The talk in government these days is about abolishing the General
Schedule and replacing it with customized pay-forperformance
systems. The General Schedule, however, is
unlikely to disappear soon, so what can government executives
and federal human capital professionals do to increase employee
productivity and organizational performance under the current
federal
pay rules and performance appraisal guidelines?
That question was the focus of intense discussion at an October 4,
2007, seminar at the National Press Club inWashington,DC, hosted by
American Universitys Institute for the Study of Public Policy
Implementation
in conjunction with the Government Consulting Services
practice ofWatsonWyattWorldwide.This forum, which brought together
government executives and federal human capital professionals
from a range of federal departments and agencies, featured
presentations
by James Perry, chancellors professor in the School of Public and
Environmental
Affairs at Indiana University-Bloomington;Toni Dawsey, assistant
administrator for human capital management at the National
Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); and Colleen Kelley,
president of the NationalTreasury Employees Union.The seminar was
held because of growing government interest in understanding how to
improve individual employee productivity under General Schedule
operating
rules and in light of recent setbacks in implementing pay
forperformance in the Departments of Defense and Homeland
Security.
Public-Service Motivation
The seminar began with a discussion of the ways
public-sector employment differs from that in the private
sector and how federal agencies can capitalize on job
candidates interest in public service (especially that of
first-time job seekers) when recruiting and hiring.
Working in the public sector is different than working
in industry, and there are ways to leverage that to advantage
in public-sector recruitment practices, noted James
Perry, who has spent his professional life investigating
what motivates people to pursue careers in the public
sector and who has done extensive research on the public-
service motivation of job seekers and holders in the
United States and other countries.
He said studies show that the work motivations of
public employees are based on a different set of values
than one finds in industry or even the nonprofit sector,
adding that understanding these motivations and incorporating
them into federal recruitment and hiring
processes is critical in attracting a new generation of
workers to public service. Moreover, he said federal
agencies must make better use of employees public-service
motivations to stimulate good job performance and
employee engagement once individuals are actually on
the job.
Perry argued that as government agencies brace for
a retirement tsunami in the next few years and gear up
recruitment and hiring efforts to deal with it, they must
do a better job of appealing to job candidates sense of
public service and to other intrinsic motivatorssuch
as altruism, the desire to make a difference, and interest
in giving back to ones community and country.This is
how you attract highly talented,motivated employees to
careers in the federal government, said Perry.
As part of such efforts, agencies need to gauge the
suitability of individuals backgrounds and interests for
the agency to which they apply, said Perry.While faceto-
face interviews are critical, so too is understanding a
job candidates past activities that reflect public-service
motivation. For example, volunteering in the community,
giving blood, or helping the poor indicate otherdirected
behaviors that show an inclination to
public-sector service, he said.They also suggest that a
persons motivation to seek federal-sector employment is
a desire to meaningfully contribute to society, not simply
a desire for job security.
Perry said federal managers need to develop a robust
profile of the ideal public-sector employee. For example,
Government employees are more likely to
volunteer to do civic things than their counterparts in
the private sector, he said. They may also have a
propensity to blow the whistle on illegal or unethical
behaviors in organizations. These character traits and
others need to be fleshed out as part of the federal recruiting
process.
Previewing the nature of public-sector jobs for candidates
is also important, said Perry, because it helps them
understand the nature of an agencys mission and work
before they are hired. Realistic previews promote realistic
post-hiring expectations.They can also facilitate the
rapid engagement of new hires, shorten the time required
to make them fully productive employees, and
help them establish a strong, compelling connection between
their everyday job and the overall mission and
goals of their organization.
Designing an agencys recruitment and hiring
processes to adequately screen and vet job candidates for
public-sector jobs can be costly, said Perry, but these costs
are recouped when the processes reduce downstream rehiring
and retraining expenses and help ensure better job
fit, faster employee engagement, and better productivity.
Performance Metrics
Perry next suggested that agencies incorporate public-
service behaviors and values as performance metrics
in their performance management systems. For example,
public-service values such as concern for the public
welfare, stewardship of public resources, and
responsiveness to taxpayers could all be used to assess
individual job performance against agency goals and promote
desired employee job behaviors and personal alignment
with the organizational mission, according to Perry.
