The Seventh Pay Commission’s recommendation to link the annual salary hikes of Central government employees to their performance may be good in theory but tough to execute without reforming the appraisal system which has degenerated to a farce
The pay commission has recommended "introduction of performance related pay (PRP) for all categories of central government employees based on quality results framework documents, reformed annual performance appraisal reports and some other broad guidelines."
In actual practice this will be extremely difficult to implement because not all posts in government are amenable to quantification of results and assessment based on the framework documents and other objective yardsticks. The government's activities cover a very wide spectrum of sovereign functions as well as developmental schemes and programmes all of which cannot be quantified or assessed against a scale which can be adjudged as "performance."
In the past, in all the pay scales there used to be a stage called efficiency bar (EB) which was meant to filter out the poor performers and block their further increments. However under pressure from the service organizations and the employees who were at the receiving end, this provision has long been dispensed with. It is this abandoned practice which is now sought to be re-introduced in a more stringent form annually by the above recommendation to link pay with performance based on annual performance appraisal reports.
The present commission has also proposed that annual increments not be granted to those employees who are not able to meet the benchmark either for modified assured career progression (MACP) or for a regular promotion in the first 20 years of their service. Performance bench marks for MACP has also been recommended to be made more stringent from ‘Good’ to ‘Very good’. Here again there is likely to be stiff opposition from the service organizations to these stringent proposals at the stage of first acceptance by the government. We can also expect soured relations across the services and unsavoury reactions from affected employees against their superiors whom they perceive as unjustly blocking their due promotions and career progression by giving unfavourable entries.
This has been a major problem while considering linking of pay, increments and other periodic raises in remuneration and incentives to various categories of government employees and officers. Even the annual performance appraisal reports have degenerated into a farce, more so under the state governments.
For instance in Kerala the reformed annual performance appraisal reports(PARs) introduced in the place of the old annual confidential reports (CRs) have been perceptibly less effective both in reflecting the actual calibre of the reportee or the quantum and quality of his output for the year. Here the performance appraisal is covered by 14 questions each of which has been graded into boxes indicating outstanding, very good, good, fair and poor. While this may superficially appear to be a very objective and error-free method of assessing an employee's work, what has actually transpired is that the employees, particularly in the secretariat, expect their superiors to grade them outstanding in all these 14 columns.
The annual performance appraisal reporting has degenerated into the employee concerned going and canvassing with the superior for 14 out of 14 highest grade entries. The immediate superior is often put under pressure to concede such unreasonable requests and it has become a competitive exercise for getting maximum high grade entries.
In the Kerala government secretariat there used to be a system of a “moderation committee” under a senior secretary with two other secretaries to "moderate" any patently biased and unjust adverse entries and gradings in the confidential reports on any employee so that he will get justice and the prejudices of a particular superior may not adversely affect his promotion prospects. But since the advent of the new performance appraisal report system, the function of this moderation committee has become the reverse in as much as it is the exaggerated gradings that had to be moderated to a more reasonable level. As a consequence this strange "moderation committee" which was there only for secretariat employees, has become superfluous and has since been abolished.
The governments of the day are put in a very challenging situation of having to find a viable working formula to ensure efficiency in government services and at the same time provide safeguards to the employees against the blind prejudices and biases and failure of judgment by individual superior officers in accurately and objectively assessing the integrity and work of the subordinates. This formidable challenge has meant the shelving of the recommendations of successive Pay Commissions and Administrative Reforms Commissions for linking performance with pay and annual increments.
The present method of the so-called ‘objective’ quantification of the subordinate's qualities and performance introduced into the performance appraisal report system has not vindicated itself. The system of giving descriptive entries for the conduct and work of subordinates is a superior system. This provides for accommodating the vast diversity of human personality and performance in respect of different individuals and their divergent duties in the wide gamut of government departments. The assessment so made by the immediate superior reporting officer can easily be evaluated for its accuracy and objectivity by the next superior reviewing officer and the still higher receiving authority.
There have been umpteen cases in which any injustice done to the reportee can be and have been rectified by one or the other higher authority. And if the reporting authority has been fair and correct in his assessment there will be no occasion for complaint from the employee or any need for rectification by the higher authority.
(Author is former Registrar General of India and Census Commissioner, Government of India, and former Chief Secretary, Government of Kerala)
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