New Personnel Systems Put Premium on Training

With baseball players in spring training, two large government teams are also about ready to see if they can pitch and catch -- and hit and run, too.

The departments of Homeland Security and Defense are overhauling their civil service systems, and their training will be for a game that will go on much longer than baseball's nine innings.

Training, of course, is usually the first thing that gets cut in the government when budgets are tight. But the departments -- in the vanguard of the biggest changes attempted in the civil service since 1978 -- promise to deliver this time. They need to hit a home run because what they do could set a precedent for the rest of the government.

"If there is not a proper training system in place and budgets that allow for adequate training, the system is doomed for failure from the start," Darryl A. Perkinson, vice president of the Federal Managers Association, said in testimony prepared for last week's House federal workforce subcommittee hearing on Homeland Security's new personnel system.

Under the system, managers will review the job performance of their employees. The review will influence pay raises and promotions and could trigger demotions and dismissals.

Perkinson said employees would be justified in worrying about the fairness of performance reviews "if they felt that the manager was not adequately trained." If employees also do not get training, "they are more apt to misunderstand the appraisal process," he added.

The FMA official speaks with some authority. He is a supervisory training specialist at the Norfolk Naval Shipyard, and he has been in management for nearly 20 years. He also knows that big change, like a winning season, requires teamwork.

"As managers and supervisors, we cannot do this alone," Perkinson's statement said. "Collaboration between manager and employee must be encouraged in order to debunk myths and create the performance and results oriented culture that is so desired by the final regulations. Training is the first step in opening the door to such a deliberate and massive change."

The new personnel systems, to some extent, are creating a new layer of work for managers and employees. For most employees, the systems toss out the "pass/fail" grading system -- which did not require much training, if any -- in favor of systems with three or four rating levels. With more rating levels, managers can make distinctions in job performance and propose raises based on the differences.

In addition to training on the rules, there will be training on how to implement the rules and training on the new layers of bureaucracy.

Homeland Security is creating a compensation committee to oversee pay and performance issues. The committee will have 14 members to develop recommendations on how to weight labor markets, salaries and performance data in setting raises. It also will review performance payments for fairness.

The department will set up an in-house labor relations board to deal with unions, set policy and settle disputes. The three-person board basically will replace the Federal Labor Relations Authority, an independent agency that handles labor disputes from across government. The department also will create a three-person review panel to hear cases of employees charged with a "mandatory removal offense." The offenses, which require immediate firing, have not been spelled out.

Employees being suspended, demoted, dismissed or given a pay cut will still be able to appeal the punishment to the Merit Systems Protection Board, an independent agency, through a streamlined process. That means training for MSPB staff and extra funding to hire more lawyers and administrative judges.

Baseball begins with spring training and ends with the World Series in the fall. But autumn probably will be the start for a season of change at Homeland Security.

Ron James, the department's chief personnel officer, said the performance management system will be introduced in the fall, with extensive training provided during the summer. New pay changes will be phased in over the next three years, he said, allowing ample time for training.

That approach, James said in his testimony, will ensure "that we have time to build greater employee understanding and confidence in how the compensation systems will be administered."

Diary associate Eric Yoder contributed to this column.