SEA: The risks of advancing in management continue to grow but the rewards do not keep pace. Image: nikkytok/Shutterstock.com
By: FEDweek StaffThe Senior Executives Association, saying “pay compression has been long discussed but never meaningfully addressed,” has recommended a thorough overhaul of pay-setting policies and has called on the Federal Salary Council for help in building momentum for such an effort.
At the council’s recent meeting, SEA director of policy and outreach Jason Briefel said that pay compression—in which the difference in salaries between executives and some subordinates can be minor—has worsened over the last several decades. SES members—and certain other career employees at comparable levels—receive raises within ranges, whose upper limits are increased each year by the across-the-board component of the GS raise but not by the locality component.
“Pay compression skews the risk-reward trade-off for employees advancing in their federal careers. At a certain point, the risks of advancing in management continue to grow but the rewards do not keep pace. Public service motivation is the only incentive to enter the SES. That is not enough to sustain our nation’s leadership cadre,” he said.
He also noted that because pay caps for GS employees also rise annually only by the across-the-board component, increasing numbers of those in the highest levels of the GS now have their salaries limited by the cap. This year it affects those in GS-15 step 10 in 10 localities plus Hawaii; at steps 9-10 in four; at steps 8-10 in seven; at steps 7-10 in four plus Alaska; at steps 6-10 in two; and at steps 4-10 (plus GS-14, step 1) in one, the San Francisco-Oakland locality.
“Pay compression negatively affects many of our best technical performers and subject matter experts, too. Beyond pay compression, there is also the reality of 100 white collar pay systems outside of Title 5 covering hundreds of thousands of federal employees. It is unclear if anyone is looking at those systems from a pay comparability, equity, or merit standpoint,” he said.
He noted that OPM director Kiran Ahuja remarked at a recent conference that the multitude of special pay authorities has resulted in some cases in agencies competing against each other for employees in high-demand fields such as cybersecurity.
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