| Comment Number: | EM-001290 |
| Received: | 2/28/2005 1:04:34 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
I work at Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, PA and elevate the following concerns/ideas regarding the Proposed national Security Personnel System (NSPS) Regulation: 1. Our upper level managers, called our Primary Team (PT) have had discussion in the past, where the senior managers stessed the use of the bell curve when doing appriasals. Their direction was for managers to give more employees the middle point (on a 1-5 scale) with the rationale that the depot population should mirror a a bell curve. The assumption for the "mean" was the midpoint of a 1 to 5 scale, not historical data. Maintaining this philosophy would leave 68% of the workforce as average. Having implemented this in many areas over a year ago, many employees opted to go along with the change and did not argue when given this new lowered rating. Now management can maintain that the person's performance all along was average. With pay banding an average rating would have a direct correlation with a person's paycheck and would now warrant discussion. The mentality of the PT was that supervisors almost universally gave higher than deserving ratings due to a) less hassle with the employee b) allows them to keep their employees in event of a RIF c) fear of conflict with Union/Management Employee Relations d)that's the way it was always done. This may or may not have been reality. 2. What if a person has looked forward to his step 5 or step 7 increase and implementation takes place 1 month before he would have received his raise? Isn't that person deserving of the raise at the time of the transfer? He/she would have already earned it for 1 month short of 24 or 32months at working at an acceptable level to deserve that increase. 3) How are employees going to be evaluated when it comes to being a member of a team? Can a team member be held accountable for lack of team performance when only 1 team members is a poor performer and impacts the entire team? Will they be responsible for more than their own performance? 4) In November 2004 the PT shared the results of an employee survey conducted at Tobyhanna with more than 90% of the workforce responding. One of the top 5 issues identified by employees were: Leadership - " Employees expressed concern about their confidence and trust in the Primary Team. " and Fair Treatment of Employees - "Employees feel that their supervisors and the Primary Team need to do a better job of treating all employees fairly and respectfully. Favoritism is not appreciated." The new system will be impacted by this perception (or reality) that the "buddy system" runs rampent in Tobyhanna.