| Comment Number: | OL-10500542 |
| Received: | 2/17/2005 4:58:43 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:
The basic concept of basing pay on performance and not on longevity sounds great, and most employees would welcome it, however, there are a few concerns with actual implementation. My experience with military supervisors is that they are often under-informed about the civil service process and do not take the necessary steps to reward deserving employees. Example: at our facility over the last 10 fiscal years, normally only 60% of funds set aside for our civilian incentive award program are awarded - primarily due to managers not taking the time to reward high performers, or dividing funds budgeted for their work center via "salami slicing". I have little confidence that these same managers will adequately compensate their employees under this new more complicated system. Additionally the "manage to budget " clause will give them another reason not to compensate high performers - Command and resource managers complain annually about the increasing annual cost of their civilian employees - particularly over the last several years as the budget process became tighter. Bottom line - I doubt our managers will properly operate this new system and the result will be high performing employees will not be compensated as well as they were under the GS system when they could at least rely on periodic step increases, that were not automatic unless we meet the required performance level. .