The Department of Defense (DoD) is in the midst of replacing the old General Schedule (GS) personnel system with a pay-for-performance system - the National Security Personnel System (NSPS) - that gives greater decision-making authority to federal managers. As more and more employees are subjected to the new pay rules, objection bells are ringer louder and louder across DoD.
Under NSPS, supervisors rate their employees on a numeric scale on the basis of their ability to meet predetermined objectives. The higher the rating, the greater the financial reward. To ensure supervisors provide fair ratings and don't just dole out wads of cash to all their subordinates haphazardly or to only their buddies, each rating and reward (or lack thereof for weak links) must be approved by a committee of senior leaders called the Pay Pool.
Federal unions have aired concerns about the potential for federal managers to abuse their powers under NSPS through favoritism, cronyism, and any other "isms" that may reward undeserved individuals financially or punish employees for conflicting personalties, previous disputes, or other trivial reasons.
Likewise, OhMyGov! has received numerous angry comments from our readers suggesting that the big problems with NSPS were not originating with their direct supervisors, but lay with the Pay Pool managers who allegedly alter performance ratings and pay raises without providing justification for doing so to either the employee or the employee's supervisor. And despite the slighted employee's best efforts to seek a rationale for the Pay Pool managers' changes through the four dispute avenues - a meeting with the Pay Pool chair, the DoD inspector General's Office, the Office of Special Counsel, or a request for a Congressional inquiry - little chance exists to overturn the Pay Pool decisions.
The complete list of complaints about NSPS reported to OhMyGov! includes:
- Inconsistent and/or lack of communication among senior leadership, the immediate supervisor, and the employee;
- Arbitrarily changed ratings, as noted above, during the pay pool process instead of an impartial ratings determination based on the content of the appraisal by the supervisor;
- Lack of standardized NSPS training for supervisors;
- Selective use of NSPS flexibility of employee placement and/or promotion on the basis of favoritism vs. mission needs;
- Inordinate amount of time required for the development of job objectives, ratings recommendations, the pay pool process, and the reconsideration process; and
- Conflict of interest involved in the Request for Reconsideration process (formerly known as a grievance), where in some cases the pay pool manager who provides initial ratings is the first line of arbitration.
While unions like the National Association of Government Employees (NAGE) focus on issues specific to compensation, we are hearing from our readers that their real concern is job security and therefore fear of retribution often prevent them from going public with their discontent and frustration with policies and practices at work. OhMyGov! believes the unions would better serve their members by addressing issues that affect government employee satisfaction, such as effective leadership, the match between employee skills and the mission of the organization, work/life balance, and more importantly the knowledge gained from the proper/improper implementation NSPS.
The conceptual idea of NSPS appears on the surface to be sound; however, according to our readers, a review by Congress and/or the organizations charted to review these concerns (the DoD inspector General and Office of Special Counsel), is much needed to smooth over flaws in the system.
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