FEMA Is Losing
Employees at an Alarming Rate Burnout is leading to
attrition as disasters spike, but watchdog also blames agency for poor
workforce management. MAY 8, 2023 The
Federal Emergency Management Agency has shed staff at an alarming rate in the
wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and an increasing number of disasters, with a
watchdog warning in a recent report it has struggled to rebuild its disaster
response workforce. FEMA
is 35% short of its staffing needs according
to its own statistical modeling, the Government Accountability Office said,
leaving it more than 6,000 employees shy of what it requires to confront
modern demands. Agency officials blamed increasing burnout and attrition for
the shortfalls, though GAO cited the agency for a lack of metrics to improve
its hiring processes. “FEMA
currently faces an all-time high in disasters and an unparalleled demand on
its workforce,” GAO said, adding the agency will struggle to overcome that
challenge without better hiring targets and clearer ways to measure success.
The auditors noted the shortages were exacerbated by “the year-round pace
caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and increasing number of disasters.” FEMA’s
disaster response workforce has dipped by more than 20% since 2020. Its cadre
of public assistance staff went from 100% capacity before the pandemic to
just 55% in the years that followed the outbreak, in part due to attrition
and in part because the need grew by 130%. FEMA
is looking to grow its workforce by the equivalent of nearly 1,500 full-time
employees in fiscal 2024—a figure that includes both its regular, permanent
staff and its corps of reservists. Combined with the 1,200 it hopes to add in
the current fiscal year, FEMA is aiming for a 20% surge in its staffing
levels from the end of September. The
agency reports its “time to hire” to the Homeland Security Department
every month, though it does not have a consistent method for doing so. It
uses differing starting points and occasionally leaves out entire swaths of
new employees. The inconsistency leaves the agency unable to “identify pain
points or bottlenecking in the hiring process, and adjust as needed,” GAO
said. FEMA
agreed to improve its time-to-hire data, which GAO said could “improve
FEMA management’s ability to oversee and make decisions on the workforce
planning and the implementation of preparedness actions vis-à-vis future
potential emergencies overall.” The
agency has instituted various hiring programs, created bulk hiring events and
boosted its use of contractors to fill staffing gaps, GAO said, but it has
failed to monitor any of those efforts to measure their effectiveness. FEMA
has set overall staffing goals for its disaster response workforce, but not
for each of the 23 specific groups contained therein. The agency agreed to
better evaluate its hiring efforts and to improve its performance
metrics. “By
developing and documenting plans and performance measures to meet staffing
targets, FEMA could better ensure it has the capacity to respond to current
and emergent threats,” GAO said. Reps.
Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., and Troy Carter, D-La., two of
the top Democrats on the House Homeland Security Committee who
requested GAO's analysis, said Congress must assist FEMA in building its
capacity. "When
disasters strike our communities, we know FEMA needs a properly staffed
disaster workforce to do its job effectively and efficiently," the
lawmakers said. "While recent events, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, are
partly to blame for staffing shortages, it is clear from this report there is
much more that FEMA can do to expand its workforce and properly track
progress." As
FEMA looks to boost its workforce to carry out its new and added
responsibilities, it will have a tool that will make its work more attractive
to prospective applicants. President Biden last year signed into law the Civilian
Reservist Emergency Workforce (CREW) Act to help it address
critical staffing shortages and a recent wave of departures. The law ensures that FEMA reservists, who are only
paid by the agency while deployed to a disaster, receive job protections even
if they are unable to give notice before deploying to a disaster response.
They previously lacked those protections, which lawmakers, agency
leadership and the reservists themselves said were decimating recruiting
and retention efforts. In the 1960s, the United States declared an average of 18 major disasters per year. FEMA responded to 104 such disasters in 2020 and 58 in 2021. FEMA’s cadre of reservists have been stretched thin in recent years, as they deployed to not just hurricane and wildfire response but also pandemic, border and Afghan evacuee obligations. Agency employees previously sounded the alarm on their lack of down time between deployments, despite efforts in recent years to bring employees home from pandemic-related assignments to allow them to rest before hurricane season. |
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Black Emergency Managers
Association International
Washington, D.C.
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