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Return to Article: New Pentagon personnel system mirrors DHS plan

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  The only people who will benefit from this new system are the supervisors who do not want to manage fair and effectively, and their pets. Also, employees who have fair supervisors will benefit from this new system. The morale is already low in our office because of the daily micromanaging, gossip, talking negatively to employees about their coworkers, borderline racial comments, etc. Upper management has turned their heads the other way because they don't want to deal with the problems. That is pretty sad. Why would anyone assume that all management is fair and impartial? They are putting a blank check in the hands of incompetent supervisors who will continue to do more damage to the morale and productivity of the workplace.

  GovExec.com reader Posted May 31, 2006 4:41 PM
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  I fully agree with VA Contracting Officer. It does not take a genius or a career employee to figure out who will be rewarded. When contract employees are hired as a Federal worker and comes in at a higher grade and are promoted yearly, what does this tell you? It is those individuals and the so-called manager's pet that will benefit from this new system.

  This does not help career employess and the nerve to say that this, as well as outsourcing has the moral up, is outrageous.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 28, 2005 9:09 AM
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  Worker Bee in KC hit the nail on the head. I have been verbally and physically threatend by a PET. I finally got out of that office. I work for DFAS and they cut out annual performance awards years ago. We are just doing our job, so upper mangement says. Only one person in a section can get an outstanding appraisal. I quit working at 110 percent years ago. Pay for performance will be worse. I am seriously considering taking an early retirement, taking a 14% cut for age. Don't forget, this administration wants to change retirement based on high 3 to 5 years. We are just sacrificial lambs.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 26, 2005 6:43 PM
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  While the 30 day comment period runs, many federal employees still do not believe NSPS is a reality. Many think Congress still has to approve the final regulations, and many, many more will move into pay for performance that their good work will be appreciated and rewarded.

  As someone who has sat in the meetings between DOD, OPM, and the unions, let me say in all honestly, DOD and OPM did not focus on the clear majority of the federal employees who are the world's best workers. They focused on the minority of those who have difficulty performing work in an agency such as DOD, and the complaints of the handful of managers and supervisors who dislike life in general if not allowed to get their way.

  740,000 federal employees should comment on the proposed regulations that LACK SUBSTANCE AND DETAIL. Those nails will hit the coffin later.

  Mark Gibson Posted February 19, 2005 7:04 PM
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  Dear Worker Bee,

  Hang in there. I've been a federal employee for over a decade and a half and dealing with employee relations for over a decade for both union and management.

  The speed of this DHS and DoD reforms is truly breathtaking but so will be the fall when the systems fail.

  There is a reason that government reform takes decades under merit principles and these failsafes have been ignored in this rush to reform. I do hope Congress isolates the reforms to DHS and DoD so that these agencies can come back later to get our help to reconstruct their old systems after systems failure occurs.

  But HR assistant- you keep your chin up because everything is a pendulum and if you pull the ball back to far as this administration has over the past four years, you will enjoy the ball swing in the opposite direction once it is finally released.

  Best of luck on your HR career from a more senior or should I say senile and crazy peer. You have to be crazy to last a decade and a half plus in federal service.

  HR Specialist

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 14, 2005 12:45 PM
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  So Bush, Rummy and Cheney will finally get their wish. Not only are they breaking the USA, now they can break the government workforce as well. Do you honestly think this is going to be a fair system? It's not fair now in my work area. If you are the supervisor's PET you can yell at the other employees, call them names, threaten them and nothing will be done to you. You don't even have to do any work and you get an outstanding evaluation. If you are a hard worker, don't bother anyone and go above and beyond the call of duty, you get nothing. So why would anyone like this new system????

  WORKER BEE KC

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 14, 2005 8:22 AM
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  Pay for performance assumes a competent management structure and qualified personnel in management positions. At DoD we have little of either. Management is more concerned about being politically correct than in doing the right thing!

