As DoD continues to overhaul a decades-old personnel system with its new pay-for-performance system, the National Security Personnel System (NSPS), the voices of opposition are becoming louder and louder. 

An unknown internal survey carried out in 2007 by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and obtained by OhMyGov! shows that employees have little confidence in the new system.

DTRA participated in the first spiral rollout of the performance-based NSPS, which took place two years ago. Since then, 180,000 of DoD's 650,000 employees have been converted to NSPS, with the remaining amount expected to make the switch. 

While a small number of the near 600 survey respondents saw the benefits of the NSPS, including increased communication between boss and employee, an overwhelming number expressed concern about it. Complaints were extensive and included dissatisfaction with performance ratings, overall disappointment and mistrust of the system, frustration with the amount of time it took, and a limited understanding of how it works.

Overall, 64% of DTRA employees expressed dissatisfaction with NSPS, while only 16% stated they were satisfied with the new system. (Twenty percent described their satisfaction level as "neutral.")
 

With NSPS, DoD aims to create an agile recruitment and retention process offering better opportunities to net bigger paychecks. The heart of new system is derived from its "pay pools," in which funding for performance payouts is shared by groups of employees working in an organization. Each employee receives a rating, ranging from the lowest level of one, to the highest of five, from a panel of agency senior leaders and managers that oversee the allocation of the pay pool funds.

Although supervisors are responsible for rating the performance of their employees, pay pool managers review those ratings and either accept or alter the supervisor's suggestion. Bonuses and salary adjustments are based upon the employee's performance ratings.  The higher the rating, the more money the worker receives from the pay pool.

But what appears on the surface to be a check and balance may actually be contributing to complaints of unfairness in the system.

A former DTRA employee spoke out against NSPS and the pay pool rating process on condition of anonymity. She attributed her decision to leave the agency to fears of a "vindictive" pay-pool manager about to take the reigns. "If she didn't like you, she wouldn't allow you to give somebody a higher mark," she explained.

One survey respondent complained that as the program is designed, and for it to succeed, the bulk of the people have to be rated as a '3' to keep the majority of employees from commanding far greater annual raises and bonuses. Despite a supervisor's rating, pay pool managers often lowered employee ratings to keep the status quo for performance at a '3'. Most employees were simply rated a ‘3' unless they had a good relationship with the pay pool managers, the respondent complained.

"With this in mind, how does that encourage people to excel, if they know in the end they'll get a 3? . . . Needless to say, the payout from NSPS was well below what I would have gotten had I still been a [General Schedule] employee receiving a step increase," said the DTRA employee.

Survey results supported such statements, as over 45% of respondents reported being unhappy with the rating they received, compared to the 32% that felt their satisfied over their rating.

"DTRA implemented the pay system in an unempowering way," said OhMyGov!'s source in an interview. "Low-level supervisors were allowed only to offer recommendations about employee ratings to pay-pool managers, rather than make final judgments."

Throughout the survey, employees and supervisors reported a high level of dissatisfaction with both NSPS and its implementation.

"This system is a return to the days of the 'good ole boys club' and graft and corruption are the cornerstone," one DTRA employee declares in the comments section. "As a career federal employee, I'm disgusted. The level of deceit, lack of ethics and integrity that is surfacing under the NSPS is appalling."

The survey results also showed that DTRA staff was unprepared for the implementation of the NSPS.

More than 40% had "some understanding, but not enough" of the new personnel system, including how to write job objectives, self-assessments and assessments, according to the results. Thirty-six percent had some understanding of the pay pool panel process, while navigating the automated tools continued to frustrate over half of employees. In fact, only 20% of respondents were satisfied with the implementation and administration of NSPS.

Concerns about the time-consuming nature of the employee evaluation process also emerged in the survey.

Thirty-six percent of pay pool panel members reported that the time involved in completing the first cycle of the system's implementation (six months) was "more or much more" than anticipated. But supervisors offered a different take. Eighty-six percent noted the rating process took more time than expected during the first cycle.

In the area of communications, the NSPS did not appear to have the positive impact expected by senior leaders. Only 20% of respondents believed communication with their supervisors increased under NSPS, compared to the 49% that thought communication actually diminished.  Likewise, 58% of participants reported no difference in the amount of performance feedback they received from their supervisors, compared to previous years, while 24% stated they received less feedback.

"I could not stand what they were doing at DTRA, and there were about four people [in my division] that left," a former DTRA staffer, now working at another DoD agency admitted to OhMyGov! "I left primarily because of it [NSPS]."

As the Pentagon continues to roll out the system across all agencies, the former DTRA staffer warned the agency's less-than-ideal implementation should not be replicated elsewhere. But, she added, the system, despite its flaws, had "a lot of potential if we'd done it right."

This is the first in a series of articles to be written BY Fawzia Sheikh

Click here to view the full survey results.

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Proposed NSPS Regulations For Public Comment
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