Congress' attack on the federal workforce

What is the recipe for low morale in the workforce?  While all agencies have experienced similar problems with employee morale, being the largest and most visible of the federal workforce, take the Department of Defense civilian workforce as an example.  Start by not having effective incentives for high performance.  Make the main metric for performance how quickly you spend your budget, including punishment for not spending all of it; to the point where cost savings are definitely not rewarded.  So what is left when it comes to raises and bonuses?  Rather than a merit based system, we are left with a time based system; everyone with the same time gets the same benefits almost regardless of performance.  In fact, what do you get for doing a good job; more work.  

That is a bit cynical given the pride that comes from doing a good job; providing the Warfighter with the best equipment possible, helping them be the best in the world, and helping to save lives.  Unfortunately, that focus on the outcome can be overshadowed.  To that end, direct leadership spent years trying to change this culture, while refocusing on the outcome, only to be undercut by outside forces.

Add on a severely high operational tempo, for 12 years, where failure directly affects those Warfighters. Imagine constant pressure from inner desire to support those Warfighters, direct leadership and customers for more than a decade. And after successfully meeting those challenges, and while attacking the next challenge, indirect leadership and public sentiment spends their time telling the workforce they are overpaid.

The irony, of course, being relative to their peers they are in fact underpaid.  Some of those indirect leaders use statistics to prove the workforce is overpaid, but fail to mention the data set includes many job categories which do not match the knowledge, skills and ability of this workforce.  After establishing this misinformation as fact, freeze their pay for a few straight years.  Then, cut their pay because of leadership’s inability to develop an effective budget.  Not once, but potentially twice.

Ultimately, after over a decade of strenuous hard work, by degrading and withholding pay from the federal work force, Congress has created an environment where the only thing keeping the best and brightest in their current position is loyalty; loyalty to their command and mission.  Even loyalty has its limits.  Should this continue, the workforce responsible for spending trillions of dollars, due to lack of knowledge, skills and ability, will be unable to effectively perform the tasks necessary to meet such an awesome responsibility.  In the end, Congress could be much, much worse than any outside enemy.