Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
September 18, 2008
Pg. D3
Federal Diary
By Joe Davidson
When the Defense Department launched a new way of rating and compensating some of its employees more than two years ago, the National Security Personnel System was billed as an innovation that would rejuvenate the workforce.
The Defense Department touts the new arrangement on its Web site as a cost-effective modernization of the 50-year-old civil service system, which will "better attract, recruit, retain, compensate, reward, and manage employees."
The employees aren't convinced.
In fact, the more experience workers have with the system, the less they like it.
A new Government Accountability Office report says "employees who had the most experience under NSPS showed a negative movement in their perceptions."
And the one-year drop in the system's rating by employees is steep. "The percent of NSPS employees who believe that NSPS will have a positive effect on DOD's personnel practices declined from 40 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2007," the GAO reported.
The importance to the Bush administration of making the Pentagon's new personnel system work goes well beyond the walls of the Defense Department. The system is the administration's signature effort in its attempt to replace the familiar GS, or General Schedule, classification with one that tries to more closely link compensation with performance. The new system significantly changes the way people are hired, paid and promoted in Pentagon offices. Pay-for-performance is the most notable element. In theory, the better the employee performs, the better that employee will be paid.
That effort is part of what the GAO calls "one of the most significant transformations to the civil service in a half a century, as momentum grows toward making government wide changes to agency pay, classification, and performance management systems."
The momentum is demonstrated by the huge growth of the system since it began in April 2006. Then, just 11,000 Defense Department workers were covered. Now, 180,000 are and that number will grow to about 200,000 by the end of this year. That's more people than in Tacoma, Wash. This report, however, could help blunt that momentum.
If the Pentagon can't get the employees' buy-in, it's going to be tough to expand pay-for-performance around the government. It's already been a struggle to get it going at the Department of Homeland Security.
One problem at the Pentagon is its inability to determine if its personnel system is "consistent, equitable or nondiscriminatory" before individual ratings are finalized, according to the report.
A Federal Times analysis of the pay-for-performance system last month indicated that white workers generally received higher ratings, pay and bonuses than other employees. Brad Bunn, the system's executive officer, said while it's too early to draw any conclusions from that analysis, he's told managers to take a "deeper dive into their data" and look for any issues that could lead to potential discrimination. The Defense Department has made it clear, he added, that ratings must be based on performance and not on any form of bias.
While the falling approval numbers in the GAO report concern Bunn, he's not about to panic. "If history is the teacher . . . they will improve. . . . It requires a lot of work. . . . Employees need a little more time under the system to really see kind of how it works."
The GAO recognizes that it takes time for employees to adjust to a new system, but the report is critical of the Pentagon for not developing an "action plan" to address employee complaints and improve acceptance.
Bunn acknowledges that there is no plan now, but says his office will develop one. Currently, there are formal evaluations of the system, including employee surveys like those mentioned in the GAO report, which Bunn said officials take to heart.
He also notes the positives GAO found, such as that 43 percent of employees under the new system, compared to a quarter of all other Defense workers, "said that pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs."
Yet, one reason many employees doubt the system, according to the report, is instructions by managers to classify the majority of workers at point three of a five-point rating system, with five being the best.
Bunn says there is no forced distribution system and pointed to figures indicating more than 40 percent of the workers did not fall into the third, or "valued performer," category.
Unions leaders have never liked the pay-for-performance system and the GAO report is a "glaring indictment of the ideologically fueled pay system," said Matthew S. Biggs, legislative director of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
But he did point to one unintended byproduct that has been good for organized labor: "It did strengthen the ability of unions to organize the workforce."
Diary associate Eric Yoder contributed to this report.
Pay For Performance
The Pentagon's pay for performance system covers 180,000 civilians. The percentage of workers rated in each of the five categories:
Valued performer: 57%; Exceeds expectations: 36%; Role model: 5%; Fair: 2%; Unacceptable: less than 1%
Source: Defense Department
September 18, 2008
Pg. D3
Federal Diary
By Joe Davidson
When the Defense Department launched a new way of rating and compensating some of its employees more than two years ago, the National Security Personnel System was billed as an innovation that would rejuvenate the workforce.
