In the future, more federal employees and their managers could see their disputes resolved by a jury of their peers.

Proponents say peer review is an efficient, fast way to resolve workplace conflicts and review panel’s decisions are rarely overturned. The method already is practiced by a few agencies, and earlier this month, Office of Personnel Management Director John Berry suggested creating a peer review system governmentwide as part of a sweeping civil service reform effort he is pushing. Peer review panels, he said, could streamline the resolution of workplace disputes between managers and employees down to a matter of weeks, instead of months.

“It’s simpler, it’s easier to use, and cases are resolved at an earlier, informal level,” said Jodi Glasow, executive secretary of peer review services at the World Bank, which adopted such a system in July.

Under the system, a panel of randomly selected employees — at some organizations, these could also include managers — hear both sides of the story and decide whether management fairly followed the rules. No lawyers are involved, and the employee and manager present their own cases, said Harvey Caras, president of Caras and Associates, a Maryland-based firm that helps companies and some government agencies set up peer review systems. Caras said his company has set up such systems at the Transportation Security Administration, the National Institutes of Health, Best Buy, Macy’s, and hundreds of other companies.

Panels interview the employee and manager separately and privately, Caras said, and there is no cross-examination. It’s important for the employee to be able to talk freely about the manager without the manager’s presence intimidating the employee, he said.

“The process is designed to be nonconfrontational,” Caras said. “The manager is not listening to everything [the employee] has to say. We think that’s an important part of the process.”

Panel members then vote by secret ballot to decide if the manager applied the policy or practice properly and consistently. Panels do not rule on the validity of the policy or practice, and their decisions do not set any precedents beyond the case in question.

“These are juries, not legislators,” Caras said.

But Caras said panels do distribute “learning points” in some cases to help other managers understand how to avoid making similar mistakes, and sometimes make nonbinding recommendations on policy changes. Most panels hear cases on disciplinary actions, and about one-third of all cases heard involve terminations.

Such panels are slightly less likely to rule in favor of employees than other appeals processes, Caras said. His studies show 18 percent of peer review cases are ruled in favor of the employee, he said.

By comparison, the Merit Systems Protection Board, which hears federal employee appeals of management decisions, rules in favor of the employees about 20 percent of the time, according to John Crum, acting director of the board’s Office of Policy and Evaluation.

“Most employees don’t like it when another employee doesn’t show up to work or [doesn't] do their job properly,” Caras said. “They don’t have a lot of sympathy [for those employees], but they also don’t want management to make up the rules as they go along and be inconsistent.”

Under peer review, managers are required to abide by a panel’s decisions. However, an employee who chooses the peer review process does not give up his right to pursue his complaint elsewhere, such as before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Caras said. But Caras said he’s never heard of an employee who lost at a peer review panel finding success elsewhere. A favorable peer review decision would strengthen management’s case, he said, since the manager can argue that a jury of the employee’s peers backed up management.

Companies that adopt a peer review system have a 62 percent drop in the number of unfair labor practice lawsuits filed, Caras said. And employees are more likely to pursue a complaint through peer review than through other avenues.

Glasow said peer review panels work well at the World Bank because panel members know the details of how the organization works, whereas an outside judge or arbitrator is typically unfamiliar with those details.

But Crum said empowering employees who are unfamiliar with legal matters might present problems.

“When you think about the jury system [in courts of law], you also have attorneys and judges who are providing the [legal] backdrop through which jury decisions are made,” Crum said. “A jury [in peer review cases] may not be operating with an understanding of the law and there may be technicalities. I’m not saying it’s a bad idea, but we have to think about it to make sure we’re dealing with these subtleties.”

OPM’s Berry has suggested that peer review panels created in the federal sector might have the power to take punitive action against managers who have acted egregiously, up to and including firing them. But Caras said that would be a big mistake.

“You don’t want to put people in the position where they’re disciplinarians,” Caras said. “What if the panel fires someone who shouldn’t be [fired]? That puts the company [at risk] of a lawsuit.”