Managers often pre-select employees for promotions, survey finds

When federal supervisors fill job vacancies from among employees in their own agencies using the merit promotion process, they often already have someone in mind for the position and usually end up selecting that person, according to a soon-to-be-released study by the Merit Systems Protection Board. MSPB's Merit Promotions Survey 2000 examined how the federal merit promotions process is applied. MSPB collected the survey information last year, but the full report will not be released until later this year, said John Palguta, MSPB's director of policy and evaluation. "We did not go into it with any preconceived notions and we found a mixed bag [of issues]," Palguta said. Among the more interesting findings, MSPB's study found that 46 percent of employees hired to fill vacancies at agencies already worked for the hiring agencies. Supervisors told MSPB that 54 percent of the time, they had already identified candidates for openings in their agencies by the time the vacancies were announced. "It would appear that some of the actions are not based on the merit promotion process, but rather a selecting official who knows the applicant already, is familiar with his or her work and believes his or her decision is merit-based," Palguta said. "We've got a long history of employee dissatisfaction for these sorts of preselections." In fact, 76 percent of survey respondents said they had not been selected for at least one promotion because the selected official had someone else in mind. There's always going to be a need for a competitive promotion process, for example, when moving from a non-supervisory position to a supervisory position, Palguta explained. "Just because you've been a great technician--maybe the best in the office--doesn't mean you're going to automatically have the skills needed to be a supervisor." But the survey results suggest that the federal government may need to look at a different hiring approach that doesn't require a competitive process each time, Palguta said. "I think what this data tells us is that we might want to take a look at how the process is working, in some cases at least," Palguta said. "It's not the quality of the [manager's] selection, it's the process itself that raises questions."