Hegseth: Managers need more guidance on how to separate underperforming employees. Image: Frontpage/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Defense Department—see note below—has said it plans a “cultural refresh” for its civilian employees aiming to “encourage workforce rewards and demystify the removal process.”
“We recently surveyed our civilian workforce. We heard loud and clear that personnel policies must better reflect our high-performance culture. This requires reforming how we treat both top and bottom performers. Winning organizations optimize the workforce spectrum,” said Secretary Pete Hegseth in a memo.
“First, we need to incentivize and reward our top performers. Department employees are not in it for the money, but our best performers need to be appropriately recognized for their performance, including through meaningful monetary awards. Second, managers need more guidance on how to separate underperforming employees. Complex offboarding creates cultural drag that hurts morale across the Department and hinders our mission,” the memo says.
Guidance toward those “complementary but distinct objectives” is to be issued soon, it says.
In another memo, he ordered a series of changes to the EEO process for civilian employees including: consolidating and centralizing EEO counselor operations, and EEO complaint investigations; expediting investigation of cases that directly affect general/flag officers and senior executives; and dismissing complaints if the complainant does not adequately respond within 15 days to an agency’s request for information.
That memo further orders “eliminating the practice of withholding or delaying promotion of an employee or service member based on an EEO complaint without a substantive finding of misconduct or not based on objective and credible evidence.” That follows one in April calling for changes to the EEO processes for both civilian and military personnel to prevent them from being “weaponized” against superiors or peers.
The memos were two of a series, most primarily affecting only uniformed personnel, issued at the same time.
(Note: A recent executive order gives the Department of Defense the “secondary” title of Department of War to better emphasize “readiness and resolve,” while legislation has been introduced in Congress – which continues to use “Defense” in legislation – to formalize the name change.)
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