Such metrics also can be used to forge strong personal
bonds between public-sector employees and the organizations
mission, especially when employees are given
a hand in creating the performance metrics by which
their work is judged.Employee participation in the appraisal
process,both through providing input into what is
assessed and providing self-assessment of ones performance,
sends important signals about social belonging
and identity and affirms ones perceptions of being a
member of a group that has shared values, said Perry.
Pay for Performance
In criticism of current efforts to promote a pay-forperformance
culture in federal agencies today, Perry said
he feels its important to design compensation systems to
emphasize long-term job attractiveness to employees and
to avoid performance-related pay that crowds out intrinsic
motivations associated with public service and
valuing the work itself.He noted that even private-sector
research indicates that pay for performance doesnt always
yield desired outcomes (improved performance) and
that in the public-service arena, it can actually be detrimental
to employee job commitment and motivation.
Paying people on the basis of short-term job performance
can be a disincentive to some public-sector
employees because they arent drawn to public-sector
jobs for the paycheck, Perry argued. Instead, their motivation
is serving the public good or making a difference
in the lives of othersnot competing with coworkers
for rewards based on external motivators.There is firm
evidence that many people who seek jobs in the public
sector are motivated by so-called other-directed behavior,
he said, not by monetary gain.
Perry noted that in the public sector the subject of
pay is important, but that offering public-sector salaries
that are competitive with the private sector is more important
than imposing external work values (and variable
rewards) on individuals who are, in many cases, driven at
work by internal motivations and values. Lets face it,
were not paying enough right now to attract the best
and brightest to government.Thus, making pay contingent
on short-term performance may not be as important
to high performance as ensuring that general pay
levels for government jobs are roughly comparable to
whats available in the private sector.
Social Significance
Still another step public-sector leaders and managers
can take to leverage the public-service motivation of
public-sector employees on the job is to increase the perceived
social significance of public-sector work, according
to Perry. He said that field research shows that
stressing job significance and non-task-related values
such as allegiance, teamwork, professionalism, and determination
can be powerful motivators to many who work
in the public sector. For this reason, he said, more and
more organizations are paying attention to the importance
of incorporating pro-social or principle-based
behaviors and values into the design of performance appraisal
systems.
The U.S. Marine Corps, for example, uses a system
of performance ratings (fitness reports) that includes not
only technical proficiency but also measures of personal
conduct.A study of government employees meanwhile
shows that managers in high-performing work units
often develop performance appraisals that measure not
only personal goals, but alsogoals of principle centered
on attributes such as honesty, teamwork, commitment
to the customer, and being a good steward of resources.
Still another studythis one of teachersfound that
they are largely motivated by their ability to see and
know they are responsible for improvements in student
performance and working collaboratively with peers.
Perry told attendees that an agency can promote the
social significance of public-sector work in many ways,
such as embedding discussion of public-sector values
into formal job training, new employee orientation,
mentoring, and in-processing programs and activities.
Top agency leadersthrough their actions and words
can create a clear line of sight from the top of the organization
down to the work unit level by emphasizing how
the work of individual employees impacts overall agency
and mission accomplishment.
First-Line Supervisors
First-line supervisors can also help communicate the
significance of public-sector work to employees and help
rank-and-file employees feel their work contributes to
the overarching mission and goals of their organization,
said Perry.The frontline supervisor plays a critical translation
role in interpreting individual employee motivations
and helping align individual employees with
larger-gauge team, departmental, and mission goals, he
said. Supervisors also play important roles in administering
informal rewards to employees that reinforce specific
job behaviors.
Notwithstanding that, Perry conceded, in many
cases, federal managers lack the necessary communication,
managerial, and people skills to help employees relate
to and align themselves with larger agency goals and
objectives. Moreover,Public-service jobs often are notstructured
in ways that allow employees to see the prosocial
impact of their work. For both reasons,Perry said
public-sector jobs should be structured such that employees
can see the downstream benefits of their work.
To this end, agency leaders should give employees the
opportunity to provide input into public policy development
and implementation. Identifying the beneficiaries
of employees jobs (their stakeholders, customers,
and service recipients), creating opportunities for direct
contact between employees and beneficiaries, and providing
clear channels for service beneficiary feedback all
demonstrate these benefits.
Early Engagement
Perry argued that, if done right, socializing new employees
to an agencys culture and missionthrough the
actions of supervisors, training, and other activitiescan
benefit the agency by fostering tight employee alignment
with agency goals and mission.The best way is to
leverage a new employees natural desires to fit into an
organization when they first come on board,he said.Recent
studies of organizational socialization suggest that
socialization begins within a short period of time of
joining an organization, as new members are frequently
very eager to learn appropriate behaviors and to fit in.
