"A Trophy For Everyone!" Is Now The Rating System At U.S. Govt's Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Of course, we taxpayers will be paying for that -- to the tune of over $5 million in increased pay...some of which will go to slackers who won't get rated according to their performance.
Scott Geer writes at The Daily Caller:
One government agency has decided that the results of employee ratings are too discriminatory, and eliminated the process entirely. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced on Monday that it will now award all employees the highest rating regardless of performance reviews.The CFPB, which oversees transactions in the financial sector for the federal government, decided to no longer conduct employee reviews because there were just too many apparent "significant disparities" between the races, ages, and locations of its employees.
According to American Banker, this new policy is set to cost over $5 million dollars, as it will now pay employees as if they received the highest evaluation score. The previous system ranked staff on their performance from a scale ranging from one to five, with five being the best score a CFPB staffer could receive after a review of their work on the job.
...Some have found this new policy to be misguided and believe it to be an overcorrection that will ultimately punish top performers in the department.
"Treating the agency's highest-rated employees the same as its lowest-rated ones is the opposite of fairness, Thomas Brown, a columnist for Bankstocks.com, wrote in a Wednesday piece lambasting the decision. "Hard-working, conscientious workers (and, yes, the federal government does have those) deserve to be treated better and paid more than workers who, say, persistently show up late and turn in shoddy work."
That's why a lot of people are in government - it's a cop-out from having to face the market for talent.
Canvasback at May 26, 2014 11:31 PM
Isn't the CFPB the agency that was created recently by some financial "reform" bill?
Cousin Dave at May 27, 2014 6:37 AM
Since this agency's budget is not subject to Congressional oversight, there's not much that can be done about it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/post/why-the-cfpbs-funding-is-guaranteed/2012/02/15/gIQA1pAQGR_blog.html
Conan the Grammarian at May 27, 2014 8:24 AM
the net effect will be that the best people leave to get better pay, and the sup par can't be gotten rid of. I suppose that;s the point.
SwissArmyD at May 27, 2014 10:00 AM
"significant disparities" between the races, ages, and locations of its employees?
Me thinks someone just noticed that the employees with the lower ratings have a tendency to share certain characteristics, and this is a preemptive move to head off a discrimination lawsuit.
V-Man at May 27, 2014 10:07 AM
I have mixed feelings about this.
For one, evaluations often have more to do with the evaluator than the person being evaluated. People tend to score either leniently or critically. Sometimes evaluators are thus required to follow a curve. What if everyone really is doing a good job or conversely, what if company culture has adopted a two martini five minute late culture?
I see it all the time in education. Some jobs are simply hard to evaluate. My job would be so much easier if I was judged on my knowledge, lesson preparation, and completion of paperwork. This things could be fairly easily assessed and controlled. My assessment is also impacted by student attention, student motivation, student attendance, student test scores, and my responsiveness to student's learning and behavior.
Some things are easily measured with government employees such as tardiness and absenteeism. Other things may not be so easily controlled such as revenue. Are there ways to suss the things the employee can and cannot control?
Jen at May 27, 2014 1:40 PM
SwissArmyD has the right idea... although most government employees have base pay on a fixed scale, so it's not that the high performers will suddenly be denied higher pay. Rather, everyone will get the same bonus (although some agencies peg the bonus to salary).
I'm shocked that this qualifies as news. When I was in gov't we had a change in our rating system because the results indicated that bosses didn't like to down-rate employees. Why might this happen? Well, the employees had union protection, the bosses did not. The bosses could be accused of discrimination (and were) and could risk their jobs because the government is not allowed to discriminate. Or look like they discriminate. Or be accused of discriminating. Etc.
I was only there for a bit after the changes, but I doubt that it did anything. It's not in the bosses' best interest to pay for performance when THEIR bosses will get pissed and/or pulled in front of TVs/Congress or fired if there's an accusation. In a corporation, the bosses are worried about the bottom line, not Congressional hearings.
Shannon M. Howell at May 27, 2014 7:44 PM
Leave a comment