Employee morale and satisfaction is improving at the US Federal Trade Commission under Chair Lina Khan, according to the latest results from an annual workplace survey.
The agency’s workers are more confident in the agency’s leaders and more positive about the direction of the FTC compared to 2022, according to the results. The increases come after Khan faced heat over the FTC’s historically low rankings in last year’s survey, which is administered by the Office of Personnel Management, the government agency that manages the federal workforce.
This year, 54% of employees said they have a “high level” of respect for the FTC’s leaders, a 9% jump since 2022. And 58% said they believe the FTC’s senior leaders maintain “high standards of honesty and integrity,” which also represents a 9% increase since last year. Overall, employees reported an 8% increase to 60% regarding positive feelings toward leadership. The overall numbers on attitudes toward leadership still lag their 2020 levels, which hovered above 80%.
In 2023, agency reported an 86% score in “employee experience,” a new category that tracks the extent to which employees are engaged by their work and their organization. The FTC scored higher than medium-sized agencies on the whole, which reported an average score of 78%.
“Our overall satisfaction numbers are up nearly 7%,” said FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar. “So we know we have more to do, but this result shows that we’re making important progress across the board.”
Since becoming chair, Khan has fended off extensive attacks from Republicans who claim she has brought a “radical” agenda to the previously sleepy agency. She has made a name for herself as one of the Biden administration’s most aggressive government trust-busters, cracking down on illegal behavior in industries from private equity to technology to healthcare.
In a highly public move, Christine Wilson, then the sole Republican on the FTC, earlier this year announced she was resigning from the agency, citing Khan and her senior staff’s approach to leadership.
There has been significant churn in the FTC’s workforce since 2021. The FTC’s senior attorneys have been leaving at a pace not seen in at least two decades, with seventy-one senior attorneys leaving between 2021 and 2022, according to Bloomberg Law. A number of the agency’s veteran senior leaders have also left. Meanwhile, the agency has hired more than 150 staff in the last 12 months, according to Farrar.
Overall, FTC staff are more confident in their performance than the average government worker. The agency scored 96% in performance confidence, compared to 84% across the government.
Farrar said the survey results show staff at the agency are “buying into Chair Khan’s vision and feeling empowered to do the important work of the agency.” Since last year, Khan has worked to improve morale by meeting with each office in the agency and hearing directly from FTC staff about what’s important to them.
