For Immediate Release
DHS Press Office
Contact: 202-282-8010
I have seen the Best Places to Work survey results. I will repeat what I said in September upon the release of the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS) results: I’m disappointed. We know improving employee satisfaction takes time, and we will not give up. We have an aggressive plan to do this.
Like the FEVS results, this year’s Best Places to Work survey results do reflect improvement in a number of places across DHS. I’m pleased that the most significant improvements occurred in the Office of the Secretary and at other places in DHS headquarters. Improvements were also reflected at the U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, the Transportation Security Administration, the Federal Law Enforcement Training Centers, and our Science & Technology and National Protection and Programs Directorates.
In September, I noted that 85 percent of the DHS workforce surveyed recognized the work they do is important, and that 93 percent are willing to put in the extra effort to get the job done. Now, as much as ever, it is important for both the public and our own DHS workforce to recognize the vital work they do to protect the homeland.
For example:
- This month and last, our counterterrorism and intelligence officials have been working overtime to assess and respond to the terrorist attacks in Paris, San Bernardino and the crash of Metrojet 9268.
- Over the Thanksgiving holiday, TSA officers screened and secured travel for an estimated 2.6 million people.
- In October, ICE agents dismantled a nation-wide human smuggling operation that led to the arrest of 29 individuals and rescued 15 human trafficking victims.
- In July, U.S. Secret Service agents along with the FBI took down a group that was responsible for the largest theft of consumer data from U.S. financial institutions in our nation’s history.
- In September, the U.S. Secret Service and other components of DHS successfully protected 170 world leaders at the 70th Anniversary of the United Nations General Assembly in New York, including the Pope.
- On a four-month mission from April to August off the coast of South and Central America, the men and women of the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter STRATTON seized over $1 billion in cocaine.
Then there are the constant acts of heroism by our people that almost no one hears about. Just last Friday, several of our Border Patrol agents pulled two individuals from a burning car in Ehrenberg, Arizona.
Surveys such as these do have a self-fulfilling aspect to them. Continue to tell workers they are unhappy, and they believe you. This makes our efforts to turn employee satisfaction around more protracted and difficult. But, we continue to work at this, and we continue our important mission to protect the homeland in these challenging times. We do so with the knowledge that we have an incredibly dedicated, patriotic DHS workforce that makes this happen every day.
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