  Management cannot even define the job we have and has no concept of what performance should be! For example, I was told (several years ago) to work on audits. I did, and did an outstanding job by everyone's measure. However, at evaluation time my manager told me he could not rate the work on audits because it was not in my job description. Needless to say I never worked on audits again!

  Currently I am working on things that are not in my job description and still get evaluated on them. However, the managers will not rewrite the position description or try to increase the grade for the job. The stuff that actually is in my job description they have assigned to another person that is a grade higher than me. Seems there is a real management problem and pay for performance will only make the situation worse! I have been at the same step and same grade for 12 years although the work has increased to levels beyond the grade I hold. The problem is the management wants to maintain a set number of grade level empoyees and will not increase those at lower grades. I am not moving but will retire soon becauwse the management is bad and getting worse.

  taxpayer Posted February 14, 2005 7:08 AM
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  My question (and maybe it's a dumb one) is, how will they know? Over here in the private sector, most people just don't know exactly what their coworkers make, much less how big a raise they receive in any given year. The only way to know is to ask, and that's considered bad form. Of course, many companies have salary schedules that match positions, so you can get a general idea of what people make. But I've never worked in a place where people openly talk about what their raise was. I realize the government culture is very different, and people often openly identify their grade and step levels.

  I have worked both private and government sector and people do talk about the amount they get in a raise. In fact, the high paid executives of private companies must publish their compensation in the files with the SEC! At any rate, if you depend upon a system where people do not know what is happening you have a bad system!

  taxpayer Posted February 14, 2005 6:47 AM
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  We career feds are screwed! I pray that I can finish my career before these changes arrive at the VA. We always had a pay-for performance system, because unacceptable performers were not eligible to receive step increases. COLA's received in January were just that and by definition should not be tied to performance. Managers and supervisors already play favorites, and will now be fully empowered to do so. DoD is notorious for the revolving door, and now it will be even easier for private sector cronies to get in the Federal service. To make it even worse, union protections under NSPS are eroded so that victims of this new systems won't even have the same appeal rights they have now. A disaster is in the making. The Federal service will be much less attractive and less able to compete with the private sector. Why put up with the expensive medical insurance, lack of dental and disability coverage, and other disadvantages of being a career Fed if pay becomes a crapshoot also? I will never consider working for the DoD!

  VA Contracting Officer Posted February 11, 2005 6:10 PM
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  Ten years ago, when we first heard about pay-for-perofrmance we were pretty excited. We could see the "slackers" getting the same financial considerations as high-producers. But now, with insufficient personnel funds (civilian personnel at our garrison were only funded through May this FY, and HHQ just told us there would not be additional money forthcoming), we are very concerned there will be no, or insignificant raises even for stellar performers. We'd like to see the "scorecard" metrics Army will use to measure/ensure a fair pay system for their best performers.

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 11, 2005 9:28 AM
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  I am really looking forward to reading the NSPS on Monday.

  For me personally, the most interesting aspect of these changes are that "MSPB will have to find that Defense managers erred by a preponderance of the evidence to overturn a disciplinary action." This is really interesting because the current law is that the agency has to show by a preponderance of evidence that the adverse action it took was justified. Now it would appear that the employee must show by the same preponderance standard that the adverse action the agency took was unjustified. Good luck to those employees who attempt to prove this negative.

  And that performance-based actions will be based on a similar standard. My guess is that DoD will also be doing away with pepformance improvement periods.

  My experienced advice to the 750,000 civilian employees at DoD is to seriously think about transferring your KSAs to a civilian, non- security related agency. I don't foresee success in stopping either the DHS system or the new NSPS that is described in this article. Hopefully, the other half of the government won't be adopting these new systems before I can retire. These new systems will certainly not improve employee relations in the federal sector. It is always a balence between management and employee rights and responsibilities-- the system just described is certaily not a balenced approach.

  HR Specialist

  GovExec.com reader Posted February 11, 2005 8:38 AM