DHS continues the struggle to forge a single identity.

Inching along up the scale of employee satisfaction, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), still the new kid on the block at five years old, continues to go through growing pains.

The 2007 Department of Homeland Security Annual Employee Survey released on April 17, which collected responses from some 65,753 DHS employees in late 2007, indicated some very stubborn difficulties, particularly challenges in “performance culture,” broadly interpreted as morale in the workforce, and the relationship between the agency’s senior leadership, management and staff.

But DHS officials are stressing the up tick in positive feedback in other areas—particularly on questions relating to job relevancy, coworker cooperation, personal accountability and overall job appreciation and satisfaction—as a reason to see progress year-over-year.

“We did go up. We’re not satisfied with how high, but we did go up,” Elaine Duke, deputy undersecretary for management at DHS, told HSToday. “I’m happy to see a positive trend, but I’m not complacent.”

Considering that the agency was only five years old as of March, it’s impossible to gauge the seriousness of these workplace issues by the movement in employee surveys alone. In fact, the 2007 report is but the third since the agency went into business—and the first conducted by DHS itself. The 2004 and 2006 surveys were handled through the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), which is responsible for assessing every federal agency on the even-numbered years, using the same prescribed questions for each.

“We can see small, but incremental changes in a positive direction,” said Larry Orluski, a DHS spokesman. “The point is, we can’t expect from 2006 results to 2007 results a quantum leap in the change in morale. Anyone can tell you that organizational change takes time.”

After looking at some of the other OPM-led studies for big agencies, such as the departments of Justice and Health and Human Services, it becomes clear that some of DHS’ problem areas are in line with similar challenges faced elsewhere—it’s just that the challenges for DHS are currently more pronounced.

Culture crisis

The worst-performing items in the 78-question review (that’s 40 questions prescribed by OPM, 28 DHS-specific and 10 demographic items) were found under the heading of “Performance Culture.” The best performing items in the 2007 review were in the areas of “Personal Work Experience” and “Recruitment, Development and Retention.” There were mixed reviews in the remaining “Perceptions about Leadership” and “Overall Job Satisfaction” categories.

According to the report, 91 percent of the workforce surveyed said they know the work they do is important, 80 percent said they know their work relates to the agency’s goals and priorities, 80 percent said they like the work they do and 77 percent said the people they work with cooperate to get the job done.

There was also noticeable, positive movement from some 2006 OPM results. For example, 62 percent of respondents said their workload was reasonable, up from 55 percent a year before, while 52 percent said their talents were used well in the workplace, up from 48 percent.

There was also a 7-point increase in positive responses to the question: “In my work unit, differences in performance are recognized in a meaningful way.” Twenty-nine percent of respondents agreed in 2007, compared to 22 percent in 2006—though any results in the 20s, or even in the 30s, is still considered a big challenge.

Many of the other responses mired on the low end of the scale concerned “culture” of the workplace. For example, results indicated only 29 percent of employees thought promotions are based on merit, while a mere 26 percent agreed that steps are taken to deal with a poor performer (up 3 points from 2006); a similar 29 percent agreed that creativity and innovation were rewarded (up 4 percent from 2006); and only 29 percent believed the organization’s leaders “generate high levels of motivation and commitment in the workforce”; and only 31 percent were satisfied with the policies and practices of the senior leadership.

A special case

DHS officials are aware that their unique employee infrastructure imposes special stresses: The agency consists of 22 pre-existing offices and agencies that arrived with their own perspectives and expectations, staff morale and politics. Moreover, each still has its own culture and mission. There has been a strenuous effort to bring these disparate agency players—all giants in their own right, like the Transportation Security Administration and Immigration and Customs Enforcement—onto the same page.

“In general, larger organizations don’t do as well in surveys,” said Duke, noting the department’s 208,000 employees. “I also think that we tend to think of DHS as ‘new.’ But our employees aren’t new. We didn’t start neutrally; we inherited a culture, some of which was probably negative coming in.

“I think that last year’s OPM survey brought a lot to light for us, that we have to be particularly sensitive to employees’ needs,” Duke added. “Last year is the first year we collectively came together. [This year’s survey] showed we made some progress, but it also shows we still have a lot of work to do with our employees.”

David Abshire, president of the Center for the Study of the Presidency, served on the culture task force for the Homeland Security Advisory Committee two years ago when it was studying the issue, and said that in no other agency would it be more beneficial than in DHS to set up “quality leadership teams” representing a cross-section of the agency’s components to brainstorm and coordinate—and integrate—agency goals and efforts and encourage a universal culture.

“Less top-down management and the cross-cutting flow of ideas—horizontal rather than vertical,” recommended Abshire, emphasizing, much like the culture task force did in its January 2007 recommendations, that setting a clear, agency-wide mission and encouraging its different parts to come together in order to avoid stovepiping would go a long way toward solving the department’s problems.

While the task force on which Abshire served in 2006 suggested one “culture” could not be imposed on such a diverse institution, it suggested, like Abshire, that with the right encouragement the DHS mission can become greater than the sum of its many parts.

“We do, however, believe that an overarching and blended culture can be developed that is based on threads of common values, goals and focus of mission among DHS headquarters and its component organizations,” the final task force report claimed.

The panel recommended that an appointee be placed in charge of nurturing such conditions, and even that private contractors be “embedded” throughout the DHS galaxy to build the new “mission-focused culture.” The agency has opted to push first for a new headquarters—preferably at the old St. Elizabeth’s Mental Hospital in Washington, DC—so that it can shift its tens of thousands of employees under one roof. These employees are far-flung now, most of them in 44 offices throughout the National Capital Region.

James Carafano, head of the national security program at the Heritage Foundation and a long-time observer of the department, said DHS has been in a state of upheaval, struggling to find an identity amid bureaucratic trial and error and constant criticism from the outside. Add a lack of overall respect for DHS, and “the culture” has really taken a back seat, if not a pummeling, in the morale department, he pointed out.

“I look at the fundamental thing—how many terrorist attacks (in the US) have there been since 9/11?” he asked. As for improving the conditions on the inside, he prescribed “patience, leadership and a good human capital program and working these things out over time.”

Not exactly a silver bullet. HST