| Comment Number: | OL-10511806 |
| Received: | 3/16/2005 5:28:11 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:
Section 9901.409 Performance Rating is an area that will always open to interpretation. With the proposed Personnel system, the possible impacts of a negative performance are much greater for an employee, as it will make that employee much more susceptible to RIFs and other consequences. -------------------------------- I am a firm believer that it can be highly beneficial for an employee to work in many different organizations throughout one's career, as doing so provides one with a broad perspective of a wide variety of different tasks, rather than slowly becoming more rigid and 'stovepiped' to ones limited exposure to a specialized career field. ------------------------------- There are supervisors, however, who value retention and long-term loyalty to an employee who comes in for a short period and moves on. These supervisors tend to give higher ratings to their long-time employees who remain team players, rather than 'being a group traitor' and moving on to gain new experiences in different work areas. ------------------------------ Care must be taken so motivated employees are not punished by moving to a new organization, or a new group. Twice in my career, under a demonstration Pay Band personnel system, I have moved to new groups, yet received very low performance ratings, because regulations stated that my yearly rating should be determined not by my new supervisor, but by my former supervisor.------------------------------- Such a situation can occur when one accepts and starts working on a work detail assignment, yet the official paperwork lags behind on this action, and shows you working for the former supervisor. In these cases, it is too easy for an unethical supervisor to say 'He isn't working for me anymore, he wasn't loyal, so I will give him a low rating, and give the extra points and additional pay raise to the employees who are staying with me.' This can happen even if the new supervisor is extremely happy with the employee's performance. It is very demoralizing to the employee when the scenario above occurs.------------------------------ Under the old personnel system, one could dismiss the incidents as temporary aberrations, that would be corrected at next year's rating time. However, with the new proposed system, the affected employee is much more likely to be impacted negatively by a RIF, and the employee could now lose his job - a much worse situation than simply receiving a smaller slice of the pay increase pool. ------------------------------ I believe that there should be some mechanism in the new Personnel system that would somehow prevent the above scenario from taking place. Perhaps an exception should be made in certain cases, so a negative ranking from a former supervisor could be ignored or hold less weight, especially when the employee has no history of lower ratings in the past. Perhaps regulations could be made so the former supervisor's rating would have to be signed off and also approved by the new supervisor, so the former supervisor could not sabotage his departing employee's rating. Perhaps regulations could better define the supervisor period as being when the employee actually works on a detail, and not on paperwork which is often delayed by many months. ------------------------------ It would be a shame if a consequence of the new Personnel System were that employees are scared to move on to other groups, based on the view that a supervisor will rate them lower when they depart the group. The new system should reward the motivated employees who are willing to learn more, and take more risks, and not make them more susceptible to being exposed to RIFs. ------------------------------ Thank you for considering the above views. -----