**Classification and Position Management, An Overview**

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**October 23, 2003**

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

**Announcer:** These courses are designed to familiarize new supervisors
with their role and to serve as a review for experienced supervisors.
Today\'s course, classification and position management Overview. And
now your instructors, Todd Ryan, Gayle Donahue and Julia Dugan.\
\
T. Ryan: Welcome. Good morning. This is a session on classification and
position management. I\'m Todd Ryan with the National Human Resources
Management Center located just outside Denver. With me today on my right
is Gayle Donahue. She is the \-- one of the senior human resource
specialists from the Oregon/Washington State Office. Good morning,
Gayle.\
\
G. Donahue: Good morning to everyone. I\'m happy to be here in these
record-setting temperatures in Phoenix, and I\'m hoping we\'ll be able
to share with you some awareness of your responsibilities in
classification of supervisors.\
\
T. Ryan: On my left, representing management\'s point of view is Julia
Dugan. Julia also comes from Oregon/Washington state as she is a
district Field Manager from Eugene. Good morning.\
\
J. Dugan: Good morning, Todd. I think a lot of us supervisors and
managers really think classification and position management is somewhat
mysterious. So I\'m really looking forward to learning along with
everyone today.\
\
T. Ryan: Well, there\'s a few things we need to get going here \-- to
know to get going. First, today we\'re using push to talk and that means
that at any time you want to participate, join in, you push to talk.
There is a \-- a few protocol things you must follow. When you do so,
give your name and location. Wait for an acknowledgment from us. There
will be somewhat of a time delay. It\'s not instantaneous communication,
but it\'s pretty close. If more than one chimes in at a time, we\'ll
give a signal that looks like this, a time-out. If that occurs, wait for
an acknowledgment from us. Once again, there will be a slight delay in
the electronics. Not too long, but slight. Also, we want you to
participate today and use \-- draw on your experience, but please
respect the privacy of those you supervise and those around you. Please
don\'t use names in situations where it would be inappropriate. Let\'s
get started with Julia explaining the objectives for today.\
\
J. Dugan: Todd, before I talk about the objectives, I want to make sure
everyone has the reference materials we\'re going to be using today. In
front of you should have a Participant Guide and then you should also
have a supplemental guide. Keep those handy. We\'re going to use those
throughout the day. Now let\'s talk about what our objectives are for
today. You can find those objectives on page 6 of your guide. The
objectives for today are for you to be able to recognize position
management and classification responsibilities; Organize work using
sound position management principles; use position descriptions
accurately; use the classification \-- classifiable differences between
grades and preparing position descriptions; and to communicate to
employees the differences between grades. Todd, why don\'t you share
with the participants what our strategy is for achieving these
objectives.

T. Ryan: What we\'ve built is a fictitious Field Office we call the
Paradise Field Office, and inside this fictitious area is a conservation
area, the Paradise NCA and we\'re going to use that organization and
scenario throughout the presentation today. I wanted to point out that
participating with us today we have quite a range of experience levels,
grade levels. The participants are at different levels in the
organization, and that means there should be a lot of experiences to
share out there ranging from all over the organization. And I believe
that we need to ensure that everyone participates, and we can learn from
each other and in sharing situations and events that have occurred to
you. During this process, please ask questions and participate. That
will make you are learning experience the best possible and everyone
will benefit. Julia, why don\'t you go over some leadership
competencies. Jr. well, this course, as well as all the courses in the
supervisory series, tie directly to OPM\'s leadership competencies. You
can see those leadership competencies on page 6 of your guide. So today
we would like you to think about how effective classification and
position management can help you lead people, lead change, strengthen
your communications, make your organization more results driven and make
you have some stronger business acumen. Right now, Todd, let\'s jump in
and start talking about PDs.\
\
T. Ryan: Thanks, Julia. There\'s a few things you need to know before we
get into the scenarios. First of all, I would like to have you go to
page 7 of your guide. Page 7, at the top of the page, it discusses
positions in terms of the law. Position is actually described in the
law, United States code, as work assigned by competent authority,
that\'s you, the supervisor, and performed by employees. Within the law
there are actually \-- at that level there is no mention made of
position descriptions. Position descriptions are actually specified by
the department in department manual 1400-511. That particular manual is
quite a lengthy document. We have taken highlights from that manual and
reproduced them in your guide beginning at the bottom of page 7. What
I\'d like to highlight here is that the Position Description itself is a
departmental requirement. It carries with it two rather important
issues. It\'s used for two major things, one of which is to serve as a
pay voucher. It also is used to describe an employee\'s major duties.
These two are the major reasons for its existence and it\'s tied
directly to the law which I spoke about earlier.

