Afraid of potential backlash from the public, supervisors at the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) manipulated the performance evaluation process for employees in order to avoid awarding raises and bonuses that might be seen as excessive in light of the agency’s fiscal problems.

 

The USPS inspector general found that managers had lowered ratings against the agency’s pay-for-performance system policies, and that they judged postmasters on numeric targets, such as retail revenue and operating expenses, instead of behavioral criteria.

 

During the audit, evaluators told the IG that they were instructed by superiors to make sure employees received average ratings, which would avoid increasing salaries.

 

In a sample case, according to the report, “comments on an employee’s appeal reflect that the evaluator and second-level reviewer concurred that the employee’s performance on one of the core requirements merited an exceptional rating of 15, yet the next level reviewer lowered the rating to a three.”

 

The IG wrote in its report that “arbitrarily lowering employees’ end-of-year ratings can affect employee morale” and that by not complying with policies and procedures, managers compromised “the integrity of the program” and undermined “the accuracy and validity of employee evaluations.”

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

IG: Postal Service Managers Fudged Pay-For-Performance Rules (by Emily Long, Government Executive)

2009 Pay for Performance Program Audit Report (U.S. Postal Service, Inspector General) (pdf)