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THE BEST AND WORST PLACES TO WORK IN THE 

FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 

HEARING 

BEFORE THE

SUBCOMMITTEE ON 

GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS 

OF THE

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT 

AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES 

ONE HUNDRED FOURTEENTH CONGRESS 

SECOND SESSION 

APRIL 27, 2016 

Serial No. 114–65 

Printed for the use of the Committee on Oversight and Government Reform 

( 

Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.fdsys.gov 

http://www.house.gov/reform 


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COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM 

JASON CHAFFETZ, Utah, Chairman 

JOHN L. MICA, Florida 

MICHAEL R. TURNER, Ohio 

JOHN J. DUNCAN, JR., Tennessee 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan 

JUSTIN AMASH, Michigan 

PAUL A. GOSAR, Arizona 

SCOTT DESJARLAIS, Tennessee 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

BLAKE FARENTHOLD, Texas 

CYNTHIA M. LUMMIS, Wyoming 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina 

RON DESANTIS, Florida 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

MARK WALKER, North Carolina 

ROD BLUM, Iowa 

JODY B. HICE, Georgia 

STEVE RUSSELL, Oklahoma 

EARL L. ‘‘BUDDY’’ CARTER, Georgia 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin 

WILL HURD, Texas 

GARY J. PALMER, Alabama 

ELIJAH E. CUMMINGS, Maryland, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 

JIM COOPER, Tennessee 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia 

MATT CARTWRIGHT, Pennsylvania 

TAMMY DUCKWORTH, Illinois 

ROBIN L. KELLY, Illinois 

BRENDA L. LAWRENCE, Michigan 

TED LIEU, California 

BONNIE WATSON COLEMAN, New Jersey 

STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands 

MARK DeSAULNIER, California 

BRENDAN F. BOYLE, Pennsylvania 

PETER WELCH, Vermont 

MICHELLE LUJAN GRISHAM, New Mexico 

JENNIFER HEMINGWAY, Staff Director 

DAVID RAPALLO, Minority Staff Director 

JANELLE FITZHUGH, Detailee 

KATIE BAILEY, Subcommittee Staff Director 

WILLIAM MARX, Clerk 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

MARK MEADOWS, North Carolina, Chairman 

JIM JORDAN, Ohio 

TIM WALBERG, Michigan, Vice Chair 

TREY GOWDY, South Carolina 

THOMAS MASSIE, Kentucky 

MICK MULVANEY, South Carolina 

KEN BUCK, Colorado 

EARL L. ‘‘BUDDY’’ CARTER, Georgia 

GLENN GROTHMAN, Wisconsin 

GERALD E. CONNOLLY, Virginia, Ranking 

Minority Member 

CAROLYN B. MALONEY, New York 

ELEANOR HOLMES NORTON, District of 

Columbia 

WM. LACY CLAY, Missouri 

STACEY E. PLASKETT, Virgin Islands 

STEPHEN F. LYNCH, Massachusetts 


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C O N T E N T S 

Page 

Hearing held on April 27, 2016 .............................................................................. 1 

WITNESSES 

Ms. Lauren Leo, Chief Human Capital Officer, National Aeronautics and 

Space Administration 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 5 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 8 

Ms. Angela Bailey, Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Department of Homeland Security 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 14 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 16 

Ms. Sydney Rose, Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Department of Labor 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 19 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 21 

Ms. Towanda Brooks, Chief Human Capital Officer, U.S. Department of 

Housing and Urban Development 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 27 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 29 

Mr. Max Stier, President and CEO, Partnership for Public Service 

Oral Statement ................................................................................................. 32 

Written Statement ............................................................................................ 34 


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THE BEST AND WORST PLACES TO WORK IN 

THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT 

Wednesday, April 27, 2016 

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, 

SUBCOMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS, 

COMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND GOVERNMENT REFORM, 

Washington, D.C. 

The subcommittee met, pursuant to call, at 2:03 p.m., in Room 

2154, Rayburn House Office Building, Hon. Mark Meadows [chairman of the subcommittee] presiding. 

Present: Representatives Meadows, Jordan, Walberg, Mulvaney, 

Buck, Carter, Grothman, and Connolly. 

Mr. MEADOWS. The Subcommittee on Government Operations 

will come to order. And without objection, the chair is authorized 

to declare a recess at any time. 

After a downward trend for the last few years, the results of the 

Federal employees’ survey sent to some 840,000 Federal employees 

reveals a 1 percent increase in both employee engagement and 

global satisfaction scores. And of that number, nearly 421,000 people replied, and this data was sorted by OPM to provide a number 

of useful metrics, some that are quite encouraging. For example, 96 

percent of Federal employees surveyed are willing to put in the 

extra effort necessary to get the job done. Ninety percent are consistently looking for ways to do better and feel that the work that 

they do is important. 

And I must stress that, as I have talked to Federal employees, 

that this does not come as a surprise to me, and it is something 

that we need to do a better job in Congress of sharing with the 

American taxpayer that we have committed Federal employees. 

Yet some employee perceptions—and I am sad to say perceptions 

by some in Congress—of agency leadership continue to struggle. 

Only 50 percent of employees had positive things to say about the 

honesty and integrity of their leadership. This should remain as a 

concern for agency leaders with managing our nation’s more than 

2 million public servants. 

And in the area of promotions and dealing with poor performers, 

survey results are even more alarming. Only 33 percent of the 

workers agreed with the statement that promotions in their work 

unit are based on merit. Twenty-eight percent of the employees 

said that the necessary steps are taken to deal with poor performers. And only 21 percent of employees across the government 

said that pay raises depend on how well the employees perform 

their jobs. 


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So over the past year, I have had the pleasure and honor of visiting numerous Federal agencies, the most recent just a couple of 

days ago, across the Washington, D.C., area. I have had the opportunity to discuss a variety of topics with Federal employees, including employee engagement and satisfaction. I have met with Federal 

employees from NASA, the GAO, the Archives, MSPB, CBP, Air 

and Marine Operations, and I have always enjoyed it and appreciated the opportunity to visit with our Federal workforce. 

This week, as I was just mentioning, I was able to visit the Air 

and Marine Operations Manassas air branch, where I had the opportunity to meet and speak with AMO pilots and those that serve 

in that capacity, as well as serve the operation. I was highly impressed not only by their commitment to serving and protecting the 

American people, but I also wanted to thank them for sharing more 

with me about their mission because it was one of those things a 

lot of people don’t know about, even Members of Congress. And so 

today, we are joined by a number of agencies near the top and bottom of the Best Places to Work rankings, as well as the most-improved agencies from 2015. 

NASA has ranked number one for large agencies in the Best 

Places to Work ranking for the past 4 years with an index score 

of 76.1 out of 100. Congratulations. Last year, I had the opportunity to not only meet with employees at NASA, enjoying that 

visit with staff and learning more about the mission and vision. I 

would like to hear more about NASA’s employee engagement efforts undertaken at the agency that allows them to remain at the 

top of the rankings. 

The Department of Homeland Security, who also joined us last 

year, continues to remain last in the rankings with an index score 

of 43.1 out of 100. DHS has ranked 19 of 19 in large agencies on 

factors such as effective leadership, fairness, empowerment, and 

skills to match the mission. 

As many of you know, we have had Secret Service hearings. I 

have had a number of Secret Service employees who have reached 

out to me personally about just concerns that they have had, and 

the Secret Service employees rank their workplace as 319th out of 

320 in the agency’s subcomponent. 

Additionally, Immigration and Customs Enforcement ranked 318 

out of 320. Both of those areas have been areas that we have addressed in this particular committee, and I am hopeful that we will 

be able to discuss those today, Ms. Bailey, as we look at DHS to 

have a plan to take ownership to ensure that its employees are engaged and how DHS plans to improve the employee satisfaction 

and commitment at the agency. 

The Department of Labor is the most-improved large agency for 

2015 with an index score of 63.1 out of 100. DOL has improved 

from 17th in the 2013 Best Places to Work to a ranking of 8th in 

2015. So congratulations. 

HUD is the most-improved midsize agency for 2015 with an 

index score of 52.3 out of 100, and HUD is ranked 21st out of 24 

for midsize agencies, and had an 8 point increase in their index 

score. 

