Ways To Improve Federal Management and Use of Productivity Based Reward Systems

GAO studied the concept of reward systems based on productivity standards to identify ways by which federal work-force productivity can be improved.

GAO found that: (1) productivity-based reward systems have had positive effects on productivity in certain work situations, and there seems to be potential for greater use of the concept in the federal government; (2) current Office of Personnel Management (OPM) guidance on incentive awards for federal employees does not adequately cover productivity-based reward systems; and (3) some of the federal agency initiatives do not include key features of well designed productivity-based reward systems, while others include features or have had experience that could be helpful to the design and operation of other agencies' systems.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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