The report also recommends putting in place a system to ensure supervisors and managers have the requisite skills for their positions, while paying above market salaries only when supervisors or managers exceed expectations, and withholding raises where performance is lacking.
It also advocates creating a single, four-tier executive service in which candidates would have to demonstrate the capacity to lead in a complex, interagency, intergovernmental environment. The SES was a six-tier system for much of its existence until the switch to a single payband more than a decade ago.
Additional recommendations include: Expanding the use of hiring flexibilities; Holding managers accountable for talent acquisition; tasking OPM to develop better assessment tools; permitting direct hire authority whenever an agency can show a shortage of highly qualified candidates; allowing high-performers to reenter government service more easily; consolidating complaints and appeals channels into one process managed by a reconstituted MSPB (essentially reversing a provision of the Civil Service Reform Act that split up authority over appeals); filling key government management positions with senior career executives instead of political appointees; and putting in place an “occupation-specific, market-sensitive system for professional and administrative jobs that takes into account total compensation roughly comparable to what is offered by major privatesector employers as well as state and local governments.”