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By: FEDweek StaffThe performance management system an agency uses, and the level of guidance it provides to those who perform those ratings, make a substantial difference in decisions on whether to allow or deny within-grade raises to employees who have met the service requirement for one, the MSPB has said.
In a newsletter article following up a recent white paper, the MSPB examined reasons for variations among agencies within a government-wide rate of denying those raises of only about 0.1 percent. Those raises are worth about 3 percent of salary and are paid every one, two or three years depending on step level with a grade until an employee reaches the top step—unless the employee’s performance is rated as unacceptable.
The article noted that where a rating system allows for a “level 2” rating—less than successful but better than unacceptable—WGIs are denied four times more often than in systems that do not.
“This may be a result of the Level 2 appraisal system offering a way to place an employee in the space between an acceptable level and outright failure. It may also be that agencies which choose to measure performance more precisely (using more levels for distinguishing performance) have a different cultural attitude towards performance deficiencies,” it said.
It added: “Organizations with comparatively high rates of WGI denials tend to have policies in place to help supervisors determine how to measure and address performance. For example, an organization we spoke with that had a WGI denial rate of 3 percent also has a 5-page memorandum on WGIs that, among other things, instructs supervisors on the exact period of performance to be considered when assessing accomplishments for the purposes of granting or denying WGIs. This offers consistency across the organization, and supervisors are not left to attempt to make such decisions for themselves.
“Another organization with a WGI denial rate 10 times the governmentwide average issued a detailed guide addressing what a performance deficiency means,” it said.
It said another factor in differences among WGI denial rates, which is largely out of an agency’s control, is that some occupations lend themselves more readily that others to measuring output, such as the number of cases, claims, or applications processed. “For example, one department noted that a particular occupation had work that could “be measured concretely in terms of quantity, timeliness, and accuracy of adjudication.” That occupation had a WGI denial rate 10 times the average rate for the rest of the department,” it said.
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