The Office of Personnel Management has issued final rules to ensure that agencies make better use of performance rating information when deciding which employees lose their jobs during reductions in force.
Four factors determine an employee's retention standing when RIFs are conducted: tenure of appointment, veterans' preference, length of service and job performance. Agencies rate each employee in each category to determine who gets bumped in the RIF process.
OPM's new regulations state that when it comes to job performance, agencies can only give employees "retention credit" for actual performance ratings on record. Retention credit is used to add extra years when calculating seniority.
To assign retention credit, agencies average the employee's three most recent performance evaluations. Under the old rules, agencies assigned employees with fewer than three actual ratings in four years an assumed rating of "fully successful" for each missing rating. Under the new regulations, only actual ratings will serve as the basis for calculating credit. No assumed ratings will be used.
The new regulations also address the fact that many agencies now conduct performance reviews in other ways than the traditional five-step grading system. Some, for example, now use pass/fail systems. In cases where an agency is conducting a RIF with a group of employees who have been graded under different performance measurement systems, the new regulations state that the agency must develop its own formula for assigning credit based on the different rating systems.
The regulations do not alter the relative importance of performance as it relates to other retention factors, such as veterans' preference.
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