Federal Government Pay System

Federal Government Pay System

Introduction

Despite the introduction of a merit-based pay component, the United States federal government pay system, over the last thirty years, has not been operating as desired. There are several key problem currently associated with the system that form the main obstacles in the way of achieving high productivity. Favoritism in appraisal system of different agencies, the lack of accountability and consequences for substandard performance, lack of reward for the optimal performance, the shortage of tools and strategies to effectively deal with the issue of the poor performance and difficulties with modifying the seniority-based civil service structure are some of the major problem that mar the productivity in federal government agencies. Different projects aimed at reforming the compensation and benefits system in various government departments including the US Department of Defense have demonstrated such improvement in efficiency in increasing performance and productivity that one could gain valuable knowledge from these projects. There are also a number of other alternative human resource systems that are being successfully experimented in the ever increasing number of government agencies and departments.

There have been different proposals, over many years, to reform the federal pay system. The proposals ranged from minor modifications in the discharge of the General Schedule system such as training managers to more substantial and core changes in the compensation and introduction of, somewhat, weak performance based systems. But the problem remained unchanged, that is, the lack of adequate system in order to account for performance. Performance is of critical importance for federal government employees, but in the current federal pay system, performance does not seem to matter very much as the trends of increase in the salaries of federal employee clearly demonstrate government's indifference to performance and optimal productivity. This paper aimed at exploring the problems and challenges associated with the conventional pay system currently prevalent at federal government departments and agencies. The paper also suggests a pay for performance alternative which would account for performance of the employees in order to increase their productivity. According to this writer, the federal government should introduce such a comprehensive compensation and benefits system that would, not only reward those with optimal performance, but also penalize those employees who are performing poorly (Musell, 2002).

Discussion

Challenge

The fundamental nature compensation and benefits system that forms the basis for the current federal government pay system was developed in the late 1940s and early 1950s, when a large proportion of federal jobs consisted of clerical work and other technical operations that were technologically not so advanced. Whereas, in the today's technologically advanced world, the government work demands highly skilled and specialized type of work, yet the federal government still uses —with minor changes— compensation and appraisal system that were developed to address the issues of pay systems prevalent in the times of file clerk, lagging far behind private sector who is greatly benefitting from the modern technology and computer systems (Bureau of National Affairs, Arlington, 1989).

This difference, far reaching effects, between the federal pay system ...