For both DOL and HUD, I hope to hear about some of the initiatives that your agencies have undertaken that has led to the sigVerDate Sep 11 2014 14:56 Dec 05, 2016 Jkt 000000 PO 00000 Frm 00006 Fmt 6633 Sfmt 6633 F:\20557.TXT APRIL

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nificant increase in the employee satisfaction and commitment. Obviously, the Partnership for Public Service also joins us today, perhaps can share some of your observations on employee engagement 

and offer some suggestions for agencies to improve the employee 

engagement efforts. 

Before I close, I wanted to also mention at the last hearing there 

were two different things that came out of that. We had different 

people testifying. The Archive, as I talked to him the other day, he 

mentioned a 4 point increase in their score that they are paying attention to. We are paying attention to this in a bipartisan way. 

The other thing that came out with Secretary Johnson, we had 

the title of this was ‘‘The Worst Places to Work in the Federal Government,’’ and he admonished me both privately and publicly that 

we ought to change the title of that. So indeed, we have listened 

to that and have changed the title, but I also want to stress today 

that the fact that you are here as witnesses and joining us here 

today is an important part of making sure that we address the concerns that have been raised by the rank-and-file. And I want to 

thank you for that. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And with that, I would like to recognize the ranking member of the Subcommittee on Government Operations, my 

good friend, Mr. Connelly, for his opening statement. 

Mr. CONNELLY. Thank you so much, Mr. Chairman. And I can 

only imagine with others what the change of title might have been, 

so maybe we are lucky with the title we had. 

Employee engagement plays an important role in agencies’ mission success. The more employees are engaged, the more invested 

in the operation and productive they become. 

As the subcommittee charged with oversight of government operations, it seems to me we should be encouraging such engagement 

to ensure that the Federal workforce is motivated to deliver quality 

services for our constituents just as we do in the private sector. 

Today’s hearing brings together a range of agencies, those with 

the highest and lowest scores, as well as those most improved, as 

you indicated, Mr. Chairman. 2015 rankings show signs of improvement with 70 percent of agencies improving their satisfaction 

and commitment scores. That is a welcome turnaround from the 43 

percent comparable figure in 2014 and the mere 24 percent in 

2013. 

However, obviously, there is always room for improvement. I am 

encouraged by the 2015 government-wide result showing a 1.2 

point increase from 2014. This is the first increase following 4 

straight years of decline since 2010. 

It is about time we see some positive signs, and I am hopeful 

maybe the tide is turning. Not only did employee satisfaction improve, but so did scores in all 10 workplace categories such as effective leadership, employee skills, and agency mission matches, pay, 

teamwork, training, development, and work-life balance. 

We all congratulate NASA, which again ranks number one 

among large agencies for the 4th year in a row. Its successful 

record of fostering employee engagement is credited to matching 

employee skills with agency mission, fostering teamwork and innovation, and satisfaction with pay. And I am going to be particularly 

interested, Max, in your analysis of that and yours as well. But 


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how much of that is the mission that just elevates, whistling when 

I go to work every day? Because other agencies can’t compete with 

that if that is the dispositive factor. But it is worthy of some examination. 

The Department of Labor is once again the most-improved large 

agency. This can be attributed in part to new workplace flexibility 

and telework initiatives. As the co-author of the telework legislation back in ’09, ’10, I am delighted to hear that. Expanding the 

use of telework has been such an important part of trying to improve actually workplace productivity and morale. So congratulations on taking advantage of the Telework Enhancement Act, 

which requires all agencies to incorporate telework into their Continuity of Operations plan. 

The Department of HUD is the most-improved midsize agency, 

and I am pleased to see Secretary Castro utilizing innovative online communication tools and town hall meetings to solicit employee feedback. 

Unfortunately, the Department of Homeland Security continues 

to struggle with employee morale and satisfaction, but I want to 

make clear that the purpose of this hearing is not to browbeat. We 

want to better understand and see what we can do to try to help. 

We must remember that DHS was created under the most intense pressures following 9/11 and combined all or part of 22 Federal agencies under one roof with the incredibly difficult mission of 

protecting the American people from a variety of threats. As the 

newest Cabinet level agency, DHS continues to experience growing 

pains and in some cases the lack of logical glue for why something 

fits within DHS, or at least arguably so. So obviously we want to 

learn a lot more today about the recently created Employee Engagement Steering Committee and how it might help. 

It is our hope that we use today’s hearing to better understand 

the challenges you all face and to identify best practices that could 

be helpful to improve employee engagement. I thank the partnership for its work. These rankings in the Office of Personnel Management’s Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey, upon which they 

are based, are very powerful tools and again often used in the private sector as well. 

Mr. Chairman, employee engagement is not an issue about which 

only agencies need to be concerned. Congress also has a vested interest in the satisfaction of Federal employees as we are their employer. And I want to commend you for your efforts to visit Federal 

agencies to hear employee concerns firsthand. I, of course, do that 

going home every night. But really, you have done a great job in 

making that part of your mission so that you are getting firsthand 

evidence and information, and sometimes that changes our perspective and our opinion. And Chairman Meadows deserves great credit 

for doing that. 

I am also heartened by the progress made. We must not forget 

the tremendous difficulty that Federal employees have faced over 

the last few years. Sequestration cuts imposed by Congress caused 

nearly 1 million Federal employees, 1 million to be furloughed for 

some time, and the uncertainty and anxiety that created. 

A budget standoff led by some in this body forced a 16-day government shutdown in 2013, the first in 17 years. Federal employee 


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pay was frozen 3 consecutive years, retirement benefits were reduced for new employees, and training budgets were slashed. In 

all, Federal employees were hit with more than $180 billion in compensation cuts, the only group of Americans targeted by Congress 

to contribute to deficit reduction explicitly. So it should come as little surprise that Federal employees during that time period were 

feeling unappreciated and often demoralized. As Congress prepares 

for the annual appropriation process to fund the government, let’s 

learn from the painful experience of recent history. 

I would like to remind everyone that next week is Public Service 

Recognition Week. I feel that Congress should give Federal employees credit and recognition for the incredible work they do day in 

and day out serving the American people, our constituents. 

So as we approach Public Service Recognition Week, let’s commit 

to engaging in fairly compensating our dedicated public employees 

to ensure that the Federal Government continues to provide the 

critical programs and services upon which the American people depend. 

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I look forward to the testimony. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman for his kind remarks, and 

I will keep the record open for 5 legislative days for any member 

who would like to submit a written statement. 

We will now recognize our panel of witnesses. I am pleased to 

welcome Ms. Lauren Leo, chief human capital officer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration; Ms. Angela Bailey, 

chief human capital officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland 

Security; Ms. Sydney Rose, chief Human Capital Officer at the U.S. 

Department of Labor; and Ms. Towanda Brooks, chief human capital officer at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development; and Mr. Max Stier, President and Chief Executive Officer of 

the Partnership for Public Service, of whom a lot of this actually 

started in an in-office visit with me many months ago. Welcome to 

you all. 

And pursuant to committee rules, all witnesses will be sworn in 

before they testify, so if you would please rise and raise your right 

hand. 

[Witnesses sworn.] 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Let the record reflect that the witnesses 

answered in the affirmative. Thank you. You may please be seated. 

In order to allow time for discussion, I would ask that you would 

limit your oral testimony to 5 minutes, that your entire written 

statement will be made part of the record. 

And so without objection, we will go ahead and start. Ms. Leo, 

you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

WITNESS STATEMENTS 

STATEMENT OF LAUREN LEO 

Ms. LEO. Chairman Meadows and members of the subcommittee, 

thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today on the 

topic of the 2015 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government. 

Today, I’d like to share with you what makes NASA such a great 

place to work, as well as what we’ve learned along the way about 

employee engagement and using the Federal Employee Viewpoint 


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Survey result as a mechanism to continually improve NASA’s work 

environment. 

First, I have to admit that I have one of the best jobs in the 

world. My job is to care for and support the agency’s most valuable 

asset, our amazing workforce, the brilliant rocket scientists, innovative engineers, dedicated support and administrative professionals, and every employee and contractor that make up the 

NASA family. 

I work for an agency that inspires, challenges, and empowers our 

employees daily to carry out missions that benefit us here on 

Earth. I feel extremely fortunate to wake up every morning to 

serve NASA’s employees who are truly a tremendous asset to our 

country and the world. 

Given that NASA is strongly mission- and project-focused, our 

employees believe in the importance of the mission and are heavily 

engaged in their work. They come to work at NASA because they 

want to be part of something bigger, not just because it’s a job. 

