Employees at the Congressional Research Service are finding it difficult to communicate their concerns and problems to management at the agency in spite of recent improvement efforts, according to a CRS union representative who spoke at a June 20 hearing before the House Committee on Administration.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Susan Thaul, president of the Congressional Research Employees Association, said that agency leadership has made an effort to listen to concerns brought by her organization, but that CREA is not as involved in coming up with solutions to the reported problems.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCREA\u2019s role, though, is not only to be heard. It is sometimes to convince management that there is a problem, that there is a solution and that we can help,\u201d said Thaul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLet\u2019s explore the reasons for what we\u2019re hearing. Let\u2019s find solutions, and I think they exist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Communication problems have involved both issues that employees have with management, whom Thaul said aren\u2019t always uniform in interpreting flexibilities granted by Congress, as well as the merit process that determines promotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cCRS has, what we can tell, no clearly stated policy or standards for promotion, and it desperately needs one. CREA has handled performance appraisal cases where there is clearly a disconnect between supervisors and employees about what their expectations are,\u201d said Thaul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThere may be no problem at all but, without our knowing that, suspicions abound.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, Mary Mazanec, director of the CRS, said that the agency leadership has worked hard to hold staff meetings and bring employees in to share their thoughts on agency strategies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI have an open-door policy, if someone wants to come in directly with me to sit down with me and pitch an idea or to pitch a concern. And, so, I think we do this on a regular basis. There\u2019s always going to be room for improvement, though,\u201d said Mazanec.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The communication situation is especially difficult at the American Law Division of CRS, which Thaul said has generated multiple reports of toxic work environments and a fear of speaking out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Employees tend to leave ALD more frequently than any other division of the service: the attrition rate for the whole agency sits at about 7.5 percent of the workforce leaving per year; at ALD, that rate is over 19 percent. Meanwhile less than half of employees in that department have been with the agency for four or more years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSome of that is normal, it\u2019s people retire. Some of it is people who may be retirement age who are fed up or who are feeling unappreciated and they leave, so that looks like a normal retirement, when we feel that it\u2019s not. What\u2019s really concerning now is new people coming in are picking up on the tensions, even if they\u2019re not affected by it and are looking for other jobs,\u201d said Thaul.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhat people have reported to me is that there are real problems in the management and next-level supervisors in that division. From the outside it looks like Dr. Mazanec is not engaging with that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Mazanec said that she meets regularly with ALD supervisory staff to discuss improvement plans at the department, but pinning down the root cause has been a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI am certainly willing to open a discussion about how we can communicate better. It seems like there\u2019s a communication issue raised by a number of concerns that Dr. Thaul raised,\u201d said Mazanec.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Union representation testified that employees at the Congressional Research Service were feeling a disconnect between themselves and their managers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":16884,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":15,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":[]},"categories":[104,106,31,15,33],"tags":[],"coauthors":[2853],"class_list":["post-24697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-acquisition-update","category-daily-brief","category-home","category-management","category-newsletters"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"YHWGQEAINJB7HDTJITOSCJDXRQ","arc_canonical_url":"\/management\/2019\/06\/21\/congresss-research-workforce-is-feeling-a-communication-strain\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n