FOR RELEASE
Contact: Janie Sheng (202) 245-0221
05/21/2009 (Thursday)
No. 09-19


FedRelay 1 (800) 877-8339
www.stb.gov



SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD RANKED 1st IN "BEST PLACES TO WORK" AMONG SMALL FEDERAL AGENCIES


The Surface Transportation Board was ranked #1 among small federal agencies by the Partnership for Public Service (PPS) in the 2009 Best Places to Work in the Federal Government rankings released on May 20, 2009 in Washington, D.C.


Of the federal agencies considered "small" by the PPS (those independent agencies with at least 100, but fewer than 2,000 full-time, permanent employees), the Board was ranked #1 according to an overall index score measuring the performance of agencies and agency subcomponents related to employee satisfaction and commitment. Among the small agencies, the Board achieved a top index score of 80.4 (in comparison, the average of the small-agency index scores was 65.1).


The "Best Places to Work" rankings, compiled by the PPS and The American University's Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation (AU), offers a comprehensive assessment of federal employee satisfaction. To develop the 2009 rankings, PPS and AU evaluated federal employee satisfaction among 278 federal agencies and subcomponents representing more than 212,000 federal civil servants. Agencies were ranked in ten workplace categories, including employee skills-mission match, strategic management, teamwork, effective leadership, performance-based rewards and advancement, training and development, support for diversity, family-friendly culture, pay and benefits, and work-life balance. The 2009 rankings were based on a U.S. Office of Personnel Management Federal Human Capital Survey, undertaken in August-September 2008 and issued in January 2009.


The Board is an economic regulatory and adjudicatory agency charged by Congress with, among other things, resolving railroad rate and service disputes and reviewing proposed railroad restructuring transactions. The agency is decisionally independent, although it is administratively affiliated with the U.S. Department of Transportation. To learn about career opportunities at the Board in the future, visit our Web site, at http://www.stb.dot.gov, or USAJOBSŪ, at http://www.usajobs.com/ . The full PPS "Best Places to Work in the Federal Government" report can be viewed at http://data.bestplacestowork.org/index.php/bptw/index .


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