News Release

HORROR STORIES

• Jane supervises a unit with a lot of fairly new employees. While all the new employees are hard workers, Bill is clearly learning the job more quickly than the others and is already making solid contributions after only 3 months on board. Jane would like to recognize Bill’s increased value to the unit by giving him a small salary increase. But she can’t – there’s a 1-year waiting period until his salary will be raised to the next pay step. When Bill realizes that his hard work, extra effort, and greater production can’t increase his salary to match his increased value and that his co-workers will get the same pay raise he will, he starts looking for another job. Jane is furious as she contemplates that the replacement cost to recruit another employee is considerably more money than the small amount she had hoped to provide Bill to let him know his contribution was valued and to keep him engaged as a committed employee.

• Tom is a GS-9 Engineering Technician who is trying to advance, but with little or no success even though he has an engineering degree, a requirement for promotion out of the technician ranks. He is really getting fed up and feels the fact that a person gets a raise based solely on the amount of time they put in is ridiculous. As he puts it, “There is no emphasis or reward to exceed performance expectations. As a result, very few federal employees worry about the quality or quantity of their work because we are provided no reason to do so.” Tom has continually exceeded the expectations for the technician position in both quality and quantity of work. Unfortunately it has gotten him nowhere except in a depressed state of mind. Meanwhile there are GS-12 Engineers around him who have been in his unit for over 30 years, who do just enough to get by, and who are getting paid almost twice as much as Tom. They are not required to perform more than a modest level of work and they know that the present system is set up to keep their jobs secure, so they just put in their time.

• Joanne made her education and career choices with an eye toward both making a difference and earning a good salary. Her degree in systems accounting offered her opportunities in both respects. She was intrigued by a government job announcement that advertised good salary prospects and a chance to help transform the government’s financial management systems. Within a few months of accepting an entry-level position, however, she learned that under the General Schedule, that attractive maximum salary she saw would likely take her 20 years to reach. After comparing notes with some of her classmates about the salary adjustments they’d already received and were expecting in the future, Joanne started giving them her resume and asking for referrals if jobs in their firms opened up.

• Mary, a bright, energetic budget analyst in a mid-sized agency, looks for ways to advance, both to help herself and to help her agency. The merit-based values of the federal service appealed to her because she believes that people who work hard should be treated well. To the delight of her supervisor, she routinely volunteers to take on new duties in the office. Mary does that in part because she believes it will help her get a better salary. When she finally confronts her supervisor about having her pay increased to acknowledge all the extra work she’s doing, the supervisor and HR specialists explain that because the new duties are classified at her same grade level, there’s no basis for a promotion. “It’s out of our hands,” they tell her.

• Roger, a new manager of a claims-processing unit, is very committed to developing his staff and ensuring that they have opportunities to advance. He believes strongly in recognizing and rewarding good performance. Two of his employees are due for promotions – known as career ladder promotions – that can be granted without competing again for a position. To be promoted, one need only maintain a satisfactory record, and the well-established agency practice is to grant them when the employee becomes eligible. One of Roger’s employees is solid, but decidedly unspectacular. The other employee takes on tough assignments and usually exceeds all expectations to make the unit look good to the public they serve. As their promotion eligibility approaches, Roger reviews the results each has achieved and notes the substantial difference between them. When he learns that these two employees will receive exactly the same raise when they’re promoted, he asks the HR office whether there’s some way to offer a larger raise to the better employee. The reply is that the way raises are calculated is dictated by law and regulation, but that he could consider granting a lump-sum cash award. Reluctantly, Roger does so, but remains frustrated by a system that will not let him differentiate salaries for two very different levels of contribution.

• Sarah, a hardworking economist at a Federal agency, has come to believe that pay opportunities might be better in the private sector. She gets good appraisals and has received cash awards. Sarah’s starting to feel it’s not worth putting out the kind of extra effort she’s made in the past. What’s bothering her? When the Government adjusts salaries each year, Sarah gets exactly the same percentage increase as Fred, a co-worker who does enough to get by, but never a bit more. In fact, all federal employees who work in the same city gets that same increase, no matter what their levels of effort or accomplishment may have been. Sarah is seriously considering offers she’s received from employers who make a point of differentiating performance and rewarding their employees accordingly.