Report - Government Executive

Element
Definition
Supervisory/Managerial
Nonsupervisory Employee
Employee
supervisors and managers are
expected to focus on the development
and productivity of their subordinates
by setting clear performance
expectations, providing ongoing
coaching and feedback, evaluating
the contributions of individual
employees to organizational results,
and linking performance ratings and
rewards to the accomplishment of
those results.
Despite apparent satisfaction with the goals of the DCIPS performance management process,
managers and employees raised concerns that the standard performance elements are difficult to
rate and introduce a high degree of subjectivity into the rating process, with an inappropriate
impact on the rating’s final outcome. For example, some employees complained that use of the
“Personal Leadership and Integrity” element is inappropriate and difficult to judge. Further, it
was not clear to some employees why the performance elements receive so much weight in the
performance rating process (40 percent).
There has been a growing trend toward introducing behavioral measures into performance
evaluations; the challenge is to strike the appropriate balance between them and objective
measures. For performance-based compensation systems, it is critical that the balance tilt more
toward clearly documented and measured aspects of performance to provide a defensible basis
for determining performance payouts. OUSD(I) will find it difficult to gain full acceptance of
the performance management system if it retains the performance elements as they are currently
structured.
Performance Standards
Some employees believe that the general standards for summary rating levels are biased toward
work that directly affects the agency’s intelligence mission. Although this is not intended, the
descriptions of Successful and higher performance imply that only work directly impacting the
intelligence mission warrants higher ratings. For example, an Outstanding rating requires that an
employee’s overall contribution result in an “extraordinary effect or impact” on mission
objectives.
The rating descriptions, shown in Table 3-3, have caused employees in the Professional and
Administrative/Technician Work categories to question whether their work can ever be rated at
the highest levels since it does not directly impact the mission, especially when these employees
are in the same pay pools with those in mission-oriented work categories, such as intelligence
analytical and operational work.
39