Every NASA employee impacts the agency’s mission daily, no 

matter his or her pay grade or area of expertise. NASA’s employees 

consistently cite shared values, shared commitment to the mission, 

and loyalty to the agency as reasons why they feel positively engaged in their jobs. This sense of belonging fuels a deep sense of 

community at NASA, and this begins at the top. Administrator 

Charlie Bolden fundamentally believes that his communication is 

a cornerstone to connecting employees to NASA’s mission, and he 

never misses an opportunity to tell employees that their work is 

important. 

Because our employees feel connected to the mission and to each 

other, we have a very positive work culture with a high level of employee engagement. But we are not satisfied with the status quo, 

and we are constantly searching for better ways to work. 

The health of our workforce is a top priority for NASA leadership. Our leadership pays attention to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data and other indicators to monitor the state of the 

agency and to develop strategies for continually improving employee engagement, connection, and effectiveness. 

NASA believes that leaders and particularly supervisors play a 

unique role in creating a positive work environment for employees, 

so we continue to invest in a number of leadership development 

programs and activities across the agency from early career to executive, better designed to better equip current and future agency 

leaders to carry out our mission. 

While our 2015 survey results were extremely positive, we observed a few areas where we can continue to improve. In particular, we are currently working to improve the experience across 

our geographically dispersed centers so that we can close the gap 

on how employees feel they are valued and recognized. We also 

want to continue to focus on improving in areas where we’ve made 

progress such as innovation and performance management. 

Additionally, as part of the broader Federal Government community, NASA believes that we need to work together to leverage 

what’s working across all Federal Government agencies. To that 

end, we are working with the Partnership for Public Service to find 

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eral agencies and to develop solutions that demonstrate how agencies can take action on those promising practices. 

In summary, NASA employees raise the bar of human achievement every day. They are passionate and dedicated men and 

women who overcome the huge challenges of exploring space and 

improving life on Earth. This is a workforce that is dedicated to 

ushering in the future of our nation, including developing new 

technologies with the goal of one day landing humans on Mars. 

NASA’s employees are building a brighter future for us all and are 

extremely proud to be part of the NASA family. 

In my role, I am very privileged to have regular conversations 

with the many men and women who support and enable NASA’s 

mission. We talk about what inspires them to show up to work 

every day, what commits them to stay engaged throughout their 

careers, and what new challenges they are up against. These people are NASA’s most valuable asset and my number one priority. 

That is why I am proud of NASA’s robust strategy to engage our 

workforce and create a culture of innovation. When I am asked 

why NASA is such a great place to work, I say it’s about our people. Without them, nothing would be achieved. 

Mr. Chairman, thank you for the opportunity to appear before 

you today to share the story of NASA’s workforce. I will be pleased 

to answer any questions you may have. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Leo follows:] 


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Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Ms. Leo. 

Ms. Bailey, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF ANGELA BAILEY 

Ms. BAILEY. Thank you. Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member 

Connolly, and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today to address our efforts to enhance employee engagement at DHS. 

I joined DHS in January of this year as a career Federal executive with nearly 35 years of service. Most of those years have been 

spent in human resources in the field and at agency headquarters. 

I’m responsible for the Department’s overall human capital program, including providing human resource solutions for DHS headquarters employees. 

My office also supports employee engagement efforts led by the 

Secretary and Deputy Secretary. In fact, in my discussions with 

DHS prior to even coming on board and taking this job, the Under 

Secretary for Management made it very clear that employee engagement was a top priority for the Secretary and the Department, 

as a whole, and as you can imagine, it is also one of my top priorities. 

DHS is a large and complex agency that holds an extraordinary 

set of missions. Our employees, many of whom are on the 

frontlines, conduct difficult work under challenging circumstances. 

Recently, the Secret Service successfully protected 32 heads of 

state during the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, 

D.C. 

Transportation security officers discovered 58 firearms in carryon bags around the Nation just last week, 49 of which were loaded, 

and 20 had a round chambered. 

The Coast Guard safely returned more than three dozen migrants found drifting in the Caribbean back to Cuba. 

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, Customs 

and Border Protection officers, and Border Patrol agents and their 

partner agencies seized more than a ton of marijuana in a tunnel 

connecting California with Mexico. These are only a few examples. 

Clearly, DHS personnel, including those who provide critical assistance behind the scenes, do amazing work, are our greatest 

strength, and deserve all the support that we can give them. 

In my short time at DHS, I can tell you that from the top to the 

bottom, this department is laser-focused on supporting our workforce so that they can accomplish their missions. Engagement is a 

mission-critical leadership issue. I have seen firsthand how engaged our leaders are in embracing our workforce, and it is clearly 

a top priority. 

I was also encouraged to see that two of our components—Coast 

Guard and Citizenship and Immigration Services, with a combined 

total of 22,000 civilian employees—consistently score above the 

government-wide average on the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. We are leveraging their successful practices across the Department. 

The Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and the Under Secretary for 

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ments, responding to questions, and receiving direct feedback on 

how we can improve our policies, our services, our operations, and 

even our opportunities for our employees. 

Both the Secretary and the Deputy Secretary have also employed 

‘‘undercover boss’’ experiences to literally walk in the shoes of 

frontline employees and show their respect and appreciation for the 

tough jobs that they perform daily. 

DHS component leadership has also reached out directly to their 

employees during town halls. They have implemented crowdsourcing idea-gathering. They have developed DHS-wide and component-specific leadership development to all levels of leadership. 

Since last year’s testimony on this issue, we have accomplished 

quite a lot, including this year for the first time actions plans were 

signed by component leadership and submitted to the Under Secretary ensuring senior leaders’ commitment and support. 

The Under Secretary and I are also working with representatives 

from all of the components through our Employee Engagement 

Steering Committee to ensure implementation of their plans and to 

share lessons learned and successful practices. 

A new department-wide employee engagement action plan, reflecting input from across DHS has three major focus areas: selecting and empowering high-performing leaders, developing excellent 

leaders at all levels, and enhancing communications. This has led 

to the deployment of new initiatives, including behavioral interview 

questions for all senior leadership positions ensuring we hire highperforming and engaged leaders, an online leadership resource center, which provides guidance and resources for all of DHS leaders 

covering a number of areas, including innovation toolkits, how to 

conduct meaningful town hall meetings, and stay interviews; and 

finally, accountability for SES with an engagement element added 

to our 2016 SES performance plans. 

In addition, we’re working with components to encourage employees to participate in the upcoming survey through messaging that 

states how feedback leads to ideas, and ideas leads to change, and 

change then leads to a more engaged workforce and increased morale. 

Every day, the men and women of DHS carry out difficult and 

dangerous work that is often unseen by the American public. They 

do an outstanding job and have a deep commitment to the mission. 

Through our efforts dedicated to employee engagement, we are determined to enhance their work experience and honor the contributions of our hardworking and dedicated workforce. 

Thank you again for supporting our employees, who protect us 

and our great Nation. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Bailey follows:] 


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Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Ms. Bailey. 

Ms. Rose, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF SYDNEY ROSE 

Ms. ROSE. Thank you so much. Good afternoon, Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member Connolly, and the distinguished members of 

the subcommittee. Thank you so much for the opportunity to participate in today’s hearing. 

As the chief human capital officer for the United States Department of Labor, it is my privilege to report on the Department’s 

climb in Best Places to Work rankings and to share our efforts of 

the past few years. 

In 2015, the Labor Department ranked 8th best place to work in 

the Federal Government. This was an improvement over our 2014 

ranking where we finally broke into the top 10. The Department 

received recognition from the Partnership for Public Service for receiving the most-improved scores for 2014 and 2015. This was an 

incredible accomplishment for us. 

Our ranking and survey results have dramatically improved 

since 2013. Nearly 70 percent of the Department’s sub-agencies improved in their 2015 rankings, and in fact, the Department’s Bureau of International Labor Affairs was recognized as the most-improved subcomponent, having improved its ranking by an incredible 165 places. 

Secretary Tom Perez has made improving employee morale and 

engagement a top priority since the minute he arrived at the Department of Labor, and he has continually reinforced his commitment towards building a better DOL through employee input and 

feedback. He came to the Department with the belief that an engaged workforce is a more productive workforce. Virtually all communications from the Secretary’s office now reinforce his commitment to and the importance of employee feedback. 

