| Comment Number: | OL-10507662 |
| Received: | 3/14/2005 1:45:14 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 proposed NSPS sounds like a system designed to promote infighting and ill-will among employees and between employees and supervisors. While the civil service DOES need reform in its hiring and firing efficiency, the proposed system seems to go too far. Civil service managers and administrators have proven repeatedly that they are out of touch with employees and this initiative would make the relationship almost adversarial. Supervisor “favorites” would get the bulk of the raises, promotions, and awards. Managers would also be free to award most of the discretionary money to one another (which happens far too much already). The idea of pay for performance sounds good in the abstract. But, when your performance is being rated by a supervisor -- who is probably being pressured from above for any number of political reasons – then having employees’ success determined by an all-too-human and admittedly fallible supervisor doesn’t sound so rosy. I’ve often noted that some employees have to work to satisfy and please their customers IN SPITE OF the bureaucratic demands placed by their supervisors and by higher management levels. If employees have to “please” their supervisors rather than their customers to get a raise, who is most likely to get pleased? If employees are competing with one another for the approval of the supervisors, cooperation, information sharing, and general helping behaviors will shrink, if not evaporate completely. People say that making civil service more like private industry as if that was a good thing. The contractors who work for the government are always trying to escape into civil service. In industry, they are treated like interchangeable cogs, are fired at a moment’s notice, told they have to work excessive hours without any recourse, and they have to lie to the government when they estimate how much they can accomplish in any period of time. This is NOT a human resources goal to strive toward. I say, yes, let’s make some needed reforms in the system, but let’s do it with forethought about the consequences of each policy that is put into place. These are people’s lives that are being affected. Those lives are worth some discussion and negotiation.