The Defense Department touts the new arrangement on its Web site as a cost-effective modernization of the 50-year-old civil service system, which will "better attract, recruit, retain, compensate, reward, and manage employees."
The employees aren't convinced.
In fact, the more experience workers have with the system, the less they like it.
A new Government Accountability Office report says "employees who had the most experience under NSPS showed a negative movement in their perceptions."
And the one-year drop in the system's rating by employees is steep. "The percent of NSPS employees who believe that NSPS will have a positive effect on DOD's personnel practices declined from 40 percent in 2006 to 23 percent in 2007," the GAO reported.
The importance to the Bush administration of making the Pentagon's new personnel system work goes well beyond the walls of the Defense Department. The system is the administration's signature effort in its attempt to replace the familiar GS, or General Schedule, classification with one that tries to more closely link compensation with performance. The new system significantly changes the way people are hired, paid and promoted in Pentagon offices. Pay-for-performance is the most notable element. In theory, the better the employee performs, the better that employee will be paid.
That effort is part of what the GAO calls "one of the most significant transformations to the civil service in a half a century, as momentum grows toward making government wide changes to agency pay, classification, and performance management systems."
The momentum is demonstrated by the huge growth of the system since it began in April 2006. Then, just 11,000 Defense Department workers were covered. Now, 180,000 are and that number will grow to about 200,000 by the end of this year. That's more people than in Tacoma, Wash. This report, however, could help blunt that momentum.
If the Pentagon can't get the employees' buy-in, it's going to be tough to expand pay-for-performance around the government. It's already been a struggle to get it going at the Department of Homeland Security.
One problem at the Pentagon is its inability to determine if its personnel system is "consistent, equitable or nondiscriminatory" before individual ratings are finalized, according to the report.
A Federal Times analysis of the pay-for-performance system last month indicated that white workers generally received higher ratings, pay and bonuses than other employees. Brad Bunn, the system's executive officer, said while it's too early to draw any conclusions from that analysis, he's told managers to take a "deeper dive into their data" and look for any issues that could lead to potential discrimination. The Defense Department has made it clear, he added, that ratings must be based on performance and not on any form of bias.
While the falling approval numbers in the GAO report concern Bunn, he's not about to panic. "If history is the teacher . . . they will improve. . . . It requires a lot of work. . . . Employees need a little more time under the system to really see kind of how it works."
The GAO recognizes that it takes time for employees to adjust to a new system, but the report is critical of the Pentagon for not developing an "action plan" to address employee complaints and improve acceptance.
Bunn acknowledges that there is no plan now, but says his office will develop one. Currently, there are formal evaluations of the system, including employee surveys like those mentioned in the GAO report, which Bunn said officials take to heart.
He also notes the positives GAO found, such as that 43 percent of employees under the new system, compared to a quarter of all other Defense workers, "said that pay raises depend on how well employees perform their jobs."
Yet, one reason many employees doubt the system, according to the report, is instructions by managers to classify the majority of workers at point three of a five-point rating system, with five being the best.
Bunn says there is no forced distribution system and pointed to figures indicating more than 40 percent of the workers did not fall into the third, or "valued performer," category.
Unions leaders have never liked the pay-for-performance system and the GAO report is a "glaring indictment of the ideologically fueled pay system," said Matthew S. Biggs, legislative director of the International Federation of Professional and Technical Engineers.
But he did point to one unintended byproduct that has been good for organized labor: "It did strengthen the ability of unions to organize the workforce."
Diary associate Eric Yoder contributed to this report.
Pay For Performance
The Pentagon's pay for performance system covers 180,000 civilians. The percentage of workers rated in each of the five categories:
Valued performer: 57%; Exceeds expectations: 36%; Role model: 5%; Fair: 2%; Unacceptable: less than 1%
Source: Defense Department