With his vision and well-communicated interest in improving 

workforce engagement, he appointed his deputy chief of staff, several members of the Secretary’s office, and myself to lead employee 

engagement efforts. The team continues to meet weekly to discuss 

progress with regard to communications and various workplace initiatives and provides regular briefings to DOL leadership on a variety of workforce initiatives. 

One of the most important strategies was for the Department to 

improve our response rates. In 2013 the Department’s response 

rate was 44.7 percent. In 2014, we increased to 71.7 percent, and 

unbelievably, in 2015 we increased further to 76.5 percent. To improve response rates, we sent out communications to employees 

throughout the year informing them how the survey was being 

used to implement changes. 

During the survey period, we sent frequent reminders from the 

Secretary, Deputy Secretary, and DOL senior officials reminding 

them of the importance of the survey. We also used regularly 

scheduled meetings to remind agency leadership to encourage their 

employees to participate. 

Beginning in the summer of 2013, we conducted extensive data 

analysis and research, which included interviews with other agencies such as the Departments of Transportation and Justice in 


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hopes of identifying strategies that we could consider and implement. Our efforts also focused on our labor-management relations. 

We worked closely with our labor unions to implement important 

workplace flexibilities and to develop and project positive workplace behaviors. Where possible, we tried to obtain pre-decisional 

input and engage in informal dispute resolution, as well as to utilize labor-management forums. In March, unions representing DOL 

employees were even invited to submit survey questions, eight of 

which we have included in this year’s Federal Employee Viewpoint 

Survey. 

In addition, we’ve worked to increase communication across the 

Department. We’ve held numerous town hall meetings and listening sessions and have visited all of DOL’s regional offices. Employee questions are invited in advance and during the meetings. 

Electronic suggestion boxes are implemented, and we have even replaced those boxes now with IdeaMill, which is an electronic suggestion box and crowd-sourcing tool. 

Based on employee feedback we’ve received, we’ve implemented 

a number of new initiatives at the Department of Labor. We have 

a new policy that allows up to 40 hours of duty time for employees 

to participate in management-improved professional development 

activities. We created the ROAD program, which stands for Repository of Opportunities, Assignments, and Details. This allows managers to post opportunities that can be short-term and allow employees to apply. 

It goes without saying our civilian workforce is our greatest 

asset, and we continually strive to increase their engagement. We 

welcome your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Rose follows:] 


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Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Ms. Rose. 

Ms. Brooks, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF TOWANDA BROOKS 

Ms. BROOKS. Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member Connolly, 

and members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity 

to appear before you today to testify on behalf of the Department 

of Housing and Urban Development regarding the Best Places to 

Work in the Federal Government. 

I became the chief human capital officer for the Department of 

Housing and Urban Development in 2015 and have been a member 

of the Senior Executive Service since May 2009. As CHCO, I lead 

HUD’s Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer and oversee implementation of the Department’s human capital management 

strategies, policies, and initiatives in support of HUD’s mission. 

HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. It is our nearly 8,000 

employees who carry out the Department’s mission on behalf of 

millions of hardworking American families in all 50 states, the District of Columbia, U.S. territories and the four insular areas every 

day. 

The link between an employee’s engagement and mission accomplishment is well documented in private and public sector research, 

as well as in HUD’s own experience. When we use employee engagement as a measure of success for the Department, we make 

HUD a better workplace and in turn improve outcomes for the 

American people. 

The best available measure for employee engagement in the Federal service is the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey. In 2015, 

HUD was recognized by the Office of Personnel Management as the 

most-improved agency for employee engagement and by the Partnership for Public Service as the most-improved midsized agency 

on their annual Best Places to Work in the Federal Government 

index. 

The Department improved its EVS scores on 69 out of 71 questions, with an average increase of nearly 5 percentage points. Two 

indicates significant movement. Notably, our employee engagement 

score rose to 61.8 percent, HUD’s second-highest mark since OPM 

began keeping records and just short of our all-time high in 2012. 

HUD also was the most-improved agency in the government on 

the ‘‘New IQ,’’ a measure of workplace inclusion and empowerment. 

HUD increased a full 5 points, while the government overall only 

increased 1 point. Employees ranked their leaders and supervisors 

6 percent and 5 percent higher than the prior the year, and their 

overall view of their jobs improved 5 percent. 

And a record number of employees filled out the survey. HUD 

achieved its highest participation rate on record, as 74 percent of 

its employees took the survey. In 2014, HUD’s level of participation 

was just 51 percent. 

HUD’s improved employee engagement scores are due in large 

part to the commitment made by HUD’s most senior leaders. Secretary Castro and Deputy Secretary Coloretti have made employee 

engagement a sustained priority, and they have shown employees 

that their feedback is taken seriously. The Secretary and Deputy 


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Secretary placed a strong emphasis on responding to employees’ requests through HUD’s internal social media tools, including 

HUDConnect, which provides ways to directly solicit and receive 

employee feedback. They also prioritize meeting with employees in 

HUD headquarters and in its regional and field offices and through 

regional town halls. In addition, the Deputy Secretary is carrying 

out an ambitious management agenda through a series of collaborative deep-dive projects aimed at strengthening the Department. 

We also attribute HUD’s increase in employee engagement to 

proactively sharing the 2014 and 2015 EVS results with employees. 

We provided opportunities to all HUD employees to access and interpret the EVS results. In particular, we provided detailed briefings for managers, identifying not just areas of strength and opportunity, but appropriate peer offices for comparisons and sharing 

best practices. As a result, managers were able to learn more about 

the experiences of their career employees, not just at the agency 

level, but often at the individual office and division levels. These 

steps have led to real change in our various program offices. 

In conclusion, currently HUD is engaged in a planning process 

that ensures employee engagement will remain a priority in 2016 

and beyond. OCHCO is continuing to provide all HUD employees 

with access to HUD’s EVS data so they understand the opportunities and challenges in their work unit and how the changes they 

make contribute to HUD’s ability to meet our mission. 

I’ve served 26 years in the Federal Government, and I know from 

experience that having a committed workforce is essential to delivering the best service to the American people. One of the most important measures of the quality of a Federal workplace is engagement of its employees. As such, while managing OCHCO operations, I have also championed leadership development, diversity 

and inclusion, and employee engagement. 

HUD’s employees are essential to fulfilling our mission. Their 

success is HUD’s success, and I’m proud to serve them and the 

American people. 

Again, thank you for the opportunity to appear before you today. 

I look forward to answering your questions. 

[Prepared statement of Ms. Brooks follows:] 


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Mr. MEADOWS. Thank you, Ms. Brooks. 

Mr. Stier, you are recognized for 5 minutes. 

STATEMENT OF MAX STIER 

Mr. STIER. There we go. Thank you so much, Chairman Meadows, Ranking Member Connolly, Congressman Mulvaney, for having this hearing. It’s phenomenal that you’re shining a spotlight on 

such an important issue. Thank you also for the trips you’ve been 

taking to Federal agencies. It’s a really terrific thing. I’ve heard 

great feedback, and building more relationships between Congress 

and the executive branch is absolutely vital. 

Ranking Member Connolly, you raised the question in your opening statement about is it NASA’s mission? I would tell you it is not 

the mission; it’s leadership. What the data says across the board 

is you’ve got a highly committed workforce, whatever they’re doing, 

if they’re working at GSA or HUD. But where you have great leadership, you have engaged employees. And when I say great leaders, 

that really breaks down to a set of different issues that includes 

the ability to communicate effectively, get good information out, 

build trust with the employees, and also create a performance culture that’s absolutely essential. 

And I would note that, again, Chairman Meadows, you cited 

some terrific stats at the front end. There are some good stories, 

some bad stories. There’s a lot of room for improvement, and I 

think focusing on agencies—I’m proud to be on this panel of all the 

folks here who are great public servants. It’s a great way of bringing up the good things that our folks are doing that they can 

spread across government. 

I want to focus my time, however, on making four recommendations of things that I think you all can do to help improve government management through improving government employee engagement. And the first and foremost, that would be modernizing 

the statute that is the basis for the information and all the work 

that you’re doing here right now, the Federal Employee Viewpoint 

Survey. 

The statute was part of the 2004 NDAA and now needs to be 

modernized for four different reasons, most important, and that is 

that OPM is in the process right now of rewriting the regulations. 

There are 45 required questions. They’re bringing that down to 11. 

A number of the questions that you cited, Chairman Meadows, in 

that beginning, will not have to be required going forward if those 

regulations go through. 