It\'s critical also, I believe, for you to know that groups of these
individual positions that are described in position descriptions are put
together to form organizations. Each of you has groups of positions that
form an organization. It\'s also important to know what your
responsibilities under relationship to a Position Description. Your \--
you\'re responsible to ensure that it\'s accurate and to also certify
that there is a need to have that work performed. It is HR office\'s
responsibility to assign the title, series and grade to a position.
That\'s known as classifying a position. On page 33 of your guide, we
have included an example of what a Position Description looks like. That
actually is a reprint from the DOI manual, which specifies what a PD is
to look like. In there also it will describe for you what the factors
should look like. This is a good place to review one of the test
questions. Question number 7 is related to what we have been discussing
here. Would anyone like to address question 7? This is from what do you
know on page 4 and 5 of the pretest.\
\
J. Dugan: Just to give you a little incentive, we\'re going to be giving
away a prize for the person who calls in with an answer.\
\
T. Ryan: The question reads who is responsible for describing the work
duties of the position? Any thoughts on the correct answer?\
\
Caller: This is Melissa in Colorado. Everyone at our table thinks it\'s
the first-line supervisor.\
\
T. Ryan: that is correct. The first line supervisor is the person that
is responsible for describing the position, and as I stated previously,
for certifying that the work needs to be accomplished.\
\
J. Dugan: Melissa, we\'ll be sending you out a book on enlightened
leadership.\
\
T. Ryan: I have only mentioned that the Position Description can be used
for. There are many others. Gayle, why don\'t you go into some those
uses.\
\
G. Donahue: By like to add to the two major reasons Todd mentioned.
Supervisors need to recognize the connection between the PD and many
other personnel programs. If you turn to page 8 and 9 in your guide,
we\'ll discuss briefly some of these programs. FLSA, the fair labor
standard act, is very important. The PD helps determine which place you
are in the FLSA determination, and that affects how you\'re paid
overtime and duties while in travel status. The position sensitivity
levels, that\'s also a very important one. That\'s the one where we\'re
going to determine how as an employee, what kind of background
investigation, you\'ll receive. And financial disclosure, from the PD,
HR determines if you\'re going to be required to file a financial
disclosure, and there\'s probably many of you out there that have been
involved in this and I think the dead shrine coming near \-- the
deadline is coming near, is that right, Julia?\
\
J. Dugan: As I remember, the deadline is October 31st.\
\
G. Donahue: We normally see that Field Managers, procurement and others
that affect the public trust. Competitive level codes, that\'s also \--
the PD determines where you\'re going to be standing in reduction in
force. It also affects the position organizational location, your
bargaining unit and special retirement coverage. Most law enforcement
officers and fire positions are covered under special retirement. And
recruitment, that to me is near and dear to me. That\'s part of my
background as an HR specialist, and if you don\'t have a PD, you can\'t
identify the title and occupation that needs to be advertised and
determine the qualifications for positions in recruitment. It also
determines the KSAs you see listed on an announcement. It \-- the PD can
be used in employee orientation, in your EPPRRs \-- the EPPRRs are
important.

It\'s required every year to have one of those. The PD is used in
developing the performance standards. The PD is also used as a
foundation for conduct and performance actions, and unless you have
accurate will he described one, it\'s did he for a supervisor to conduct
one of those. And disability and reasonable accommodation actions. I
added a couple more you\'re not going to see on your screen that we
talked about earlier since we have been here and it\'s workforce
planning and competitive sourcing because of the two very important
things that are going on in the government right now and in your
offices. So I think this is a good time to talk about question number 2.
If you will go in your pre-quiz book, and what page was that on \-- 4
and 5. Ok. What do you believe is the purpose of the PD? Somebody out
there want to help answer that question?\
\
Caller: This is Marion in South Dakota.\
\
G. Donahue: What do you think the answer is?\
\
Caller: Since you went through all the information, I think it must be
E, all of the above.\
\
G. Donahue: You\'re right. It\'s all of the above. It\'s official of
record, it allocates funds, and employees cannot have one in order to be
\-- employees cannot be hired unless they have a PD. That means they
can\'t be promoted or reassigned. So very good. Thank you. Todd, he\'s
now going to talk about classification and the law. Todd?\
\
T. Ryan: Well, as you can probably imagine, there\'s plenty of laws
behind classification. I\'m going to hit only a couple of high points
relative to it, and I want to start with the concept that management has
rights, and if you go to page 10 of your guide, you\'ll actually see a
reprint with some highlighted areas from the law that talks about
management rights. This actually is an important area for you to
consider. You have the right to determine the mission, to determine the
organization, the number of positions and also to assign the work. There
are other rights listed there. I picked those out. Those items are
related to our topic today. That is typically referred to in the labor
arena as numbers, types and grades, and management rights can be
negotiated away at the bargaining table. That typically is not a good
thing to do. You need to know that you have these rights, but you also
need to be aware that you could negotiate them away. Not a good idea in
our opinion.

