Alyssa Rosenberg writes in the December issue of Government Executive about how the Defense Department may move forward on dismantling its controversial personnel overhaul - the National Security Personnel System. The system was fully repealed in the fiscal 2010 Defense Authorization Act, meaning the thousands of employees who are currently hired, evaluated and paid based on the system must convert back to the decades-old General Schedule by Jan. 1, 2012. But that introduces a number of challenges, Alyssa writes, including how to shift employees back into the GS without a decrease in pay, and implement a performance management system to cover the entire department.
What are your reactions to NSPS' recent demise, and how should the government pick up the lessons learned from NSPS and move forward on personnel reform? Are other changes, such as those to the federal hiring and recruitment system, or campaigns to improve the health and wellness of federal employees, more critical to improving the recruitment and retention of federal IT workers than a complete overhaul of the federal pay system?
COMMENTS
As on of the 1st installations to enter NSPS we recieved a multitude of briefings. I was hooked. I did my research and saw what pay for performance systems did for companies like John Deere, Harley Davidson, and Toyota. I became a staunch advocate for the program and sold it like I was the person who came up with the idea.
Unfortunetly the program was not executed as advertised.
1. Supervisors and managers were not given very much latitude to write SMART goals as we were promised.
2. Opportunities to excell were alligned with who you knew and how well they were positioned than your actual performance related to the mission, as we were taught.
3. Pay pools were not vetted or well trained to execute thier function. I attended pay pool manager training and most of the members of my class had already sat on several pay pools without training at all.
4. There was too much emphasis on the bell curve in some organizations during pay out time. It was more important to have a good model than to achieve fairness in recording performance.
5. Goals that were too generic and broadly worded did not provide middle management and the supervisory work force with well defined expectations applicable to thier daily activities. This created a great deal of confusion and consternation with supervisors regarding thier routine work and the seemingly low value that leadership placed on it. Yet that is what they were hired and paid to do.
6. Production suffered in some instances because more emphasis was placed on documentation for supporting self achievements than on work load. Many NSPS employee's spent hours searching for the next group to join or IPT to tag simply for appraisal sake. Not because they had the desire or expertese. They had to get thier ticket punched.
7. Leadership at the installation level did not truly buy into NSPS. I dont know how many times I heard: "I dont like it but it's what we have to live with for now".
So, where do we go from here? The GS system does have a lot of flaws but it is the system the employees trust for now. Merit promotion can work with elements of pay for performance built in. Next time OPM considers a change of this magnatude I hope they are more considerate of Unions to avoid the devisiveness caused by NSPS. Furthermore, change should take place across the board within the DoD not a few installations at a time. This created more than a few nightmare situations.
Regarding pay conversion, it seems the only obvious solution is to place employee's into the properly classified GS grade. They should be properly placed in the step they would have achieved naturaly w/o NSPS. If that pay is less then the employee would remain in save pay until there is a match. If that pay is more the employee should recieve an increase to bring them up to that point.
I have been treated very fairly under NSPS and GS systems by my supervisor/manager but his frustration with NSPS as well as my own will not be missed. Simply put, it is just easier to operate in the trenches when all our folks are in one system. Thanks for the opportunity to speak to this issue.
Okie 01/12/10 09:06 am ET
The problem with NSPS here in this building (located in New Orleans), is the people running the pay pool are retired Officers. There are not seasoned Civilian Employees that know the rules.
Last year's payout results were sent out by email.
And once they realized it went out, INSTANTLY sent out a notice to delete the previous email, and stated it was only a "MOCK" payout.
Then stood by each employee's computer and made sure they deleted the email.
Guess who received the highest payouts? The retired officers running the pay pool, and this building.
Make the pay outs PUBLIC. If they could honestly prove they earned the highest payouts, then it wouldn't be a problem posting the results.
Worker Bee 12/18/09 11:12 am ET
Hi SLOWMAN,
For someone with the education credentials you purport to have, a few peer-reviewed sources may help your argument. Where are they?
Ed
Ed 12/03/09 10:21 am ET
I found Slowman's discussion regarding the perils of the GS system as compared to NSPS to be completely on point. While I do not have a PhD, I am educated and have been a Labor Relations Specialist for almost 28 years within the Department of the Navy.
One chuckle...while I couldn't have said it better regarding the gaggle of comments that had circular, non-factual based conclusions regarding NSPS, not to mention the unbelievable frequency of misspellings, improper grammar, punctuation, etc....I found it humorous that Slowman didn't quite make it through his discussion without one misstep...just within his last few words?!!
What amazes me is the lack of oversight and basic quality control over our products, witten or otherwise. I literally started at the bottom as a GS-1 and made it to GS-13 before conversion to NSPS. As part of that growth in my government career path, I had some incredible supervisors and mentors who impressed upon me that perfection of product was the only acceptable standard. We have completely lost that in today's federal government.
While I have been both a supervisor and an employee under NSPS, I agree with Slowman in that the philosophy of a performance-based/merit based system is valuable and I truly hope that OPM and DOD don't abandon that effort in total. The time-in-service recognition system found in the General Schedule pay system only allows the non-performers to have safe haven and receive an ever-growing pay check that they just don't merit. The pay-for-performance system did excite those among us who really want to grow and, as much as is possible within the government structure, think creatively and actively participate in our respective organization's success.
