Jeh Johnson, chief of the Department of Homeland Security, says he is very dejected about the low happiness scores of his minions, who scored the lowest of the low in job satisfaction among all federal government agencies. He has therefore announced a brand new initiative designed to instill some gladness into his airport gropers as well as putting all that lost disaster fun back into FEMA.
Only half the DHS workers surveyed scored well in the "engagement" category, with about the same percentage proclaiming themselves less than "globally satisfied." This is 10 percent lower than 2010's globally satisfied engagement scores.
Do you suspect that the low scores might have as much to do with respondents not knowing what the hell these questions even mean as with how happy they are making $10 an hour patting down passengers in Airport Security Theater? Do you ever even have the time to stop and ponder about how engaged and globally satisfied you are as you schlep through your own crappy job?
The Washington Post has the whole sorry scoop:
Even worse, DHS fell 1 percent in both categories this year, despite a frenzy of morale-boosting efforts including an employee steering committee dedicated to fairness in hiring and promotions, enhanced employee training programs and Johnson’s department-wide “Unity of Effort” initiative, designed to tackle the department’s management challenges. DHS’s struggles with employee morale date back to its creation during the George W. Bush administration, when 22 autonomous agencies were plucked from across the government and welded into one department.That pretty much explains the morale issues. Who wouldn't be disgruntled after being plucked like a free-range chicken and then welded into one hot stinking cage on a factory farm? The CIA is not the only agency that knows how to "torture some folks." I suppose that we, the public, can at least gain some satisfaction knowing that the fine folks spying on our Occupy protests from their DHS fusion centers feel as miserable and down and out as the rest of us. Maybe they should just join us after they finish beating us.
Maybe their global satisfaction scores will improve if Jeh Johnson gives them cuddly global hacky-sacks to kick around during breaks from operating their Rapiscan machines at the airport.
Better yet, Congress might disband Homeland Security, declare the War on Terror over, take its multi-billion dollar budget and reallocate it for health care, education and infrastructure. Sad DHS workers would get retrained for other jobs -- say, as teachers and nurses and architects and construction workers.
But Jeh Johnson apparently likes his own job title, and is not giving up. The Boss is going to shove the morale down their throats whether they like it or not:
Johnson, who took over the sprawling domestic security agency in December 2013, pronounced himself “disappointed that our efforts to improve employee satisfaction at DHS were not reflected Department-wide in this year’s results of the Federal Employee Viewpoint survey. ”But the former Pentagon General Counsel said he was “not discouraged.” In a public statement and a department-wide email, he told employees that he and Deputy DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas “will not give up. We know that improving employee satisfaction across a 22-component, 240,000-person department takes time. ”He proudly noted, moreover, that the people working in his own office are 85 percent globally satisfied with their jobs. Their jobs depend upon their satisfaction. Jeh Johnson is not about to allow any sad-sack hacks within an inch of his own joyful presence.
