DoD issues new rules for employee appraisals

By TIM KAUFFMAN

Defense Department supervisors will be required to rate employees based primarily on job objectives set out at the beginning of the year. And they will be rated themselves based on at least one supervisory objective. These are two elements of the department’s newly revised performance management system.

The new plan, outlined to union leaders Feb. 16, was developed because employees who had been trained on the initial plan complained it was too complex and difficult to understand. In January the department announced it would delay launching the new system from February to April 30 to allow for revising the system and training on it.

In assessing employees, supervisors will assign a rating of 1 to 5 for each job objective, with 1 indicating the employee failed to achieve the objective and 5 indicating the employee exceeded the objective and expectations.

The earlier plan required supervisors to use job objectives as an indicator of expected performance, but it didn’t require supervisors to rate each individual’s job objective. Instead, supervisors would have rated employees’ overall performance — using benchmarks of performance expectations for employees at different levels — based on how well they performed in areas such as technical proficiency, critical thinking, cooperation and teamwork, communication and achieving results.

Supervisors still will use those benchmarks to guide their ratings, but now they will be required to rate employees specifically on the job objectives they were expected to achieve.

Supervisors will be able to adjust individual job objective ratings by one point — up or down — based on what Defense calls contributing factors. These factors fall in two categories: solid performance benchmarks and superior benchmarks. Employees who achieve a job objective but perform below the solid benchmarks could have a point deducted from their rating, while those who perform at or above the superior benchmark could have a point added to it.

How the ratings are determined, and what they’re based on, are critical because the average rating from each of the employee’s job objectives will determine how much of a performance-based raise the employee will be eligible to receive.

In addition to briefing union leaders Feb. 16, Defense officials posted a 33-page outline of the revised management system on the National Security Personnel System Web site. Unions didn’t immediately comment publicly on the proposed revisions.

Rules detailing the changes are expected to be issued by the end of February, after Defense officials discuss them with unions, Defense officials said.

Defense officials said they expect to resume employee training on the system in March and remain on track for rolling out the new human resources system to the first group of employees April 30.