Pay-for-performance harder than it looks, managers say
For years, federal managers have taken flack for poor leadership and people skills. But now, with laws granting broad new powers to managers at the Homeland Security and the Defense departments, Congress and the Bush administration have put their faith back in bosses. Managers are getting real control over hiring, disciplining and firing employees.
At the core of the changes is pay for performance -- the belief that federal employees, like their private sector counterparts, should be rewarded, or not, based on how well they do their jobs. And the link between salaries and performance is the manager's evaluation of how well each employee is doing.
On its face, pay for performance could not seem more logical, and, to be sure, there are strong arguments in its favor. But in the February issue of Government Executive, Shawn Zeller reports that federal managers who are already using performance-based systems and private sector human resources managers readily agree that it's not easy.
COMMENTS
- Today I read the front-page article in the Feb 2004 "Issues of Merit" newsletter published by the Merit Systems Protection Board-- Performance Evaluation: Time To Roll Up Your Sleeves. I can restrain myself no longer. The author of the article is right on the mark: this will put great pressure on supervisors to do appraisal well. The article in Issues of Merit goes on to describe what it means to be doing appraisal well: communicating goals, understanding the work, communicating, tracking goals and performance, communicating, diagnosing shortfalls in performance, communicating, candid evaluation, communicating ... you get the idea. The author further describes the task before us as "taking performance evaluation off autopilot ..." since the current general schedule system allowed supervisors to devote very little time to evaluation. I'll take that one step further ... not only have we been able to devote little time to evaluation, we have been forced to devote almost no time to supervision and leadership at all. As we cut the middle in the last two decades (mostly grown back now, but filled with technical specialists ... the expected employee:supervisor ratio is still amazingly high) we filled up the middles with real work. We took time that could be spent supervising, called it overhead, cut the overhead, and were able to have fewer people doing more work. I'm a GS-15 ... I supervise about 40 folks, about 8 directly. To do supervision and leadership well would probably take about 30-50 percent of my time (based on real research done in the '80s regarding the tasks of supervising). Do we have any idea what it takes to supervise well today? In terms of time and effort? Not that I can find. But I have more work for which I am personally responsible than I've ever had. From my calendar, I can only assume that supervision must be something you do during lunch or on weekends. My point is we have not recognized that to LEAD takes time and effort, and we have taken all that away by filling the time with other tasks. If, as DHS certainly expects, I am to make meaningful performance distinctions and provide developmental feedback, someone needs to invent a 9-day week. Or tell me what to stop doing. Or (for OPM) adjust workload and staffing calculations to account for the work expected of us. Stephen Wehrenberg Posted February 25, 2004 11:12 AM
- Pay for peformance begins at the top. The federal government is NOT private industry. Institutional knowledge, longevity, and leadership is what is missing at most federal agencies. Instead of deserving leaders, political appointees, Ivy League graduates, and ex-military personnel burrow into Federal agencies and bring with them their "new" management philosophies, and are compelled to "reinvent" everything, even programs that run well. Even with the strong business case for diversity, the same type of appointments are always made. Their sole purpose is to add to their resumes and to move on to another opportunity before they can be held accountable, leaving the remaining federal managers/employees to repair the damage their poor decisions have caused (decoupling of performance and awards, and the infamous pass-fail system). What was their result? More money for the executive merit pay pool, and minimal crumbs for favored employees. You can never have fairness in such a system. Another NOAA employee GovExec.com reader Posted February 24, 2004 3:45 PM
- Very easy for managers to abuse the system and give preferential treatment to their "favorites"; the only thing they have to do is shift workloads, giving the meaningful work to "their people" and leaving others with minimum to account for as substancial work at the end of the year. Very easy to set up some people to succeed and others to fail! GovExec.com reader Posted February 23, 2004 2:34 PM
