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.

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.

“CREA’s 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,” said Thaul.

“Let’s explore the reasons for what we’re hearing. Let’s find solutions, and I think they exist.”

Communication problems have involved both issues that employees have with management, whom Thaul said aren’t always uniform in interpreting flexibilities granted by Congress, as well as the merit process that determines promotions.

“CRS 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,” said Thaul.

“There may be no problem at all but, without our knowing that, suspicions abound.”

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.

“I 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’s always going to be room for improvement, though,” said Mazanec.

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.

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.

“Some of that is normal, it’s 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’s not. What’s really concerning now is new people coming in are picking up on the tensions, even if they’re not affected by it and are looking for other jobs,” said Thaul.

“What 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.”

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.

“I am certainly willing to open a discussion about how we can communicate better. It seems like there’s a communication issue raised by a number of concerns that Dr. Thaul raised,” said Mazanec.

About Jessie Bur

Jessie Bur covers federal IT and management.

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