DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative

The New DOD Merit-Based Pay Initiative
The Joke's on America

by

Tom Molloy

In this article the term DOD includes Army, Navy and air Force employees as well as those employed by the Pentagon.

I was a federal employee for almost 40 years. Contrary to the mythology that emanates from presidents, cabinet secretaries, political appointees, many congressional representatives and senators, the vast majority of federal employees with whom I came into contact worked very hard. I was in a professional job series and my colleagues and I consistently worked 10 or more hours per day without compensatory time or overtime pay. Often my job called for travel and we were generally required to travel on weekends (our time) and received no extra pay. I am not complaining. We accepted this as the normal state of affairs. We also learned to ignore politicians denigrating the federal bureaucracy. For some reason or other, bashing federal employees is a form of macho demagoguery that gets votes. According to the mythology, the typical federal employee is lazy, ignorant, inept, apathetic, whining clock watcher who can’t be fired. Republican politicians are particularly prone to promulgate this mythology and many ordinary American citizens believe it.

Several months ago I found myself on an airplane seated next to a retired executive, who had held a very responsible position in a large corporation. He was vehemently opposed to government waste (i.e., all forms of welfare for the poor, but not tax deductions for business lunches). He was convinced that federal employees were goldbricks. I didn’t try to argue with him. It would have been nugatory. However, when he paused for breath, I remarked that it was shame that social security checks always came late and for the wrong amount; Medicare kept screwing up payments to doctors; and so many letters and packages were lost in the mail. He looked at me quizzically and said he had been lucky because he didn’t have such problems. I said neither had I. I added that we were fortunate because the federal employees taking care of us were the few who weren’t inept and lazy.

He will go to his grave muttering imprecations against federal employees.

From what I gather, when you cut through the hype, the goal of the new DOD performance-based pay initiative (PBPI) is to shape up the good-for-nothing DOD civilian employees. The PBPI is replacing a system that certainly needed improvement, but was not the disaster that demagogues proclaim it to be. It is an urban legend that federal employees can’t be disciplined or fired. Managers can and do discipline and fire employees. The benighted or malicious who claim that federal employees can’t be fired are simply uninformed. As a supervisor, I learned that the deck was stacked in my favor. Given a few months, I could have fired anyone I supervised, irrespective of their level of job performance.

As I understand it, under the new systems individuals will get no annual pay increase unless they meet certain “objective” standards. To the uninformed, a group that apparently includes Secretary Rumsfeld, this DOD initiative will ensure that the beleaguered American taxpayers get full value for their money. But, folks, there is one problem that is a show stopper. The premise for a merit-based pay system is the ability to render an objective evaluation of each employee’s performance. This premise is a fantasy. No one knows how to objectively rate job performance for employees in soft skill jobs—those jobs in which judgment, discretion, creativity, tact and initiative are so important. In a word, this whole gut-wrenching implementation process is bullshit.

I have had some humbling experiences with the elusive goal of developing “objective” soft skill performance standards. In the 1980’s the Department of the Air Force initiated a new appraisal system for its civilian employees. The goal was to establish objective performance standards for each civilian position and base the annual appraisals on employee adherence to the standards. Easier said than done. In my organization there was some enthusiasm for this initiative. However, we soon realized that none of us knew how to develop such performance standards for our cadre of professional employees. The AF told us that we would receive training in the preparation of performance standards.

Sure enough, a colleague and I were sent to a three-day workshop to receive the required wisdom. Upon our return, we were to be the performance appraisal gurus who could provide guidance to our colleagues. I was an enthusiastic supporter of the new initiative. The workshop leader was a very charismatic ex auto industry executive, who was reportedly an expert in performance measurement. The first day we discussed the deficiencies of the current appraisal system and the hypothetical benefits of the new appraisal system. On the morning of the second day, we were divided into several groups and assigned the task of developing objective standards for a secretary. By the end of the day, we had merged the input of each group into a single product. Our expert praised our performance standards and showed us how close they were to the actual performance standards of his secretary.

Up until this point, I had, as is not my wont, kept my counsel. I now felt compelled to speak out. The “objective” performance standards we had produced were crap. I asked the expert if he honestly

Tracked the average number of typos, grammatical errors, punctuation errors, format errors his secretary made per page?

Calculated the average time it took his secretary to retrieve a document from the files?

Knew the percentage of documents his secretary misfiled?

Kept track of the percentage of telephone calls his secretary directed to the wrong office?

Counted how many times a quarter his secretary failed to exercise proper (objective?) tact?

