More recently, leadership, as evaluated by the workforce, has been an issue of concern throughout the federal workforce, but particularly in the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) (Office of Personnel Management (OPM), 2012a). In evaluating the 2012 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), the Partnership for Public Services noted that although for several years federal employees had not provided high remarks for their leaders, scores on leadership dropped remarkably for the first time since 2003 (2013). Effective leadership ranked 9th out of the 10 workplace categories measured for six of the 19 largest federal agencies (including DHS) (Partnership for Public Service, 2013). Agencies which rated high included the National Aeronautical
…show more content…
One repeated statement was that the quality of leadership grossly varied (Committee on the Department of Homeland Security Workforce Resilience (CDHSWR, 2013). At many sites, employees felt their supervisors were managers as opposed to leaders. Moreover, that supervisors do not know them, do not care about their strengths, and lack the expertise and skills to be in their supervisory roles (CDHSWR, 2013). Additionally, employees reported a great disconnect between the department and component headquarters leadership in Washington, DC, and the workforce on the ground (CDHSWR, 2013). As such, employee expressed little faith in higher-level leaders who lack the knowledge of what is transpiring in the field (CDHSWR, …show more content…
As such, additional measures have been implemented, beginning with goal one of the DHS workforce strategy, which states, “build an effective, mission-focused, diverse and inspiring cadre of leaders” (Department of Homeland Security, 2011). Former Deputy Secretary Lute also directed the creation of the Leadership Development Program to provide “a standardized framework and a shared set of expectation about competency development for leaders that appropriate across the entire department” (Institute of Medicine, 2012). The framework was to guide the 841 training programs that DHS was participating in or sponsoring (Savkar, 2013), as well as to strengthen the DHS leadership bench, and build leadership competencies at all levels of the DHS workforce through a continuum of leader development opportunities across the Department (Emerson, 2012). Additionally, it was built around 44 competences in 5 content categories (core foundation, building engagement, management skills, solutions capabilities, and homeland security) to focus on developing leaders at all levels within the Department (Emerson,
One repeated statement was that the quality of leadership grossly varied (Committee on the Department of Homeland Security Workforce Resilience (CDHSWR, 2013). At many sites, employees felt their supervisors were managers as opposed to leaders. Moreover, that supervisors do not know them, do not care about their strengths, and lack the expertise and skills to be in their supervisory roles (CDHSWR, 2013). Additionally, employees reported a great disconnect between the department and component headquarters leadership in Washington, DC, and the workforce on the ground (CDHSWR, 2013). As such, employee expressed little faith in higher-level leaders who lack the knowledge of what is transpiring in the field (CDHSWR, …show more content…
As such, additional measures have been implemented, beginning with goal one of the DHS workforce strategy, which states, “build an effective, mission-focused, diverse and inspiring cadre of leaders” (Department of Homeland Security, 2011). Former Deputy Secretary Lute also directed the creation of the Leadership Development Program to provide “a standardized framework and a shared set of expectation about competency development for leaders that appropriate across the entire department” (Institute of Medicine, 2012). The framework was to guide the 841 training programs that DHS was participating in or sponsoring (Savkar, 2013), as well as to strengthen the DHS leadership bench, and build leadership competencies at all levels of the DHS workforce through a continuum of leader development opportunities across the Department (Emerson, 2012). Additionally, it was built around 44 competences in 5 content categories (core foundation, building engagement, management skills, solutions capabilities, and homeland security) to focus on developing leaders at all levels within the Department (Emerson,