An Inside View of Federal Employee Evaluations

Congresswoman Harriet Hageman (R-WY) recently had a townhall in which an organized mob booed her for supporting the DOGE federal government reductions. During that event, a woman purporting to be a federal employee spoke of losing her job, even though she had the “highest marks” in her performance reviews. I will be frank here… this federal employee is most certainly a scammer… and that’s because the federal government has a serious problem with “performance inflation” on evaluations, something I have seen countless times.

About 70% of all federal employees are on the GS system, and use an evaluation metric similar to TAPES, which is the standard evaluation system for the Army.[1] This system evaluates employees on a five-point scale. On the TAPES system, a “3” means an employee “meets expectations,” that is a “3” employee is a typical, average employee. A “1” is an employee who “walks on water.” Only a few percentage points of federal employees should ever get a “1.”

And yet, over 80% of Army civilian employees get a “1.” Huh? Are we to believe that over 80% of federal employees working for the U.S. Army “walk on water?” While what I know involves Army civilians, I suspect that the rest of the federal workforce has the same inflation in their performance evaluations.

When I was a supervisor of an Historical Office, I had one regular employee and one intern assigned to my office. I attempted to give the intern assignments, initially with wide latitude. But as she failed to perform the job, I tightened down the latitude to the point that I was almost having to micromanager her. When I did her evaluation, I gave her a “3,” in large measure because I had just started evaluating her and gave her the benefit of the doubt. She actually deserved at least a “4” (i.e. needs significant improvement), and probably a “5” (failed to meet standards).[2]

My supervisor went behind my back, changed her evaluation to a “1,” and then sent it to her to sign. He didn’t even talk to me about it. I was furious, but could do little about it. I learned a long time ago that you can try to fight these battles, but you will ultimately lose. Instead, I bided my time. Soon enough, my supervisor was temporarily reassigned and I had a new boss… and he was more willing to hold the line with me. It turned out that my intern was violating her signed contract to hold her job, and as a result she was terminated. To hold the line, I had to engage in a work-around.

What is really sad about this story was that my regular boss, thinking that he was doing this intern a favor, in reality hurt her career. Had he held the line with me, she may have changed her behavior to become a decent employee. Instead, she remained a slug and suffered the consequences. As an aside, it should be noted that this intern was the daughter of one of our Senior Executive Services chiefs, and my supervisor was scared to cross blades with him. After all, one’s authority is only as good as the boss above him who will back him up.

Of course, it also didn’t help that this intern’s appointment into my office, which happened before I took over, violated federal regulations and law regarding Prohibited Personnel Practices. But whatever… who cares about those things… you know, like nepotism and law?

But, much of the problem about “performance inflation” is that bonuses, such as cash or time off awards, are based on the evaluations. If a supervisor strives to give “honest” evaluations, and rates most of his people “3s,” they will be denied any bonus, which will be given instead to those who get the inflated “1s” and “2s.”  Probably the only way to deal with this is to get rid of the bonuses all together. But if that happens, then many employees will wonder why they bust their rear end to get a higher rating, and as a result could become “quiet quitters” in the office, doing just the minimum to get by. After all, many senior slots are given to retired Army colonels, who transition to the civilian side and scoop up promotions that could go to hardworking civilians. Talk about killing the morale of a middle manager burning the midnight oil to do a good job with the expectation of getting promoted.

Frankly, I don’t know if I have solution to this problem. But one thing is certain. Don’t ever… ever… let a federal employee get up in front of you and say “I got fired because of these cuts, even though I’m a top-rated employee.” Cry bull… and call them out on it. Almost all of them get “1s” on their evaluations, so who should care?

I certainly don’t, and neither should Congresswoman Hageman… or anyone else for that matter.

Russ Rodgers has several books published on Amazon.

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[1] Total Army Personnel Evaluation System. I believe this system is still in use to this day, under AR 690-400, though there have been efforts over the years to modify or eliminate it, such as NSPS and AcqDemo.

[2] I know… some readers are going to be hard on me here, and say “you should have held the line on this!” I understand… so read on….