Fedweek

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More federal employees reported in 2016 that they had seen prohibited personnel practices in the workplace than in 2010, MSPB has said in a preview of an upcoming report.

A budget-related document notes that until the MSPB board has a quorum—it has lacked one for more than a year although nominees for the two vacant seats recently were named—it cannot issue the kind of studies it conducts regularly into federal personnel issues. However, it gave some detail regarding reports in progress.

One shows that in a survey MSPB conducted in 2016, more employees reported observing “PPPs”—which include whistleblower retaliation, various forms of discrimination, decisions not based on merit, and more—compared with a similar survey in 2010. “Notably, only 54 percent of respondents in 2016 indicated that they had observed no PPPs, compared to 78 percent in 2010,” it says.

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The later survey also found high rates of employees reporting that their agencies are not complying with new PPP created in 2012, that non-disclosure policies must include language stating that the policies do not reduce employee whistleblowing rights.

MSPB added that it is working on several other studies that rely in part on the survey data. “Those studies cover areas such as individual drivers of employee engagement, sexual harassment, performance management, effectiveness of the HR workforce, and the Pathways program,” it said.