I think it’s essential that this committee weigh in on making 

sure that critical information is actually gathered. OPM has done 

a terrific job. This is a change that I think unfortunately would unravel some important things, including our ability to do the Best 

Places to Work rankings, because one of our three key questions 

would be removed from the regulations as well. So we hope that 

the committee will look, number one, at trying to ensure that the 

right questions are actually included in the survey. 

Number two, the survey needs to be conducted every year by the 

Office of Personnel Management. The statue currently does not require that to happen. Kudos, frankly, to OPM under the Obama administration, they’ve chosen to do it every year. Clearly, it’s a more 


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efficient operation to have one entity do the survey for all of government, and it’s both cost-effective and it enables comparison 

across agencies, which you lose if OPM isn’t required to do it for 

everybody. So that would be the second point on change that we 

think would be really important. 

The third piece which is absolutely vital is getting the information out much faster. OPM has accelerated the time, and you’ll see 

some nodding heads here about that. The truth of the matter is 

that you ask someone’s opinion about what can be improved in 

their agency, and if they don’t see anything done with that opinion 

for 6 months or 7 months or 8 months, that’s a real problem. The 

only way the agencies can actually do anything with this is if that 

that information is turned around a lot faster. And therefore, I 

think that’s a place, again, where you could legislatively put some, 

you know, incentives to make sure that it’s getting out there much 

faster, not just the agencies, but to the public for organizations like 

the Partnership for Public Service. 

And finally, we think information should actually be reported by 

occupation because that would enable really critical comparisons 

across the board wherever feasible. 

So three other very quick suggestions for improvements that this 

committee could lead the way on, and the second one would be 

making sure that political leaders are actually held accountable for 

addressing engagement. 

So one interesting thing that goes on here, we talk about a performance culture. In any other organization I’ve seen, you have the 

top leadership that has certain expectations that cascade down to 

the rest of the organization. The career workforce have performance plan obligations. The political workforce doesn’t. Some agencies require performance plans for political appointees, but that’s 

frankly a rarity. That ought to be done across the board so the career workforce can actually see how their work lines up against the 

priorities at the top for the agencies. And that should include a 

focus on talent management and employee engagement. 

Number three would be improving the effort to create a culture 

of recognition and improve manager performance. So this is an 

area that I hope I can come back to. But we should be switching 

to probation period presumption that you automatically become 

non-probationary after you come through a year. Rather, our view 

is that a manager should actually have to make that choice. And 

the same goes for someone coming into a management position. If 

we have time at the end here or during your questions, I’d love to 

get into that. 

And then the last piece I would like to focus on is just what 

you’re seeing here, the sharing of best practice. To my mind, everything that should happen in the Federal Government is happening 

somewhere, just not in all the places it needs to. And we need to 

figure out ways to scale best practice, and that’s a place your oversight can make a very big difference. 

Thank you very much. 

[Prepared statement of Mr. Stier follows:] 


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Mr. MEADOWS. Well, I thank each of you for your testimony. 

Max, obviously, some of those recommendations are spot on, but 

I would like to share that in other hearings other than those with 

a title like we have today, employee engagement continues to be a 

big issue. 

After my visit to NASA, I can tell you that we had a few others 

that were here, and I suggested that they get with NASA in terms 

of that employee engagement component to see what they are 

doing. Now, I wrote myself a note so I am going to see the next 

time they come back if they actually got with you. 

But with that, I am going to go ahead and recognize the gentleman from South Carolina, Mr. Mulvaney, for 5 minutes for his 

opening questions. 

Mr. MULVANEY. I appreciate that. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

Ms. Bailey, I don’t want to appear to be beating up on you, but 

I don’t know if you are—the coincidence of your being here today, 

we just had a hearing this morning regarding TSA, which I think 

is in your department, isn’t it? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes, it is. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Okay. That didn’t go very well. They weren’t 

very happy. The subject matter of the hearing—were you here for 

that? 

Ms. BAILEY. No, sir, I wasn’t. 

Mr. MULVANEY. The —— 

Ms. BAILEY. No, sir, I was not. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Okay. The subject of the hearing was some of 

the issues that we have been facing with whistleblowers and so 

forth. We had two folks here who feel like they had been mistreated, and I had some stories from my district about folks—and 

I am not laying blame because I know that is not your department, 

but that was the subject matter of this morning’s hearing is how 

could TSA be run a little bit better. And I listened to what the 

chairman had to say about DHS, what you had to say about DHS, 

and, again, I can’t blame you because you have only been there for, 

what, 3 months or something like that? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. MULVANEY. And I get that. So I guess if I wanted to skip 

all of the rhetoric and get down to the bottom line, when is it going 

to get better at DHS? You all are last. When can we expect you 

to, say, be in the top half judged by your own employees’ feedback 

on what kind of place this is to work? Top half by when? 

Ms. BAILEY. I do believe, sir, that with all of the efforts that we 

have actually put in—put forth within this last year and actually 

for the last couple of years, I do think that what we’re going to see 

is actual improvement in our EVS scores. There is an absolute 

dedicated commitment. We agree leadership matters most. We 

have—from the Secretary to the Deputy Secretary to the Under 

Secretary and on down, we’ve made a concerted effort to get out 

and listen to the employees and find out —— 

Mr. MULVANEY. And, Ms. Bailey, again, I don’t want to cut you 

off, that is fine. That is what we call rhetoric. That is not really— 

everybody says that. Everybody says it is a critical thing—everybody says the same thing now. At NASA and DOL and HUD, it is 

actually working. They made it a priority and they have listened 


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to the people. Everybody uses words we have had town hall meetings with our employees. We get that, okay, and that is the right 

thing to do. But our question is when is it actually going to work? 

All right. 

So let’s pretend that we are not a congressional hearing and you 

are a private company. You are working with Google and you are 

the human resources chairman at Google, and everybody and 

Google hates working at Google. And you come into the board of 

directors and you say, okay, here is what we are going to do to fix 

it. We are going to do our town hall meetings and we are going to 

do all these wonderful things. And we turn to you and say, okay, 

when will it get better? What is your answer? 

Ms. BAILEY. Well, if I may, sir, everybody does not hate coming 

to work to DHS. In fact, most of the men and women at DHS are 

incredibly proud to work at DHS. When things get better actually 

is whenever we’re able to make concrete changes that affect their 

lives positively. 

Mr. MULVANEY. How did you all do on the percentage of employees who had a positive thing to say about the honesty and integrity 

of leadership? The average across the whole system is 50. How did 

you all do? 

Ms. BAILEY. I’m not sure, sir. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Probably worse than 50? Maybe? Probably? I 

don’t have the numbers in front of me. But again, you are last, and 

if that is average, it is fair to say that you are last. And again, we 

are not trying to beat up on you. All we want to know is when is 

it going to get better? And just let us know. If it is a year, that 

is fine, if it is 3 years, that is fine, but I will let you know the next 

question is, okay, if you tell us it is going to be 3 years, what is 

the penalty for when it isn’t? Because at some point—in fact, the 

gentlemen who were here this morning, very insightful, down-toearth guys, they said, look, the only way it is going to get better 

at TSA is when we have accountable leadership. That is it, period, 

end of story. 

So my question is when are we going to have accountable leadership? And if we don’t, who pays the price? Because right now, I 

think the people who are paying the price, at TSA at least, are the 

employees and the public, which that is a really bad group to have 

to pay the price. The people who are running the organization at 

DHS and TSA are not paying the price. The people who work there 

are paying the price. The people they are supposed to serve are 

paying the price. 

And we are going to try to turn that upside down to where the 

people who pay the price for failure are the people who are responsible for failure. At TSA, the people who wait in line to get through 

the security are not the ones who are not doing their job. In fact, 

what we heard today, and if you believe them—and I tend to do 

it—is the folks who actually work there on the line. The folks meeting face-to-face with the public are not the folks who are not doing 

their job. It is the folks, no offense, at your level and higher who 

are not doing their job. And what we are interested in is trying to 

create a system where the people who are screwing up are the people who pay the price and not the people who are sort of the victims or the folks who are ending up on the short end of the stick. 


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So my question to you before my time and out is, give us a date. 

When will you all get better? 

Ms. BAILEY. I believe that we will make incremental improvements beginning this year. 

