Effective in October DoD will launch the second phase of its Defense Performance Management and Appraisal Program, which is to eventually cover the vast majority of the department’s civilian employees, but like the first phase in April, the scope of the upcoming phase will be limited.
The initial group included some 14,000 employees, mainly in headquarters functions and in some relatively small DoD components. According to a recently released schedule for the remainder of the implementation period, the next group will include the Navy’s civilian HR operations centers, the Defense MicroElectronics Activity, certain Defense Security Cooperation Agency components, and Defense Technical Information Center. It did not provide a specific number of employees total.
The program, part of the larger “New Beginnings” personnel initiative, seeks to create a unified department-wide performance management program using standard processes and rating cycles ending each March 31. It has three rating levels—1, 3 and 5—with an emphasis on level 3 being considered a valuable, well-functioning employee and level 5 reserved for only truly superior performance.
It also specifies numerous tasks for supervisors through the ratings and rewards cycle.
A planning document sets additional implementation phases for April, May, June, July, October, November and December 2017 and a similar schedule in 2018 through October of that year. However, it leaves room for adjustments to accommodate bargaining obligations; a bargaining-related issue threatened to hold up the initial phase but that was resolved in time.
The document also contains a checklist for components to consider when assessing their readiness to make the transition, involving issues such as timelines, bargaining, communications, training and IT—some of them one-time events and others requiring ongoing attention.
