United States

Office of Personnel Management

Office of Merit Systems Oversight and Effectiveness

Digest of Significant Classification Decisions and Opinions

March 1999

No. 22-08

Standard:	General Attorney, GS-905 (October 1959)

Factor:	Level of Responsibility

Issue:	Crediting of Stature

Identification of the Classification Issue

The issue, which arose in an OPM oversight division's adjudication of an appeal, concerned the proper crediting of "The Effect of Individual Stature in the Profession" provision in the General Attorney Series, GS-905, standard. The standard provides instructions for crediting the provision. The agency, having determined that "stature" should be credited to the appellant, awarded an additional grade beyond the grade produced from applying the grade-level conversion chart in the standard.

Resolution

In adjudicating the appeal, OPM agreed that the appellant had met the requirements in the standard for attaining stature in the appellant's area of expertise. In discussing how the stature provision should be credited in the position's evaluation, the standard states:

In such cases it is appropriate . . .to provide some credit for it in evaluating the position. This extra credit will not normally, in itself, be worth an additional 'bonus' grade. However, in evaluating positions which meet the requirements of a level of responsibility with respect to some elements of evaluation and fall short with respect to other elements, this effect of the individual on the position should be recognized in evaluating it to the higher responsibility level, which in some cases will make a difference of one grade in the conversion to grade level.

Crediting of the stature provision, then, is done through the assignment of a level to the evaluation factor, Level of Responsibility. This factor contains four elements evaluated separately. Thus, when some elements are evaluated at a level, but the evaluation of the other elements falls short, crediting of the stature provision should be done by evaluating the Level of Responsibility factor to the higher level. In other words, crediting of the stature provision sways the rating of the Level of Responsibility only in borderline situations. Since OPM found only one element equating to a higher level than the other three (Level C), it concluded there was no borderline situation. Therefore, OPM concluded the factor was properly evaluated at Level C.