| Comment Number: | OL-10500250 |
| Received: | 2/15/2005 7:12:10 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:
9901.512 Probationary periods. I'm an 18-year Navy employee, engineer, and have been a supervisor for the past 4 years. I work at Research and Development lab. I strongly believe that probationary periods for ALL newly hired employees need to be 3 years rather than the current one year. It's hard to evaluate an employee's performance as he/she is still learning the job. In several cases, I saw problems with a new employee's performance but couldn't be sure that they were truly a performance problem rather than lack of specific experience in the job. This is especially a problem with new college graduates and recent military retirees, both of whom are often entering the civilian workforce for the first time. A handful of college graduates never mature very far beyond the novice/apprentice stage but this isn't obvious until the second or third year. Many military retirees are unable to adjust from military to the civilian workforce but again this is not always fully apparent in the first year. A one-year probationary period forces a supervisor to make tough decisions in a relatively short timeline and often without the necessary information. Even with the improved process for employee removal under NSPS, I feel strongly that we need a longer time during which we can thoroughly assess an employee's true performance. It's much less painful to remove a subpar performer during the probationary period than it will be thorugh the formal removal process after the employee is permanent.