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Return to Article: NEWS+ANALYSIS Pay Potential

• 49166
  

  I don't want to rehash all that has been said to this point so I'll just point out a major issue that everyone seems to be skipping. Under NSPS an employee doesn't get 100% of their locality pay. Seeing the Government doesn't have enough money to fund NSPS in order to make it run properly they decided to rob the locality pay pool and include a portion of the monies to the performance pay pool. Locality pay was invented to help offset the cost of living associated with living in different areas of the United States. Locality pay is a given that every DoD employee should receive 100% of what Congress has allocated for their given area of residence.

  John Lingrel Posted April 22, 2008 12:52 PM
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  Lets be honest, most of the government is broke, and I don't mean financially. Once management has NSPS implemented it'll be a down hill slide for a significant amount of those workers who actually do the work. Anyone who thinks that management will not pad their pockets first is living in a dream land. The opportunity of actually breaking even with NSPS is slim to none. Face the facts GS-ers the outlook is bleak.

  Tony Hoeppner Posted April 22, 2008 11:53 AM
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  Liars, damn liers and statistics. If NSPS and the GS system are recieving the same funding per person for pay raises than the average pay raise is the same. The difference is that under the GS system employees recieve a periodic step increse every 1,2 or 3 years, rather than an annual performance increase. The funding for NSPS includes the money allocated for step increases as well as the annual pay raise, so if the step increases in the GS system are included the average raise for GS employees is the same as NSPS, it is just distributed differently. As an NSPS employee I was rated in the upper half of 3 (valued employee) and recieved 2 shares of the pay pool. This resulted in a pay increase of the annual increase + .9%. As a step 4 under the GS system I woluld have recieved the annual increase + 3% every 2 years. As a "valued employee" and team player I will lose .6% compounded per year compared to the GS system. Very motovating.

  Gary March-Force Posted April 22, 2008 10:44 AM
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  I think the key point of the article is that average employees must receive lower raises in order to award higher raises to higher performing employees. The annual increases to government pay is an adjustment to keep government salaries competitive with the private sector. There is no increase in funding for improved performance of the government. Therefore, as the article states, average employees will have to receive an increase that is less than the amount necessary to keep their salary competitive. The people who thought that pay-for-performance would be a good idea seemed to forget that government is a non-profit organization. The pot of salary funds is fixed by congress. It doesn't increase because employees work more efficiently. So how did DoD fund more a pay increase that is more than double the Governmentwide Pay Increase?

  Timothy Tuttle Posted April 7, 2008 9:38 AM
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  I read with interest the article on Pay Potential but was disappointed with the lack of basic understanding about NSPS exhibited particularly in the last several paragraphs both on the part of the writer and the employee who was quoted. One of the best aspects of NSPS, in my view, is that employees may advance through their careers, and receive commensurate increases in pay, through reassignments rather than promotions. Ms. Ballenstadt asserts that employees might only be promoted twice in their careers, which might be true, since a promotion under NSPS is generally from one pay band to another. However, she fails to point out, for example, that one pay band encompasses the range of pay represented by former GS grades 9-13, and that an employee may progress through that band as their duties and responsibilities appropriately increase through reassignment to new duties. As an employee, my opportunity to grow and develop is actually greater under NSPS than it was under the GS system--since the old time-in-grade constraints do not apply. I felt that the article was misleading with respect to advancement under NSPS, and mixed apples with oranges when speaking of annual performance pay raises and career advancement in the same breath. Even under the GS system, the annual raises typically had nothing to do with career advancement and so it is under NSPS.

  Susan Roller Posted April 2, 2008 11:17 AM