Pay, promotions, punishment: Are you next?

If you take the departments of Defense and Veterans Affair out of the mix, Uncle Sam doesn’t have much left. In size, mission, image and budget, they are two of the best-known federal operations. And two of the most admired and/or hated.

Because they are so big and so important, Congress has ordered the DoD and the VA to get their act together. Fast. And when (and if) they do, there’s a good chance your agency, and your job, will be next starting in 2017.

Defense is working on a major overhaul of its appraisal system. Among other things the proposed new system will mean more work for managers who will be required to evaluate and confer with employees several times a year. The idea, among other things, is not to surprise employees as now happens under the dreaded 365th-day system. Instead of being hit with a bad review, the idea is that workers would be evaluated and updated several times so they’d better know where they stand before the actual final appraisal. That new three-tier system would determine when and if workers get bonuses and quality step increases. Or fired.

The VA is under heavy shape-up-or-ship out pressure from Congress. VA has been in the political doghouse since a couple of hospitals were found to be cooking their medical books. Official records (which were made up) made it appear that needy, in some cases desperately ill veterans were getting prompt treatment. In fact in some cases they were on waiting lists for months. Congress also wants members of VA’s Senior Executive Service held to a higher standard. The changes proposed by VA are less draconian than some proposals coming from Congress. But it would set up a peer review board for senior medical professionals who get into hot water.

Some insiders think that although we’re only months away from the November elections Congress will take some action to change the personnel systems at the Pentagon and the VA. Today at 10 a.m. on Your Turn, I will talk with two of those insiders, Federal News Radio’s DoD correspondent Scott Maucione, and reporter Nicole Ogrysko, who has been overseeing congressional coverage of the situation at the VA.

You definitely don’t have to work for Defense or the VA to be interested in this, because however and whenever it rolls out, odds are you are next on the list.

Nearly Useless Factoid

By Michael O’Connell

The nursery rhyme Peter Piper was first published in Peter Piper’s Practical Principles of Plain and Perfect Pronunciation by John Harris in 1813.

Source: Wikipedia

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