Much has been said about the serious protective undertaking of TSA, and how it balances its national security mission against its role in moving hundreds of millions of travelers quickly, efficiently, and safely through the world transportation system. You’d like to be a part of that, right? Apparently not.
According to the Partnership for Public Service, which conducts an annual poll of federal employees in 300 agencies to determine the best and worst places to work, DHS and TSA consistently find themselves very near the bottom of the list, found at: http://bestplacestowork.org/BPTW/rankings/detail/HS10. I hasten to add, this is specifically not about the quality of their work or any success or failure of their important security task, although one might form some opinions when looking at statistics. That includes the match of employee skills to the mission (TSA: #270 out of 300 agencies, although in this instance, TSA can draw some minor comfort in being slightly “better” than their sister DHS agencies; CBP at #286 and ICE at #297). This poll is talking to employees about what it’s like to work there.
Of the 19 largest agencies, DHS (comprised of 22 smaller agencies, including TSA) comes in dead last, #19 of 19 in 13 of 14 categories, the exception being alternative work (#16). The breakdown is primarily in managerial areas such as 6 different areas of effective leadership, as well as training, teamwork, support for diversity and performance-based advancement. Of the next 300 agencies, in the same leadership categories as DHS, TSA was again near the bottom; their best showing was #267 out of 300 in work-life balance, and #270 in skills-mission match; the rest ranging from #283 (diversity) to #299 (pay), edging out only a small office in the Department of Agriculture.
So what do those numbers really mean? I’m no social scientist, but solely from these interviews of the people who work there, it sounds like it might be a lousy place to be every day. Leadership: Bottom. Teamwork and training: bottom. Performance advancement: bottom. Pay: bottom. It leads one to speculate that there may be some strong motivations for high turnover. I am not aware of many career people in it for the long haul, which in turn simply exacerbates the problems by losing valuable experience and developmental history.
Again, I want to emphasize that like virtually any other industry or business, there are a lot of front line people doing important work, and doing it well, but in light of the findings of this poll, perhaps they are doing so in spite of a lack of good leadership rather than because of good management.
Finally, to respond to the biggest maybe-security-maybe-not question of the past 5-6 weeks: No.
I have no intention of joining the speculation about what happened to Malaysian Airlines flight 370. Your guess is perhaps as good as, or better than, a poll by CNN and ORC International which determined that while 57 per cent of those surveyed said terrorists were likely involved, one in ten Americans think "space aliens or beings from another dimension” were involved. Frankly, I am personally an ET believer (although not in this case), and that’s not nearly as bizarre as some of the other unconventional theories being advanced – and who could dispute the truth according to CNN?
What? ….
Oh.