Perrys other suggestions for capitalizing on publicservice
motivation during the recruitment and hiring
process include developing work systems and processes
that enhance employee self-determination and encouraging
employee input into goal settingboth of which
encourage personal empowerment and job ownership.
Research on goal setting has increasingly emphasized
that in complex settings, employee input into setting
goals not only encourages workers to find more effective
strategies [to do their jobs] but may also energize behavior
and increase employees perceptions that they can
effectively accomplish their goals.
Perrys research on how public-sector managers can
better leverage public-service motivation in employees
will soon be published in a book, Motivation in Public
Management: The Call of Public Service. The book is
coedited by Annie Hondeghem from Katholieke Universiteit,
Leuven, Belgium, and is scheduled for publication
in May 2008 by Oxford University Press. It will
outline specific tactics and strategies that government
managers can use to make interest in public service a
centerpiece of their recruitment, retention, and human
resource management activities.
NASA Employee Motivation
Like Perry,Toni Dawsey, assistant administrator for
human capital management and chief human capital officer
at NASA, also had employee public-service motivation
on her mind as she spoke to seminar attendees.
Dawseys job at NASA is to help the agency transform
itself for new mission challenges that lie just ahead, including
the retirement of the space shuttle in 2010, completion
of the International Space Station, and rollout of
NASAs Constellation program,which will develop new
space vehicles to explore the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
Addressing all three challenges involves a huge mission
shift for NASAfrom its current focus on operations
(shuttle launches and missions) to one on research
and development to implement the Constellation program.
The shift depends largely on NASA employees,
whose prized technical, scientific, and engineering skills
will be critical to all three endeavors.
In the next few years,NASA must retain much of its
in-house technical talent to safely execute the remaining
shuttle missions.At the same time, it must begin to transition
certain shuttle program employees into research
and development jobs associated with the Constellation
program, recruit more critical-skill workers to fill jobs as
part of future Constellation flight operations, and manage
targeted attrition efforts across the organization
all this without impairing operations or lowering
employee morale.
A team of officials and representatives from various
NASA centers of operation is now mapping the skills
and competencies of the shuttle workforce to migrate
shuttle program employees to Constellation work,
phased to correspond to key milestones in all of NASAs
current activities, according to Dawsey.Their work has
enormous implications for NASAs future mission capability,
she said.
As the agencys mission focus shifts,Dawsey wants to
keep employee morale and engagement up, in part because
employees face job uncertainty and relocation possibilities
in some cases and the need for job retraining in
others. High workforce morale has always been a hallmark
of the NASA work culture,Dawsey said.Thus, she
wants to ensure morale and engagement are maintained
in a time of critical agency mission transition.
Staying in Touch
NASA is using employee surveys and intensive supervisor-
employee communications to keep employeesinformed about changing
mission and job requirements,
to find out what people find meaningful in their work,
and to continuously monitor employee concerns during
the transition.The agency is also offering special job
details and back-to-school opportunities to many NASA
line employees so they can update their skills in key technical,
scientific, and engineering areas.
At the same time, NASA has taken steps to
strengthen its technical and leadership depth. It has developed
an organization-wide approach to leadership
development to support long-term succession planning
and executive development to create a prolific new leadership
pipeline to serve the agencys mission needs far
into the future.The initiative involves systematic workforce
planning and analysis, career path setting, formal
agency-wide leadership development programs, formal
and informal coaching and mentoring programs, and
leadership training.
At the core of NASAs leadership development and
workforce reshaping activities is the development of
strong career paths. Dawsey told attendees that NASAs
efforts to set career paths are intended to
assist managers and supervisors in developing talent
within the agency and recruiting new talent to
meet future mission needs;
support the long-range goal of facilitating greater
movement of employees across NASAs various
centers and different scientific, technical, and engineering
disciplines as mission needs dictate; and
help employees broaden and strengthen their skills
to prepare for potential new work assignments and
increasingly higher levels of responsibility.
By setting career paths, developing leaders, coaching,
and other activities, many employees will be prepared
to easily transition into new positions when new
Constellation systems development work comes online,
according to Dawsey.
Aggressive Recruiting
Workforce reshaping efforts are also taking place on
the recruitment front. Dawsey told seminar attendees
that the agency is working hard to attract a new generation
of employees and take advantage of strong public
interest in NASA as an exciting place to work.We have
hundreds of applications for every science and technology
job we have, she said.