Mr. MULVANEY. Okay. That is great. And I look forward to the 

hearing next year, and if you are not last here, I will be the first 

to congratulate you. I would love to see you in the most-improved 

categories like DOL and HUD. 

I am sorry. I didn’t want to focus on the negative, but we did just 

have this hearing this morning. But if you are last here or you 

haven’t made—you know, if you are next-to-last, this hearing might 

be less fun than it was this year. 

Thanks very much, Mr. Chairman. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. 

The chair recognizes the ranking member of the subcommittee, 

Mr. Connelly, for questions. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I thank the chair. 

And I think my friend from South Carolina makes some very important points, and in listening to his questioning, I reflected on 

the 20 years I spent in the private sector in management. And one 

of the principles certainly that I think is applicable is that you 

have to differentiate between performers and nonperformers, people with stellar performance and people with adequate or sub-adequate performance. If you treat everybody’s performance the same 

when it comes to recognition, you are saying to your stellar performers I can come in early and stay late, I can donate time on the 

weekends and it doesn’t matter. I am going to be treated like Harry 

Houdini there who is a clock-watcher, shows up at 9:00 and leaves 

promptly at 5:00 and never volunteers for anything. And as far as 

management is concerned, we are the same. 

And, Mr. Stier, I am looking at a statistic that says 73 percent 

of private sector workers believe management recognizes superior 

performance, but in the public sector, only 44 percent believes that. 

That tells me there is a problem if we are going to get at what Mr. 

Mulvaney was talking about, which is, okay, give me a time frame 

where we want to see this improve. Part of the solution, it seems 

to me, or part of the problem is this recognition-of-performance 

problem. Do you want to comment on that, Max? 

Mr. STIER. I think you’re 100 percent right. I think, frankly, you 

need definitely to be able to recognize good performance if you 

want to encourage that to be the norm. And we don’t have a culture of performance recognition in government, and that’s one of 

the reasons why I think Federal employees are risk-averse. They 

see real downside and no real upside. So you have to provide that 

upside in order to be able to get the innovation that you want. 

Again, I think—not to pick on NASA in this context, but that’s an 

area that they focus a lot on, and I think that’s extremely important. 

If I might also add, it’s also very important not to roll up too 

much in the way of the data. So we talk about Department of 

Homeland Security being last. It’s a very large organization and 

with multiple subcomponents, some of which are doing extremely 

well like the Coast Guard, which we heard about earlier. And so 

I think you need to disaggregate to some degree. Certainly, you 


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need to hold top leadership accountable for the whole thing, but 

there are bright spots at DHS that ought to be, you know, recognized, as you’re suggesting here. 

But your point is phenomenally important. We have the Service 

to America medals, the CMEs where we find extraordinary people. 

Next week, we have a breakfast—the 4th, the 3rd. I hope you’ll be 

there, just awesome stories about what you get when government 

is doing really right. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I remember once in the private sector working 

with somebody, the head of a big division, and he had a bonus pool 

that year, at bonus time, and he decided to give everyone a $250 

bonus rather than make the tough decision of Mr. Meadows gets 

one because of stellar performance and Mr. Connelly doesn’t because we know what. He is a Democrat. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. CONNOLLY. No, no, that is not true. But if you don’t do that 

differentiation, you are saying to everybody, we are going to 

dummy down to the mean, and that is not how to get high performance, and it actually has a morale effect on the high performers because I feel unappreciated. 

All right. I want to push back just a little bit, Mr. Stier, about 

you are saying, well, it is really about leadership more than mission. That is a little hard to believe. So, Ms. Leo, how many agencies were kind of put together to form NASA? How many agencies 

do you represent here? 

Ms. LEO. One agency. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. One. You have got a lot of missions? I mean, you 

go to Mars, get a man on the moon—so I was a person—space shuttle is over, I mean, are you doing oceanographic research, climate 

change research. I mean, have you got a lot of missions that —— 

Ms. LEO. We’re doing a plethora of missions. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Plethora —— 

Ms. LEO. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY.—of missions. Ms. Bailey, I guess you get a plethora of missions? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes, sir. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. So you have got TSA, you have got Customs? 

Ms. BAILEY. Correct. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. You have got Border Control? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. You have got Secret Service? 

Ms. BAILEY. Correct. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. What else did you get? You got 22 agencies when 

you were formed? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes, we have 22 agencies. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. So that is a world of difference than sort of the 

cohesive mission that helps provide an organizing principle for 

NASA. 

Ms. BAILEY. Well —— 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Would that be fair? 

Ms. BAILEY. That is fair. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. How many employees you got? 

Ms. BAILEY. Close to 240,000. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And how many have you got, Ms. Leo? 


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Ms. LEO. About 17,000 civil servants. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. A quarter of a million almost, 17,000. 

Well, I am going to accuse my friend Max Stier of oversimplifying. I think DHS has a much more difficult task from day one. 

That is not to let anyone off the hook, but many orders of magnitude different than NASA’s wonderful success. And good for you. 

I would bet you Ms. Bailey is sitting there thinking I wish I had 

Ms. Leo’s problems because trying to bring all this together in one 

happy family when it—and I was in the private sector, and we 

were a contractor to the administration trying to figure out this 

new thing called the Department of Homeland Security. I remember looking at the org charts and trying to figure out, well, what 

would go where and who would go where and what is the logic of 

it? And sometimes there was logic and sometimes there wasn’t. So 

trying to cohere all of that and infuse it with mission and morale 

and productivity is a challenge. And, Max, you want to redeem 

yourself a little bit? 

Mr. STIER. I do. I feel like the ranking member —— 

Mr. CONNOLLY. And then I will —— 

Mr. STIER.—has filibustered here and not offered me an opportunity to respond here. 

Mr. MEADOWS. That would never happen. 

Mr. CONNOLLY We don’t filibuster here in the House of Representatives, Mr. Stier. 

Mr. STIER. All right. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. We are not the Senate. 

Mr. STIER. All right. Well, so if I might, Mr. Chairman, respond? 

Mr. MEADOWS. Yes, go ahead and respond quickly. 

Mr. STIER. Okay. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I think we have got votes pretty soon —— 

Mr. STIER. Okay. 

Mr. MEADOWS.—so that’s why I’m —— 

Mr. STIER. Just very quickly in all seriousness, there’s no question that an organization of 240,000 people is a much trickier proposition that an organization of 17,000. However, that’s a different 

question about saying whether it’s the mission or it’s the leadership. If you look across this table and you ask each of these individuals, are they at their agency because they want to be at their 

agency, my bet is they’ll say they care about housing, they care 

about labor, they care about, you know, homeland security, they 

care about the issues at NASA. 

The Federal workforce, if you look at the data, says that by and 

large the employees are as mission-committed across the board as 

any organization. Where you see the differential is in their perspective of their leadership, not in their mission commitment. And that 

is true, and to your point earlier in the private sector, same thing. 

People who care about NASA issues are at NASA. People who care 

about homeland security, law enforcement, whatever issues are at 

DHS. What differentiates their views about their work environment and whether they’re engaged is whether they believe that 

their leadership is giving them the resources they need to do their 

jobs well, whether they can see from what they do how they’re connected to the overall mission, whether they, you know—on and on 

and on. That’s where the clear—that’s what the data shows. 


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I’d love to continue this conversation further. The turnaround 

issue is a separate one about the size that DHS has to deal with. 

That’s one reason why I say break it into blocks, into the subcomponents. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Thank you. The chair recognizes himself for a series of questions. 

So I will give you a soft ball. So, Mr. Stier, is it always the large 

agencies that perform the poorest, or have we had examples of very 

small agencies that have had very poor rankings in the past, so 

like Chemical Safety Board? 

Mr. STIER. Well, or, you know, bluntly, I’m—you know, I will 

take a DHS example. Look at the Secret Service, which was an organization that actually had very high scores that you’ve seen decline over the course of the last 4 and 5 years. And I would posit 

that that’s about leadership again. When you look at the—you 

know, the FDIC and the SEC, they swapped places in our 

rankings. I think that’s about leadership. One was on the top, one 

was at the bottom. They flipped it, and that—so that’s what you 

see. 

The large—I mean, this is a statistical issue. The larger you get, 

the more close to the mean you’re likely to get, and so that’s going 

to drive your —— 

Mr. MEADOWS. Is that why we rank them out as most improved 

for large agencies —— 

Mr. STIER. Absolutely. 

Mr. MEADOWS.—medium-size, small agencies, et cetera? 