Also, I\'d like to go into, why should you really care, rather than
concentrate entirely on the law. Towards that end I\'ve put together a
few reasons here. On page 11 you\'ll see a discussion about cost, how
you classify positions has a definite impact on what it costs to perform
the work. Here you see a chart on page 11 that discusses presently what
it costs average grade-wise within the Bureau of Land Management for
each individual grade. You also see what\'s referred to as a fully
loaded cost, which wouldn\'t cost for that grade, including all the
additional expenses that the government must cover beyond salary. As you
can see, there can be a significant dollar amount difference annually
between each grade and, of course, over the period of a career, it can
add up to a considerable amount of money. You as a supervisor are
responsible to ensure that the government gets its work done for the
least cost possible. Another reason why you should care, really, is that
performance issues can be \-- poor classification can cause serious
performance issues. It will affect your employees\' willingness to
perform work if they believe that they are underpaid. And certainly your
job as a manager would be affected by having to deal with an unwilling
employee. Certainly grievances are an issue as well.

When an employee believes that their position \-- their duties and their
position are inaccurate, they can file grievances, and that\'s going to
eat into your time as a supervisor. You\'ll be spending a considerable
amount of time dealing with those kinds of issues. I\'m going to
transition from why should you care back into the concept of \"it\'s the
law.\" There is, of course, a Classification Act. It\'s been in
existence for 80-plus years. That particular law, I show it on page 12,
and I try to summarize a little bit from the law some of the major
principles of it. I really only want to highlight one principle today
and that is the concept of equal pay for equal work. That is one of the
principles that is derived directly from the Classification Act. It also
is a concept that enumerated elsewhere in the law, notably in the Merit
System Principles. You\'ll also see that particular concept from that
\-- in that area of the law, the concept of equal pay for equal work.
The issue of consistency is one that\'s certainly \-- is out there, and
it\'s derived generally from that concept from the law. We have quite a
few references available to you on a website that we\'ve built. The
website address is located in your guide. Most of the laws are there
complete. You can also look them up online in a number of places. This
is a good place to take a look at some of the other questions from the
pretest. Let\'s take a look at question number 1 from your pretest on
page 4 and 5 again. That question is, why is it position classification
important to you? Would anyone like to tackle that one? .\
\
Caller: Joe in Amarillo.\
\
T. Ryan: Hello, Joe.\
\
Caller: I vote for all of the above.\
\
T. Ryan: You\'re absolutely correct. All of those issues are very
important, and you\'re dead on correct. There\'s also another question
in our pretest that is related to this topic, and that\'s question
number 3, and the question number 3 is: Is equal pay for substantially
equal work one of the fundamental principles in the classification
system? Who might like to try to answer that question?\
\
Caller: Well, the correct answer to that one is, of course, true. It is
one of the three most important principles forming the basis for the
classification system. On page 13, at the top of page 13, you\'re going
to see, I mentioned previously, a fake Field Office, if you will. At the
top of that page is the actual office that we\'ve created in scenario
form \-- or to use in our scenarios later on, and of course the area
we\'re going to be talking about is the Paradise NCA, inside the
Paradise Field Office. Let\'s take a brief look at this organization,
and let me tell you something about what I see when I look at this
particular organization. First of all, the organization itself is filled
with permanent full-time employees. There are 13 of them. I notice when
I look at this organization there are \-- there\'s a supervisory ratio
in the Paradise NCA of 1-to-12, 1 supervisor for 12 subordinates. I also
make note that the assistant Field Management, AFM, is in the 401
series. That\'s slightly unique.