To help it vet and recruit the best external job candidates
for new and future jobs, NASA is using special
hiring flexibilities approved by Congress.These flexibilities
include offering enhanced recruitment, relocation,
and retention bonuses to critical-skills workers, making
expanded use of term appointments, and offering enhanced
travel and annual leave benefits to new hires.All
these tools are considered vital to filling many missioncritical
NASA jobs.
The agency is also vigorously recruiting students.
NASAs ten centers are using programs such as the Student
Employment Program and Federal Career Intern
Program to recruit new hires into the agency. The
agency also has cooperative education (co-op) programs
in place at many universities and, in many cases, is reaching
out to underrepresented population groups to find
appropriate job candidates for new NASA jobs.
As NASA transforms itself to prepare for an exciting
array of future space missions, the agencys concern with
keeping employees motivated is evident in the approach
it is taking to restructuring efforts and to reshaping the
makeup of its workforce. Dawsey said that keeping employees
informed and helping people prepare for new
job and challenges (in some cases, to transition out of
the agency) are key to ensuring that the agency is able to
fulfill its public mission in the years ahead.
Touching the Mission
Is Dawsey worried about NASA retaining (or acquiring)
the talent it needs to achieve an ambitious
agenda of future space missions?To some extent perhaps,
but she quickly adds:NASA employees are among the
most committed in government largely because the
work of the agency is so public and high profile, and because
agency employees have so many individual ways
they can personally touch the mission of the agency
everyday on the job.
Dawseys words are backed up by recent hard numbers.
NASA recently ranked fourth on the 2007 Best
Places toWork in the Federal Government survey, conducted
by the Partnership for Public Service (PPS) in conjunction
withAmerican Universitys Institute for the Study
of Public Policy Implementation (ISPPI.) The agency won
especially high marks from PPS and ISPPI for
fostering teamwork on the job (second of twentynine
agencies surveyed),
offering employees strong training and development
opportunities (second), supporting diversity (second),
offering performance-based rewards and advancement
(second),
promoting work/life balance (fourth),
displaying effective leadership (second), and
providing workers with a good match between
employee skills and organizational mission (fourth).
Despite the employees giving the agency high
marks as a place to work, Dawsey said that she and her
human capital colleagues arent resting on their laurels.
She said the agency cant afford to be complacent about
workforce planning needs today or in the future.Too
much is at stake. She and her human capital colleagues
remain focused on working with the agencys top leadership
to determine NASAs human capital requirements
far into the future; attract (and retain) the best scientific,
engineering, and technical talent to work in the agency;
and build on NASAs strong mission legacy of the last
forty yearsone of which she said all Americans are
proud.
NASA is filled with highly educated, dedicated
employees at all levels who love what they do and are
inspired by the challenges and exciting environment,
said Dawsey.Our challenge today is to align our workforce
with our new mission, to strengthen the technical
and leadership excellence of our employees, and to reshape
our workforce to better serve future mission requirements.
Union Perspective
The last speaker to deliver remarks at the seminar
was Colleen Kelley, president of the National Treasury
Employees Union. Kelley expressed admiration for the
way NASA is keeping employees motivated and engaged
at work during a time of tremendous mission change at
the agency. She went on to say, however, that not all federal
agenciesor managersare doing as good a job of
engaging and motivating employees, to the detriment of
employee morale and productivity. Many federal employees
today dont feel valued, she said.In fact, a lot of
them feel theyre treated like widgets in their organizations.
This is a shame, Kelley added, because federal
employees want to see top performers rewarded and also
want to see issues of poor performance addressed. But
this isnt happening, she says.
Available Rewards
Kelley noted many federal agencies dont use the full
complement of General Schedule reward and incentive
mechanisms available to them. There are many things
agencies can do to recognize and reward top performers.
For example, they can make greater use of Quality Step
Increases (QSIs), cash bonuses, repayment of student
loans, time-off awards, suggestion awards, and other
things. The problem is few managers know these reward
and incentive tools exist.And if they do, they get
little support or training in how to apply them with their
people.Kelley added that many agencies also fail to fully
fund award programs or to make them a significant part
of the employee evaluation process.
