TSA Highlights Employee Retention Progress
News & Happenings
July 18, 2007
In response to a Government Accountability Office report that highlights its turnover rate, the Transportation Security Administration says it has made progress stanching the flow of exiting employees, thanks to a shift in thinking about security positions.
The GAO report, released July 16, says the Department of Homeland Security has an attrition rate for non-senior employees that is higher than most Cabinet-level agencies: 8.4 percent, compared with an average of about 4 percent. But it notes that when TSA's Transportation Security Officers (TSOs) are removed from the equations, DHS' attrition rate drops to 3.3 percent (See related story, CQ Homeland Security, July 16, 2007).
TSOs, which make up just over one-third of DHS staff, had an attrition rate of 17.6 percent in 2005 and 14.6 percent in 2006, according to the report. TSA says that decrease is evidence of an attrition rate that continues to fall. The administration said its turnover rate is 16.5 percent, higher than 2006, but still a 13.6 percent reduction since 2005.
"Our attrition rate is falling so fast it's diving," TSA spokesman Christopher White said Tuesday. "We're beating the entire transportation sector, and we're significantly beating the private sector," he added later, citing a total attrition rate of about 26 percent for TSO-level jobs in the private sector. Over the same period, part-time TSO attrition declined 36.6 percent and is now at 38.7 percent, according to TSA numbers.
TSA employs 43,000 TSOs who handle nearly 2 million bags at 430 airports nationwide. White said the agency has a difficult task in creating a retention strategy for TSOs, long seen as a low-level, dead-end job.
TSA said that before Sept. 11, 2001, the Federal Aviation Administration reported that baggage screener turnover reached 140 percent in 1998, and at times rose as high as 400 percent.
One of the steps TSA took to keep TSOs on staff longer was to change the job title from transportation security screener to transportation security officer. Along with the nomenclature change came new opportunities for advancement, White said. While screeners had been in a closed-off system, they are now in the federal government employment chain and can go as far as the senior executive level. White said one TSA federal security director began her career as a TSO. He also said TSA created a new pay band for TSOs, which gives them access to higher potential wages than the previous one, which was capped.
"They've gone from screener with a checklist mentality to professional officer with discretion," White said. "They feel empowered, they feel they have the tools they need to do the job, and they're staying."
