U.S. Office of Personnel Management - Ensuring the Federal Government has an effective civilian workforce

Archive

Program Updates: Trends, Developments, and Initiatives

If you wanted to learn about the latest trends, developments, and initiatives in strategic pay and related human resources programs, the program updates at the 1999 Strategic Compensation Conference were your ticket. These updates gave attendees an opportunity to hear first-hand the most recent information about total compensation, performance management, position classification, and pay and leave issues.

• Total Compensation Update.
• Performance Management Update.
• Position Classification Update.
• Pay and Leave Update.

Total Compensation Update. Staff from OPM's Total Compensation Policy Center (TCPC) described the long-term initiative to improve Federal compensation. The outcome of this initiative will be new compensation systems to help Federal managers and human resources professionals recruit, manage, and retain highly productive employees. As part of this effort, the TCPC staff will benchmark practices in pay, benefits, and other forms of compensation in the public and private sector. The staff will also solicit the views of Federal stakeholders on introducing improvements to Federal compensation programs. TCPC's objective is to produce a set of recommendations to improve Federal compensation as a tool to attract, manage, and retain a high-quality workforce. For more information, call the TCPC at 202-606-8486, email, or visit their web page.

Performance Management Update. The Performance Management and Incentive Awards Division staff described:

• changes to Senior Executive Service (SES) awards that allow bigger performance award pools and that allow Presidential Rank Awards to be a percentage of base pay,
• revised recordkeeping procedures that now exclude awards documentation from Official Personnel Folders (effective Jan. 1, 1999),
• new Central Personnel Data File (CPDF) edits (effective October 1, 1999) to help improve the accuracy of rating of record data, and
• new Nature of Action Codes (NOAC) used for CPDF reporting to streamline awards reporting requirements (effective October 1, 2000).

New performance management publications available on the web include: Performance Appraisal for Teams, Evaluating Performance Appraisal Programs, and A Handbook for Measuring Employee Performance: Aligning Employee Performance Plans with Organizational Goals For more information on performance management, call us at 202-606-2720, email, or browse through the rest of this web site.

Position Classification Update.OPM staff from the Classification Programs Division (CPD) described their efforts to simplify and automate the General Schedule (GS) classification system, their goal to reduce GS classification documents from 400 to fewer than 100, and the production of "plain English" standards and guides that are easier to understand and apply. CPD staff also explained how they are working with OPM's Employment Service to produce integrated classification standards and qualification/competency-based job profiles. Conference attendees received a copy of the CD-ROM, "HRCD," that contains a number of CPD products, including: General Schedule (GS) Classification Standards, Classifier's Handbook, and Index to Functional Standards and Guides. For more information, call the CPD staff on 202-606-2950, email, or visit their web page.

Pay and Leave Update. Experts from the Office of Compensation Administration described the proposed expanded use of sick leave for family care purposes, availability of new software to compute interest on back pay, OPM research on the advisability of giving Federal employees time off for cancer and other preventive screenings, and OPM's study on the non-foreign-area cost-of-living allowance (COLA) program and the compensation of Federal employees in these COLA areas. The cancer screening report is due in early November 1999 and the COLA study is due March 1, 2000. Attendees learned that several comprehensive 1-day workshops on Federal leave systems will be offered in various locations this fall. For more information on pay and leave, call 202-606-2880, email, or visit their web page.

Originally published on October 1999.