Reward Inconsistency
Kelley also said that when it comes to rewarding
frontline employees for superlative job performance,
consistency is lacking across agencies.It all depends on
the individual agency and manager, she said. Some
agencies have award ceremonies where they recognize
employees with QSIs or Commissioner Awards.These
kinds of awards ceremonies get a lot of visibility within
the agency, and are very much respected by employees.
In other cases, however, agencies give awards to
management officials and executives, but not to frontline
employees. Or they give people awards in secret or
without sufficiently publicizing them to all employees in
the agency.When awards are given to people in secret,
whether intentionally or because of a lack of publicity, it
sends the signal that the giving of the awards isnt really
valued by the manager or agency. It also sends the message
to employees that the agency doesnt really want the
general employee population to know what it takes to
excel in that agency.
Kelley cited examples of two federal agencies where
she said performance standards for awards arent explicitly
communicated to employees or the agencys compensation
system and performance management system
have been disconnected from one another. In both instances,
it has led to problems with employee morale and
job satisfaction and in one case to a lawsuit charging job
discrimination.
Authority, Standards, and Creativity
Kelley noted that in too many cases today, federal
managers and supervisors dont have real authority to
use money for employee rewards, and, in other cases, rewards are
given to people without being tied directly to
clear, formal job requirements and performance criteria
that everyone in an organization can understand. She
emphasized that agencies do themselves a disservice
when they fail to communicate clear performance standards
to employees and to acknowledge employee contributions
on the job.Managers should be proud to give
awards to top performing employees [because] it sends a
very positive message to all employees about whats valued
on the job.
Kelley also said federal managers should exercise
more creativity in giving employee awards.This would
help bolster employee productivity in many agencies.
Agencies could create more opportunities for employees
to be detailed to new or different jobs, to higher
grade jobs, or to jobs that make specific use of an employees
talents, she said. Such awards would do a lot for
morale and employee motivation and help with individual
career planning.However, such stretch assignments
are rare in government, she said.
Conclusions
On the basis of the speakers seminar remarks, we
conclude the following:
Federal agencies can leverage existing employee rewards
and incentives more effectively and creatively
than they are now. In some cases,more effective
management training is required to fully acquaint
line managers with available reward and recognition
options and with the effective range of managerial
discretion in using these performance tools.
Agencies can be more creative in their use of nonmonetary
rewardssuch as trainingto provide
incentives to employees and give people practical
career development options. NASA is using employee
training and leadership development, not
only as tools to reshape its workforce, but also to
provide incentives and align employees with future
mission goals and priorities.
Agencies must intentionally include public-service
values and motivations into the screening and hiring
of future job applicants. Doing so is likely to
attract a highly motivated and prequalified pool of
job candidates to federal service in the years ahead,
which will be critical in replacing aging baby
boomers as they retire in large numbers.
As agencies hire new employees, they can do more
to incorporate public-service values and principles
into new employee orientation and in-processing
programs, training programs, and formal and informal
coaching of employeesat all levels.As James
Perry pointed out, such socialization activities
and the values and behaviors they reinforce in new
hirescan alter the extent to which they bond and
identify with the goals and mission of their agency
from the moment they walk in the door. Such efforts
also serve to quickly captivate new hires and
make them effective and engaged employees.
Top government leaders should create a clear line of
sight between the mission of their organization and
the roles individual employees play in helping the
agency achieve it.This engages and motivates employees
to perform because they see how their
everyday jobs relate to the organizations overall mission.
Careful and deliberate leadership communication
with employees can dramatically impact the
degree of employee engagement with mission goals.
Finally, first-line managers and supervisors can motivate
and engage their subordinates.They serve as
a vital link between frontline employees and overall
mission goals. In large bureaucracies, its very
easy for average employees to feel their contributions
to the organization dont make much of a
difference, especially if their managers dont work
to overcome such perceptions. For that reason,
first-line supervisors play a crucial role in bonding
individual employees with the goals, values, and
ideals of an agency or department. First-line supervisors
not only influence how employees view
their jobs and identify with the organization, but
also reinforce the social significance of public-sector
workthe ways that conscientious federal
workers contribute to the smooth functioning of
our government and to the effective administration
and implementation of our laws, statutes, and
public regulations.
The General Schedule will be around for the foreseeable
future.The insights offered by Perry,Dawsey, and
Kelley can be used in better managing federal workers,
providing them crucial (often nonmonetary) incentives,
and helping them connect and identify with the goals
of their organizations. Public-sector employment differs
from that in the private sector and calls for management
and motivational practices that reflect that distinction.