Tracked the number of times his secretary took a few extra minutes for breaks or lunch?

Calculated how many words per minute his secretary typed?

His answer was evasive and I told him that, in my opinion, anyone who actually measured a secretary’s performance by such standards was an anal-retentive nut and couldn’t keep secretaries long enough to learn their names. He responded to my ad hominem attack in kind. He pompously informed me that he was the expert and implied that I was just a humble functionary privileged to be in his presence. I responded that I now had some inkling of the reason for the decline of the American auto industry. A puerile exchange, to be sure, but I had a feeling of catharsis.

The next day we were again divided into groups and told to produce objective performance standards for a hypothetical first-level supervisor. To make a long story short, the standards we produced were far from being objective. We produced performance standards heavily dependent on the judgment of the rater. That is to say that our “objective” performance standards were as objective as the German Democratic Republic was “democratic”.

I had anticipated that our expert would show us how to fashion our crude attempt into an objective performance measure. Instead, to my chagrin, he suggested a few trivial changes and blessed our standards. I left this workshop with feeling of uneasiness because, having had the benefit of this workshop, I was supposed to show colleagues how to write objective performance standards.

After this fruitless workshop, I began to read about performance standards and learned that no one knew how to develop objective standards for soft skill jobs. One author (I forget who) summed it up succinctly: “In soft skill fields, the supervisor is the standard.”

This limitation notwithstanding, every supervisor of civilian employees in the DAF was told to shut up and prepare “objective” performance standards. We gave it our best shot and the new system was implemented. Despite the fact that the standards were subjective, the new system was tolerably efficient.

The advocates of this new performance evaluation package had advertised it as a muscular, kick-ass, 500 pound gorilla. When the customers opened the package, they found an emaciated monkey. Nevertheless, despite its imperfections, the system worked reasonably well. Annual appraisals were rendered. Employees were given awards, promoted, downgraded or fired. All the while, the usual chorus of demagogues relentlessly portrayed the federal service as rife with goof offs; screw ups, and goldbricks who are immune to being fired. Of course, there are inefficiencies in the system. But anyone who has recently taken a commercial flight, rented a car, had cable TV problems or dealt with an insurance company can tell you that the private sector also has some inefficiencies.

I am certainly not opposed to a system that truly rewards merit. The problem is that the technology to objectively evaluate merit in soft skill jobs doesn’t exist. When you promise employees to deliver an objective system and deliver a highly subjective one instead, employees become cynics. My civilian friends working for DOD, have told me that the cynicism has already begun. There are few true believers. These veteran employees recognize bullshit when they see it. They fear that the new system will be worse than the one it replaces. <>

Many DOD civilians are in the unenviable position of having a military boss (MB) who knows little or nothing about their job. The reason for this phenomenon, which in the private sector is generally regarded as managerial lunacy, is officer bloat. There are far more officers than needed to fill the combat and combat support positions that are normally considered military jobs. DOD assigns the large number of excess officers to jobs that would normally be performed by civilians. To be successful, the incumbents of these jobs should have a level of expertise many MBs simply don’t have. This creates the bizarre scenario of professionally ignorant MBs supervising civilian experts. This daffiness wreaks havoc throughout DOD. There is a double whammy. Not only do MBs generally perform miserably in these mid-level and senior management positions, they also block access of qualified civilians to these positions. The MBs come and go like drive by shootings. The civilians learn that the basic operating principle is “a uniform trumps all civilian experience and knowledge”. The word “morale” elicits snickers from civilian employees in the clutches of an ignorant MB. In DODland, you will find the world’s greatest cynics.

Ironically, many of the problems with the current appraisal system spring from the failure of transient MBs to comprehend it and use it correctly. Under this new PBPI system, these ignorant, sometimes arrogant, MBs can, with the stroke of a pen, deprive civilian subordinates of significant income. Ignorant MBs often resent the best and the brightest civilians, who are living reminders of their own ignorance. To avoid ego shattering encounters with the best and brightest, they shun them. They tend to ally themselves with the unit’s dullards, who often have developed sophisticated ass kissing skills in order to survive.

If Secretary Rumsfeld wants to fix a problem, the infestation of MBs unqualified for their jobs would be a good one to tackle. This problem is the source of many of DOD’s legendary inefficiencies. Imposing another faddish appraisal system on the civilian employees is a sham.

The best and the brightest civilians I know fear that the dullards are going to emerge victorious under the new PBPI system. They predict that the dullards will not only survive, but will thrive. When you have an ignorant boss, the worst offense you can commit is to be right. Ask General Shinseki.