That said, I sought and attained a non-supervisory position after struggling under the requirements imposed by NSPS on supervisors to monitor, track and evaluate our subordinates' performance. Then there was the posturing and defending of your ratings before a sub pay pool or pay pool panel. There were definite flaws in the application of NSPS...a system that was intended, in its purest form, to inspire, motivate and make room for high performers, but only served to confuse employees and severely overburden supervisors.
I'm not an Obama supporter, but he is our Commander-in-Chief at the moment. We don't need to agree with his agenda, but we do need to respect the position. We also need to remember that none of us can fully appreciate the seriously grave matters and world-wide threats that face anyone who sits in the President's seat. There is always another election year. This administration must be enlightened and encouraged to take careful steps when addressing this country's many challenges, of which civilian federal employment is but one. May I suggest that we make ourselves heard, but without the rhetoric, the mud-slinging and thoughtless accusations that have been so prevalent in not only past discussions about NSPS, but in the current struggle over government-controlled health care, and many other issues that impact all of us.
This from a personnelist.
Dorothy J. Whalen 12/02/09 03:40 pm ET
Let me preface this by saying I am glad "Slowman" is not my supervisor or one I need to advise. Regardless of his Ph.D., there is an above-average chance that he speaks as an authority on what he did in his own office and nothing else.
There is nothing intrinsic to NSPS that precluded "reward for supervisors who put in herculean effort to provide guidance for their subordinates"; there is no reason why the evaluation criteria for supervisors should not have provided rewards for that effort.
The intrinsic problem with NSPS is that it cannot be implemented effectively unless and until an agency is able to hire enough highly trained supervisors who (a) need not fear controversy above all else, because they have the time, training, and HR support to deal with it; (b) are competent to judge the performance of their full range of subordinate employees using individualized (not standardized) criteria; and (c) are held to task for failure to supervise in an honestly and even-handed manner, rather than only for failing to meet agency productivity or cost-saving goals.
Unfortunately, none of these things is realistically feasible in any large bureaucracy subject to the whims of Congressional funding, and probably never will be. We need to settle for what can in fact work well enough, not what labor economics theory suggests ought to work in an ideal organization.
SteveG23 12/02/09 10:25 am ET
I agree with slowman to a degee, but I hated NSPS and I have a masters' degree. I might also have "fat fingers", but that is no reason for him to challenge my intelligence. The system was not standard and was wide open for the good ole boy promotions. The objectives were so general it was hard to determine what constituted good performance. It was based on execeptions rather than doing a really good job day to day, which allowed supervisors to assign more visible tasks to pets. Yes, if there was a work count for every position, I am sure NSPS could have worked.
Cindy 12/01/09 11:36 am ET
Let me preface this with the fact that I have a Ph.D. in Labor Economics. I served both under NSPS and supervised in NSPS, so there is an above-average chance that I speak with some authority on the subject…
Simply put, merit pay systems work better than seniority based pay systems because they encourage greater effort. NSPS was good in theory for that reason, but poor in its implementation. It was cumbersome and time-consuming for supervisors. It was not standardized for effort across career fields. There was no reward for supervisors who put in herculean effort to provide guidance for their subordinates in the system. Hence, the performance appraisals followed the “cookie cutter” approach, using buzz-words copied and pasted from the performance standard guides. There were no concrete standards or methods for setting or evaluating standards. Each individual’s objectives could be manipulated so that achievement was virtually guaranteed. Thus, grade inflation occurred almost immediately. When pay pools tried to mitigate this, they did so with seemingly arbitrary ham-fisted lack of finesse. Who could blame them, really? They were a gaggle of people from unrelated disciplines, most of whom knew little about what it takes to excel in all of the areas they were evaluating. Thus, they all came in with their pre-selected golden boys and girls, and it was just a matter of posturing after that as to who received the higher ratings. The idea that a pay pool can retroactively change the verbiage in an assessment is also odious, and something I had never before seen (nor ever want to see again.)
The root of the problem lies in the structure of the civilian workforce itself. Unlike military officers, who are governed by DOPMA as an up-or-out system, DoD civilians tend to stay fairly in one position for a relatively long period. Job changes are the exception, rather than the rule. The implementation of the NSPS system seemed to be modeled more like the officer promotion system, but without the up-or-out stick. Likewise, officers tend to switch jobs relatively often, making for a broadened career. Thus, they are more uniform in appearance when they come up for promotion, particularly at the higher ranks. Promotion boards have a much less difficult time differentiating between the average and the outstanding performers.
Perhaps a better implementation of a merit pay system would be more closely aligned with the enlisted promotion system, where promotion and evaluation occurs within a career field. In this way, effort and results can be more standardized. Job objectives could also be standardized to a large extent, thus relieving much of the onerous burden from the supervisors. While DoD civilians will probably never be subject to an up-or-out system, there should be set standards developed for competitive promotion to the next higher band. If career broadening or particular skill development is desired, that should be explicitly stated up front.
One parting shot: There is no doubt in my mind that the current GS system is severely broken and badly needs overhaul. Previous posted comments railing against NSPS, almost without exception, were poorly written, venomous diatribes, riddled with poor grammar and misspellings. I would have been ashamed to put my name to such poor quality work. It’s no wonder that they complained of failure under NSPS – they should have failed 7th grade English class. The fact that these people were securely pigeon-holed in the GS system tells me that NSPS was working to some extent, if only to provide these illiterates with a wake-up call. I fervently hope that the DoD does not give up on merit pay. Let’s hope they take some lessons learned from the NSPS attempt and make the next system and even better one.
Slowman 12/01/09 10:28 am ET