Excellence in Government

Federal agency performance appraisal systems are required by law to establish objective performance evaluation criteria “…related to the job in question for each employee or position under the system.”  Many federal managers, union officials and frontline employees misinterpret this statutory language to mean that every employee at every agency in the same position must have their performance evaluated against the same set of criteria, and that performance expectations and evaluations have to focus exclusively on the individual employee without taking into consideration the context in which the employee works.  Neither of these interpretations are accurate. 

For example, assume that an important context element for a common federal position in a particular agency is the work group and task teams or committees of which the incumbent employee is a member.  If successful job performance in that position in that agency requires that the position incumbent work effectively with immediate co-workers and with other employees on ad hoc and standing teams or committees, then that agency-specific collaborative performance expectation may be reflected in one (or more) of the performance evaluation criteria established by the agency for the employee’s position.  And it may be used by the employee’s manager to rate the employee’s performance.

Further, the applicable statute and policies do not limit employee performance evaluation criteria solely to position-specific quantitative outputs.  Agency managers are allowed to take into account how as well as “how much” and “how fast” when rating the performance of subordinates.  Performance appraisal criteria may include behavioral standards that specify the expected manner of job performance, such as “collaborates and cooperates effectively with other members of the work group and task teams of which the employee is a member.”  If it happens that collaboration with others is by far the most important single element of an employee’s job, then that job element may be designated as a “critical element” and weighed correspondingly more heavily than any of the other job elements in the performance rating.

The “behaviorally anchored rating scale” is a tested and proven mechanism for ensuring that employee performance is observed and assessed objectively in relation to a behavioral performance standard.  In this particular example, such a rating scale would provide several concrete descriptions of “collaborative and cooperative behavior” corresponding respectively to varying degrees of falling short of, meeting and exceeding satisfactory performance on that context-sensitive performance standard.  The supervisor rating the employee’s performance would decide which behavioral description on the scale most accurately describes how the employee worked with other group, team or committee members during the performance period in question.

Common misconceptions such as the belief that performance standards for the same position must be fixed across all agencies or that context factors must be excluded from employee performance appraisals underscore the need for performance appraisal training among federal managers, supervisors,  employees and their union representatives.  Ongoing federal efforts to tie pay to performance only heighten the urgency and importance of providing such training.

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