‘Dissatisfaction persists’ | Favoritism, understaffing, & mandatory overtime behind TSA's ongoing disengagement, says GAO

The Government Accountability Office has criticized HR practices at the Transportation Security Administration, highlighting favoritism, understaffing and poor performance management as reasons for ongoing employee disengagement.

The 75-page report, released on February 28, finds that whilst employee engagement did improve by four percentage points from 2022 to 2023, thanks in part to a new personnel system that allowed an agency-wide 30% pay increase in July 2023, TSA continues to have among the poorest disengagement scores across the federal government.

TSA, which employs almost 50,000 transport security officers (TSOs), has previously identified “commit to our people” as one of its top three priorities central to its security mission, emphasizing the need to improve engagement amongst its workforce.

In 2022, it ranked 427 out of 432 federal government subcomponent agencies in the Partnership for Public Service’s “Best Places to Work.” It measures employee engagement with its Employee Engagement Index, which uses 15 questions to measure the conditions conducive to engagement.