Supervisors are the “linchpin” between management and
front-line employees and play a pivotal role in pay for
performance, the Merit Systems Protection Board has said
in a new report.
It said agencies should select supervisors based on their
potential, develop and manage them to function as supervisors
rather than as technicians or staff experts, and evaluate
them based on their supervisory performance.
Supervisors translate organizational goals into concrete
objectives for individual employees and provide access to
resources employees need to achieve those goals, and
because they have greater discretion in setting pay
increases there is more pressure on them to perform well
than in traditional tenure-based pay systems, the report noted.
It said supervisors have to assign work, evaluate
performance, and allocate rewards fairly, as well as be
held accountable for it, partly through linking their pay
to how well they perform themselves.
As such, supervisors need an effective performance
evaluation system with enough of an opportunity throughout
the assessment cycle to use it properly, not just once or
twice a year, MSPB said.
It also said a fair and frequent interchange between
supervisors and employees is crucial, and that the greatest
changes coming about in pay for performance relate to an
increased emphasis on defining and communicating goals to
employees, providing feedback, and heightening employees’
sense of responsibility for contributing to well-defined
organizational goals.
