Trump administration orders federal agencies to provide lists of underperforming employees

[Betty Boom]

29. Memories

Oh God, what an enormous waste of time and energy GPRA was. One of my worst memories of Federal service.

I only ever put an employee on a PIP one time, and they richly deserved it. Looking back, I can honestly say it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if someone like that would’ve been easier to terminate. She caused endless chaos and bad will among the entire staff and many many hours spent documenting violations and incidents.

However, I also had employees where I graded them less than satisfactory on perhaps one element on their performance plan. Someone like that deserves the chance to improve. What worries me is that these goons will come in and look at something like that and say that person is someone that needs to go. I can see this, causing all kinds of problems with performance evaluation and managers being torn about how to use the process in a way that helps employees improve, but also protects them at the same time.