Mr. STIER. Absolutely. And at some point you slice it too much 

so the reality is we keep getting asked, well, we’re not—we’re a 

large agency but we’re 240,000, we’re not like 15,000, but you can 

only do so much —— 

Mr. MEADOWS. Right. If you get it down small enough, you become the best and worst of the subsets. 

Mr. STIER. Super large, exactly. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So —— 

Mr. STIER. But I think the bottom line here is that you look at 

the data, leadership is like two-thirds of what’s driving what we’re 

seeing here. And that’s, you know, political leadership—and there’s 

things you can do, which is what I’ve suggested, to help encourage 

the better behaviors. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. So, Ms. Leo, when you are on the top, 

everybody guns for that top position. So how have you managed to 

stay on the top for 4 years running? Because some of the most critical surveys in the automobile industry actually go towards Lexus 

and Mercedes-Benz and some of the ones that you would think of 

very high quality because the expectation rises along with that. So 

the expectations are that you are going to be number one from here 

on out. How do you manage that expectation and continue to deliver satisfaction to your employees? 

Ms. LEO. Well, thank you for the question. We are really focused 

on our trend, and so we want to see our trend continue to go up. 

And so I think—we think that if someone overtakes us because 

their trend goes—they increase more than ours, as long as we’re 

still increasing and listening to the feedback of our employees, 

that’s a good-news story because —— 


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52 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. 

Ms. LEO.—it really is about the health of the Federal Government. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Valid point. All right. So, Ms. Rose, your energy 

was obvious in your testimony earlier, so, you know, I wish you 

would get a little energetic. 

[Laughter.] 

Mr. MEADOWS. But how do you make that energy—obviously you 

have—contagious in the Department of Labor? I mean, we have 

talked about engagement and other things, but how have you been 

able to do that, you know, other than town hall meetings and 

things? Why do they feel like they are important, your rank-andfile? 

Ms. ROSE. I think it’s because we’re not just listening but we’re 

doing as a result of our listening. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Now, that was the answer that I wanted to hear, and so thank you for that response. 

Ms. ROSE. You’re welcome. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Because here is the interesting thing is we can 

do a number of surveys, and I used to be in that business. You 

would send the surveys out. If you got the information, you checked 

the box, you did the surveys, and if nothing happened with those 

results, two things happened. One is employee morale went down. 

Two, I guess the participation rates in subsequent years went 

down. 

And so if you are doing that, I saw the recommendation is that 

the feedback gets quicker and then everybody started nodding and 

getting quicker. And I see some people in the audience nodding as 

well when I say that now. How do we do that effectively without 

making it a management—well, without making it laborious on 

management where then we are essentially surveying to survey to 

make sure that we are checking the box? And, Max, how do we 

make it quicker? 

Mr. STIER. I think, one, to recognize OPM has made it faster already but there’s more that can be done. An example is the survey 

is held open for 3 months. It doesn’t need to be that way in my 

view in today’s day and age. There’s a lot of technology and methodology that allows it to be done in a shorter time horizon. 

So if you start asking people in the beginning of April, which is 

what’s happening right now, surveys in the field, and you’re not 

done until the end of June, that already means that folks that got 

their opinion asked in April are waiting forever before their information is actually collected. 

I think that, like with a lot of things, this is a place where you 

can legislate and say this is our expectation, that this is the private 

sector benchmark and we expect the government to meet it. And 

if you did that, I think we would wind up with a faster turnaround 

and, as I might add, it should be public as well. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, and as you know, we are going to continue 

to highlight this not for the benefit of this committee but for the 

benefit of the workforce, the 2 million Federal workers that I continue to hear each and every day of both wonderful applause and 

frustration sometimes going hand-in-hand, and that is why we are 

going to do it. 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
53 

So let me close before I recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, 

Mr. Grothman. 

Ms. Bailey, let me come to you, and one is a positive and one is 

a negative. So let me give you the positive first. 

I was able to hear from the Coast Guard here recently, and one 

of the wonderful parts of your group is the Coast Guard and their 

ranking being much higher than some of the others within your 

purview of 22 different agencies. So as we see the Coast Guard, one 

of the things that impressed me was the number of volunteer hours 

that the Coast Guard has put in place right here in the District. 

I mean, the numbers were mind-boggling, and in fact, the gentleman I saw had a sunburn because he had been out volunteering 

on a weekend to actually clean up a park here in D.C. 

And so I want to just publicly say thank you for—if you will pass 

along my thank you and recognition to the thousands of hours, not 

just with the Coast Guard but that was a particular example because it seemed above and beyond in terms of the average, but the 

thousands of volunteer hours that have been put forth from the Department of Homeland Security, so applause there. 

Ms. BAILEY. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS. My concern—and so we will come to the other 

second part of this—is that in March of this year the commissioner 

for CBP actually told agents, and I will quote when it was with regards to President Obama’s Executive order, he says, well, if you 

don’t like it, it is time to ‘‘look for another job.’’ Can you imagine 

in any place where that would be encouraging to employee morale? 

Ms. BAILEY. Sorry about that. I wasn’t sure with the button. 

I do understand with regard to that situation. We have had conversations with Customs and Border Protection, and they’re working with them on ways to engage with the workforce with regard 

to the policies that they carry out and to ensure that everybody 

really kind of in some way sees engagement as a team sport and 

—— 

Mr. MEADOWS. So engagement means engagement at another 

agency? 

Ms. BAILEY. No —— 

Mr. MEADOWS. Because looking for another job that would—and 

here is my concern, and so here I want to make the message clear. 

Secret Service, CBP, you know, when we look at some of those, the 

bottom four in terms of the component, we have to see improvement there. We get more whistleblowers and concerns from people 

out of those particular components under your supervision than 

any others in the entire Federal workforce. And because of that, it 

lets me know that there is a big problem. 

And so do I have your commitment that within the next 120 days 

that you will have a plan on how we are going to address those 

four lowest in terms of improvement? Do I have your commitment 

to do that? 

Ms. BAILEY. Yes, sir, absolutely, because we are actually—we 

have quite a few things underway right now. 

Mr. MEADOWS. All right. Thank you, Ms. Bailey. 

And I will recognize the gentleman from Wisconsin, Mr. 

Grothman for 5 minutes. 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
54 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Sure. I want to talk to Ms. Rose a little bit. You 

are kind of one of the stars of the day because your satisfaction 

scores are some of the biggest increases out here. Could you just 

give us a general background on some of the initiatives that you 

may have started in the last few years that are reasons for the big 

increase in your scores? 

Ms. ROSE. Yes, I would be delighted to. The listening sessions 

which started the whole thing were extremely —— 

Mr. GROTHMAN. See, that is the nicest question asked by any of 

them, so —— 

Ms. ROSE. Which started the whole thing, and it goes back to 

what Chairman Meadows discussed with me. We gathered data 

and we looked for things that we could do, things we could do right 

away based on employee feedback and suggestions and things that 

were longer term. Employees told us we think you could do a better 

job training supervisors and managers, preparing people to be leaders at DOL. So we built a curriculum specifically to address that, 

and we call it Leading at Labor. And we just started an Emerging 

Leaders program, which gives people who have aspirations towards 

leadership roles at the Department a chance to start acquiring 

some skills in that direction. 

We did simple things. People said, can we have a microwave in 

the cafeteria? It would be really nice to have someplace to warm 

our food at lunchtime. We put microwaves in the cafeteria. We did 

small things, we did large things, we did long-term things, and 

then we kept telling people what we were doing. You said this, we 

did this. You suggested this, we’re looking at this. So it’s a continual dialogue with our workforce. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Is there anything you did in particular to 

address leadership styles among your folks? 

Ms. ROSE. The leadership training that I mentioned is really focused more on soft skills. Most of our leaders are in the positions 

they’re in because they are very good at the technical aspects of the 

work they do. But we decided to offer a curriculum that really addressed the soft skills, the soft side of leading, how to communicate, how to inspire, how to challenge, how to lead. 

Mr. GROTHMAN. Okay. Now, I see on the screen next to me that 

they are calling votes on the Floor. That is what they pay us the 

big bucks for. Mr. Chairman, you want to take over? 

Mr. MEADOWS. Sure. If the gentleman yields back, the chair will 

recognize Mr. Jordan for a few questions, and then we will —— 

Mr. JORDAN. Thank you, Chairman. 

