Feds in marine program compensated better than nonfederal counterparts
Differences in salary, annual leave and other benefits cause divisions within Commerce program’s multisector workforce.
Federal employees at the National Marine Sanctuary Program come out on top in terms of compensation, at least according to their nonfederal counterparts.
The Commerce Department's marine conservation group truly represents a multisector workforce: federal employees, contractors, state government employees, grant-funded employees, interns and volunteers.
"Benefits for nonfederal personnel rarely, if ever, matched those enjoyed by career federal staff," said Margo Jackson, senior policy adviser for the program. She said those disparities have caused rifts among employees.
Jackson discussed her agency's efforts to unify its workforce Thursday at a forum hosted by the National Academy of Public Administration, a congressionally chartered think tank.
She said sanctuary program employees are equals, even if they are not paid that way.
"If you walked into any of our offices, I would challenge you to say who's a contractor and who's not," Jackson said.
More than 64 percent of the workers there are nonfederal employees.
Of the 344 employees in the group, there are 122 full-time federal employees, 144 contractors, 49 state employees, nine grant-funded employees, and 10 officers in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Corps. The remainder work under a handful of other employment arrangements.
In addition, 3,500 volunteers play a vital role in the program's mission of protecting sanctuaries from the Florida Keys to the Olympic Coast, Jackson said.
The sanctuary program recently hired consulting firm Kelly, Anderson & Associates to assess its workforce and make suggestions on better blending the workforce.
After holding focus group sessions and conducting a survey, program officials discovered that employees were not integrating fully in large part because of their different levels of pay.
For example, salaries of federal employees were higher than their counterparts'. Staffers lamented the cash awards that federal employees could receive and identified leave as a sensitive discrepancy. For one, some employees are given time off on snow days and others are not, Jackson said.
The agency also pays to print business cards for its federal employees, but not for contractors. Federal employees could use government credit cards and government list serves while their counterparts could not.
"Things that seem little, but make a big difference," Jackson said.
Workers also indicated that they were desirous of the civil servants' telework opportunities, flexible scheduling options, training opportunities and job security.
In the future, the marine sanctuary program will require contractors to find solutions to compensation discrepancies. Program officials also are developing a staffing plan to provide greater job security and clarity of the agency's resources for nonfederal employees.
"To better manage our natural resources, we must better manage our human resources," Jackson said.
The forum is the latest part of the academy's project to identify problems and solutions in an increasingly multisector workforce in government.