| Comment Number: | OL-10511453 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 3:33:19 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:
While this system appears to have some great benefits for those area of the Government wtih a stable workforce, I do not think that this system will work well for those organizations in DOD that have a high percentage of military supervisors (in charge of GS employees) who change assignments frequently. The proposed NSPS places a substantial burden on supervisors (for both initial training and continual employee management). In the Army we have serious difficulty even getting our military supervisors to attend the basic LEAD course. Many of my military supervisors have not wanted to spend the time completing the basic civilian personnel tasks that are required of them to include counseling and writing my civilian evaluations once a year because they claim not to "understand" the civilian system. They do not want to understand it, as it is not their core mission. In the Army Medical Department, it is even a larger struggle to get out military doctors to perform civilian supervisory tasks (because the are "professionals" and such administrative work "not what they went to school for"). They typically take the time to write OERs and NCOERS because they understand importance of these documents (and appear to have greater motivation for furthering the career of fellow soldiers), but take little to no time to do civilian evaluations, let alone spend time figuring out a complex system for "motivating" and "rewarding" civilian employees. This situation will only be compounded by thier frequent changing of assignments, or getting out of the service all together. There appears to be little motivation for these "transient" supervisors to spend the time required to make NSPS successful. They come and go so often that they have no vested interest in buiding a strong team, or motivating its civilian employees for the long term. This sytem is supposed to motivate civilian employees to perform, similar to our counterparts in private industry. There is a serious flaw in this reasoning. In private industry, if a team works hard and saves the company $1 million then the company can reward employees with substantial rewards from the money that they've saved. They can reward as many or as few employees with as much of the profits as they would like. The team benefits if the team works together. The revenue that Governement Employees generate through our efforts is not reappropriated to the civilian pay budget. If Government employees work hard, they are essentially "competing" for a bigger slice of a very small pie. This fosters cut throat competition, and is detrimental to any organization. Could you also put together more information on how this system will impact upon the priority placement program? I've spent time researching and contacted my CPAC POCs on this but have not been able to find