Mr. Stier, the Partnership for Public Service, so here is what I 

want to know. So we got this survey and we are talking to Federal 

employees and we do it every year and we find out, you know, the 

satisfaction, what they think about their working environment and 

everything else. Is there work that you have done that actually 

looks at it from the taxpayer perspective, from citizens who have 

to interact with these Federal agencies? 

And do you see a correlation between agencies that have dissatisfied employees and the satisfaction or lack of satisfaction taxpayers 

and citizens experience when interacting with that respective agency? 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
55 

Mr. STIER. That’s a terrific question, and the answer is yes, you 

do see that correlation. We don’t have as much research done in 

the public sector as I’d like to see done, but in the private sector, 

there’s a ton of data that show improved employee engagement, 

shows improved performance, increases bottom line —— 

Mr. JORDAN. Which is what we would all expect. 

Mr. STIER. The VA actually has some good data that shows in 

those hospitals where they have higher employee engagement 

rates, you have higher customer service —— 

Mr. JORDAN. Exactly what we would expect. 

Mr. STIER. Yes. It’s what you would expect and it’s there. What’s 

also interesting is, subsequent to our starting the Best Places to 

Work rankings, the Government of Great Britain, Australia, Canada, you’re now seeing this as a global phenomenon where other 

countries are recognizing that a good way to hold leadership accountable is to listen to the employees and to focus on employee engagement. So it —— 

Mr. JORDAN. So the fact that DHS continues to be at the bottom, 

the worst, employee satisfaction is the lowest at that particular 

agency also most likely means that the taxpayers who have to 

interact with them, as Mr. Mulvaney pointed out today, specifically 

taxpayers have to interact with TSA probably also aren’t too satisfied with the kind of service they are getting from that particular 

agency? 

Mr. STIER. I would say it is slightly differently, and I’ll give you 

the reason why. 

Mr. JORDAN. Okay. 

Mr. STIER. I think that there is an opportunity to improve taxpayer results by improving the quality of the leadership experience 

of the employees at DHS. 

Mr. JORDAN. Well, that is good. I mean —— 

Mr. STIER. Yes. 

Mr. JORDAN.—you said it —— 

Mr. STIER. But I say that because I think it’s still the case—I 

mean, that’s one of the reasons why I’m all for the best places to 

work and not the worst places. I still think that the American taxpayer is getting a lot of good service from DHS. 

Mr. JORDAN. Well —— 

Mr. STIER. There’s an opportunity to make it better is my only 

point. 

Mr. JORDAN. Well, I am not saying—you said it in —— 

Mr. STIER. Yes. 

Mr. JORDAN.—the glass-half-full way. That is fine. 

Mr. STIER. That’s the way my mom taught me. 

Mr. JORDAN. No, that is good, and I appreciate that. Some agencies I would use the glass half full, others I wouldn’t. And one I 

wouldn’t is the Internal Revenue Service. 

I notice on the list, Department of Treasury, 16 out of 19 when 

it comes to the big agencies, and more specifically, an agency that 

every single taxpayer has to interact with, some of these—I bet I 

don’t have that many people who have to interact with NASA, 

right, taxpayers, probably just doesn’t. But I know I have got a 

bunch of folks I get the privilege to represent who have to interact 

with the Internal Revenue Service. And they are in the lower third 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
56 

when it comes to employee work satisfaction, and they are going 

down. 

And meanwhile, we have this same agency, when you talk to any 

taxpayer out there, the answer, lack of answers to questions, and 

you talk to some who have been systematically targeted by the Internal Revenue Service, I mean, this to me is an important correlation where IRS is way down the list and then when you talk to taxpayers, oh, my goodness, when they have to deal with that agency, 

their level of dissatisfaction, probably off the charts, too. Do you 

have any specific information or data on that particular one? 

Mr. STIER. Well, first and foremost, you noted, you know, IRS is 

part of Treasury. It’s the biggest part of the Treasury Department. 

Mr. JORDAN. Yes. 

Mr. STIER. It drives the numbers there. You know, one thing I 

would note is we think there’s an opportunity to actually —— 

Mr. JORDAN. And I would say this —— 

Mr. STIER. Yes, please. 

Mr. JORDAN.—just to interrupt, when you look at the numbers of 

the lower four, DHS being the last, but the lower four, two of them 

are going up in satisfaction of employees. IRS is going down even— 

their employee satisfaction with their working environment is 

going down even faster and lower than DHS. So they are moving— 

if this continues, it will be a couple of years where Ms. Bailey won’t 

have to take all the tough questions; it will be Mr. Koskinen from 

the IRS taking it. If he is not already gone, he will be the one having to answer the tough questions. 

Mr. STIER. Well, two quick things, the one is that we think there 

is an opportunity at the Partnership to do something around customer service similar to best places around employee engagement, 

and that would be to create a common customer service index for 

the Federal Government. And that would be a way that you would 

get more of your, you know, better correlations, but frankly, it 

would provide good accountability information for government 

agencies. That’s a conversation that we would welcome to have. So 

that’d be terrific. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I thank the gentleman. Ms. Brooks, let me ask 

you one question because obviously you have got a long ways to go 

but you have made unbelievable improvements. So what one piece 

of advice maybe to Ms. Bailey or others who are watching saying 

what one piece of advice if we were to give them one thing to improve that you have seen make the biggest difference at HUD? 

What would that be? 

Ms. BROOKS. Leadership involvement and looking at the data 

and understanding the data. 

Mr. MEADOWS. So getting leadership to actually look at the data 

and then actually having interaction with the team? 

Ms. BROOKS. Yes. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Because I have experienced that in a personal 

way with Ms. Leo and the team there at NASA. I mean, we were 

teleconferenced all over. And we didn’t have some of the leadership 

in there even though it was a leadership part because they wanted 

to free it up to allow for very candid discussions with a Member 

of Congress. 


AKING-6430 with DISTILLER
57 

But what you are saying is having leadership involved and then 

having it open and transparent where there is no retaliation with 

regards to what the comments that are made? 

Ms. BROOKS. Yes. First and foremost, we wanted to make sure 

that we had full participation from employees, so we got the participation up so we could have the data. And then we had all leadership involved to be able to look at the data and metadata available to everyone. And we broke the data down to—for every organization within HUD and had employees at every level to be able to 

look at the data and broke it down into engagement plans for every 

organization. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well —— 

Ms. BROOKS. And I think that was the biggest gain for our organization was to be able to look at the data, understand it, and act 

on it. 

Mr. MEADOWS. Well, thank you, Ms. Brooks. I want to just say 

thank you so much. Does the ranking member have a comment? 

Mr. CONNOLLY. Well, thank you, Mr. Chairman. 

I just wanted to follow up a little bit on the IRS, Mr. Stier, because, presumably, if your agency were called before Congress on 

real and bogus allegations for dozens of times, if over $1 billion of 

your budget was slashed, if people couldn’t fill vacancies even 

through attrition because of those cutbacks, if your technology was 

getting more and more ancient every day and you have, you know, 

hard drive collapses and all kinds of problems integrating systems 

and so forth, and you couldn’t even meet customer satisfaction 

standards because of inadequate resources, presumably, that might 

have an impact on your morale and your productivity every day 

and your job satisfaction if you worked for that agency. Fair 

enough? 

Mr. MEADOWS. I think a smile says all it needs to say. I thank 

the ranking member. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. I have got to go vote. 

Mr. MEADOWS. I am thanking the ranking member. 

Mr. CONNOLLY. But there can’t just be one point of view about 

IRS around here, and as long as I am here, there won’t be. 

Mr. STIER. And I think it’s important to be focused on the employee engagement because all of us benefit with more engagement 

that way. 

Mr. MEADOWS. And I do want to stress that —— 

Mr. STIER. Thank you. 

Mr. MEADOWS.—I have had the opportunity to meet with IRS 

employees and found them very engaging and willing to look for 

real responses, and so on that, I think it gets back to management 

again. And all of you have said that. 

And so we are going to give you a few additional questions. We 

are going to vote right now, and that way we don’t hold you. So 

we are going to go ahead and finish up this hearing. 

But I want to say thank you. Thank you for not only being here 

today, thank you for your testimony, but thank you to the great 

Federal workers that are out there that are serving the American 

taxpayer each and every day. 

If there is no further business, without objection, the subcommittee stands adjourned. 


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[Whereupon, at 3:20 p.m., the subcommittee was adjourned.] 

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