Federal Workers are Demoralized
Our recent survey shows the federal workforce is deeply dissatisfied and doesn't trust political leadership. Congress could help — if it wanted to.
The Trump administration came into office last year promising to traumatize our nation’s civil servants. In that, it succeeded, haphazardly jettisoning more than 300,000 federal employees, dismantling agencies, cutting critical programs and services and appointing political leaders based on loyalty, not competence or character.
The result, according to a new survey of federal employees, is a demoralized and battered workforce that remains dedicated to their jobs but sees a decline in services provided to the public and gives agency leaders an unequivocal failing grade. These disturbing findings have serious consequences for our country’s health, safety and prosperity.
The survey, undertaken in November and December by my organization, the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, found that more than twice as many employees believe the performance of their agencies and the delivery of services has gotten worse rather than better during the past year.
In addition, only 7.5% of respondents said their political leaders generate high levels of motivation in the workforce while just 20% felt they could safely report illegal or unethical acts occurring within their agencies.
These numbers should worry all of us. They paint a picture of an increasingly unaccountable government distrusted even by the people working in it.
Poorer service delivery, failing leadership lacking credibility, and declining transparency are not hallmarks of efficient or effective government. Instead, they are symptoms of a government that puts the needs of the president ahead of the needs of the people. And the costs are not abstract.
Veterans are increasingly having trouble receiving benefits and face declining health services. The Social Security Administration has become less responsive to the needs of seniors and the disabled. Our government is less prepared to deal with disease outbreaks; our disaster response capabilities have been diminished; school lunch programs and food banks have suffered; and public schools and higher educational institutions have faced upheaval.
Our government should be accountable to the public, but the clear message from people within the government, who have the best vantage point to know, is that right now it is not fulfilling its obligation to the American people.
My organization’s survey represents an effort to fill the void left by the administration’s decision last year not to conduct an annual employee survey and provide essential data on the views of the federal workforce. The reason is clear, with our survey offering a damning indictment and a strong warning that the leadership and management of this administration is not working or serving the public interest.
But there is worse to come. The administration is now implementing policies to strip tens of thousands of federal employees of their civil service protections, allowing them to be fired at will and replaced with political loyalists, taking the country back to the incompetence and corruption of the 19th century spoils system.
The American public deserves better — a government responsive to meeting its needs, not a government headed by unqualified appointees presiding over a workforce impeded from fulfilling its public service missions.
The recent Senate hearing in which a defensive and combative Department of Homeland Secretary Kristi Noem was called to account for her mismanagement and soon thereafter fired by the president is a start.
But the employee survey shows that the leadership failures at DHS are endemic across the government, a flashing red light that requires Congress to pick up the baton and conduct rigorous oversight to hold administration leaders to account and ensure that our nation’s public servants are fully supported in carrying out their critical responsibilities for the American people.
Max Stier is the founding president and CEO of the nonpartisan, nonprofit Partnership for Public Service, an organization focused on building a better government and a stronger democracy.
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Federal worker household here to testify that every action taken in regard to civil servants has been designed to wreck morale and force people to quit. Every "nice" thing once enjoyed as a means to make up for short pay has been rescinded since Biden left. He had staffed up agencies to distribute the workload; they have now been gutted to increase the drain on those who stayed. The barest work/life balance provisions are gone and office space downsized to leave employees stuck in noisy cubicles to do the work of 3 or 4 with the same quality expectations. And nobody wants to do a poor job; that prospect, alone, hurts. There are many, many more examples.
The result, as you can imagine by simply putting yourself in the place of people who have dedicated their working lives to serving the public, has been grief and frustration. Meanwhile, the continual threat of having our livelihood yanked away at any time for no reason at all creates a grinding stress every single day. We may all have had a job or two like this but were free to walk away and try again. There is no replacement for doing meaningful work on a national scale to better the lives of fellow citizens by working for the federal government. Thank you, Max Stier, for pointing out this ongoing situation. It sucks.