrinsic Work Experience, DHS scored a 53 percent, down a percent from a year ago, while DoD posted 65 percent, up a percent from 2014. The government-wide score was 64 percent, up one percent from 2014.
OPM on Monday only released an interactive dashboard of its forthcoming FEVS survey, which will be released in October.