Senior executives sound off on pay, performance issues

Pay is still a sore spot, accountability at the top of federal agencies is spotty and being a government leader often means being the subject of allegations of wrongdoing, federal executives said in the government's first-ever survey of its Senior Executive Service.

The survey, conducted jointly by the Office of Personnel Management and the Senior Executive Association (SEA) went out last August to 6,538 SESers. The results were released Friday. Overall, 2,521 responded, a 40 percent response rate. OPM and SEA wanted to get a feel for how federal managers and supervisors weigh in on topics like executive qualifications and development. OPM plans to use the results to shape future SES policies and programs.

"It seemed to us that it was almost criminal how little we knew about the career executive service in contrast to how private industry deals with their executive corps," said Carol Bonosaro, president of SEA.

Executives who answered the survey said offering more compensation was the best way to improve senior executive recruitment and retention. Among the respondents, 50.5% said they are not satisfied with their salaries.

But 38 percent of executives said they were satisfied with their pay. "I don't know who these people are," Bonosaro said. A possible explanation she offered is that executives at lower pay levels may be satisfied with their pay because they have received annual pay increases in recent years. Higher level executives, meanwhile, have not seen increases every year because of a cap on their pay.

Executives' responses regarding performance management-how managerial performance is evaluated-suggest room for improvement. According to the survey, 21 percent of executives' individual performance plans are more than a year old. Nearly 10 percent of respondents said they don't have an individual performance plan at all.

Last month, the President's Management Council (PMC) issued a plan for each agency to draft performance agreements with its executive leadership team during the next appraisal cycle. The plan is part of a top-level push to improve the performance of the federal workforce.

"No one should have standards that are older than a year," Bonosaro said.

Meanwhile, 68 percent of SESers said they have fired poor performers, in contrast to the results of governmentwide employee surveys that have found many government workers think managers do a bad job in dealing with poor performers. "If you would listen to the rhetoric you would think no one ever dealt with this at all," Bonosaro said.

On the flip side, nearly 60 percent of SESers said that fellow senior executives aren't removed from their positions when they perform poorly. About half of respondents said the procedures for removing ineffective executives are too burdensome and slow.

A majority of top government managers, 58.9 percent, said they have been the subject of a grievance. Meanwhile, 54.9 percent have been the subject of an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint. Fear of receiving grievances and complaints was among the reasons managers cited for not wanting to fire poor performers.

Looking at their roles as the highest career civil servants, three out of four respondents agreed that career executives and political appointees work well together. But an overwhelming majority (87.2 percent) of politically appointed SESers said that recruiting more leaders from outside the federal government would improve the SES. Only 39.8% of career executives agreed.

Overall, Bonosaro said the survey didn't tell her much more than what she already knew. "There's nothing that stands your hair on end," she said.

Complete survey results are online at http://www.opm.gov/ses/survey.html.