I note that there is one interpretive park ranger of the four rangers
present. That\'s the GS-7. I see three contact representatives, all
three of them at grade level GS-5, which is a full performance level. I
also note that there are three outdoor rec. planners at the GS-9 level,
which is the first full performance level for an outdoor rec. planner.
As you can tell just by looking at an organizational chart you can
actually gather quite a bit of information. I want to emphasize that
we\'re going to be using this particular chart and the positions in it
during our scenarios that we\'re going to be doing later on. We feel
like actually applying some of the principles that we\'re talking about
is one of the best ways to learn some things about position management
and classification and we\'re going to be using that organization that
we just looked at each time in the follow-on scenarios. Gayle, in fact,
why don\'t we get to our first scenario.\
\
G. Donahue: Ok. Be glad to do that, Todd. Scenario number 1 is a new
project for recreation for 120 days or less. As supervisors you\'re
normally and regularly faced with having new assignments that you need
to try to pass on to your employees, and they have deadlines with
completion dates. We\'re going to use the Paradise Field Office as Todd
said, and what I\'d like to see you do is use this scenario to show you
a thought process to follow. Also, we\'re going to also look at some
considerations behind that, too. So let\'s take a minute and read the
scenario number 1. It\'s on page 14 of your guide. And we will come back
and I\'ll work with \-- with you through this together. But I want you
to remember something. I want you to keep thinking, \"what should I do
as a supervisor?\" Ok. Let\'s take a minute. .

G. Donahue: Ok. Let\'s look at this scenario involving OHV heated issues
that requires a plan to be developed and as you as a supervisor would
like to assign your recreation planner to this work. To answer the
question, \"what should I do\" let\'s look at the thought process every
supervisor needs to go through when a situation involving classification
recruitment comes along. A thought process really just is a series of
questions you want to ask yourselves and you\'ll see on page 14 there\'s
a series of questions that we\'re going to go through. Whenever you
receive a new project, you should always be asking yourself this first
question: \"how long will this work last?\" This is a very important
question because depending on the length of the assignment is what kind
of April shuns you have as a supervisor. \-- kind of options you have as
a supervisor.

In this scenario it\'s 120 days or less. 120 days or less is very
important because a supervisor as I just said has many options. There\'s
no need for recruitment and that means you don\'t have to advertise the
position, and \-- but I want you to keep in mind that your local unions
and local office policies could impact some of those rules and in
specific locations. So what your number 2 question is, what is the work?
We\'ve already decided in this case it\'s to develop a plan quickly and
it has a deadline. Another question, third question, is pretty big, who
can do this work? Do I have employees on my staff that this can be
assigned to? And in this case we\'ve decided we\'re going to give it to
the recreation specialist. And then another most significant question
is, how complex is the work? As a supervisor, it is very important for
you to understand what the higher graded work is. You need to estimate
this level, but we\'re not going to try to do that right now. Todd is
going to share with you later some information on how to do that. Is
that right, Todd?\
\
T. Ryan: Yes.\
\
G. Donahue: But now the scenario, let\'s assume the project involves
higher graded work and the recreation planner on your staff. So \-- the
two options that we\'ve come up with are you can temporarily promote
someone or you can detail them. In both instances, the temporary
promotion requires that you have a classified PD and other forms that go
with that, and that\'s \"for personnel action and SF-52, and you would
want to have the start and end date for that. In the documentation for a
detail, RH always recommends that you describe the work hopefully in a
PD format, but it\'s not required, but a list of tasks would be
essential. You don\'t have to effect a detail unless it\'s over 30 days
because a detail is not going to really pay the employee. It\'s just an
opportunity for a different experience as opposed to the promotion.
We\'ve provided you with two generic flow charts that are on page 15 and
16, and I\'m going to put one of them up here on the screen so you can
see what I\'m talking about. These are designed to help you in very
similar situations in the future and I would like to turn to Julia is
see what her perspective is that. Does this happen a lot in your mind?\
\
J. Dugan: Gayle, I think it does. Our work changes rapidly, we often
have new issues come up, workloads and listening to your explanation of
the scenario, I thought a detail or a temporary promotion really is a
pretty good way to provide some career experience to an employee, and
it\'s probably a really good way to get some work done quickly, because
you don\'t have to advertise, but I thought, there\'s probably some real
things we should consider. First, we could be giving one employee
specialized experience that could qualify them for a higher job in the
future. There could be some negative impact with some of the other
workgroup members because they might feel passed over, especially if you
didn\'t take the time to explain to everyone what your rationale was in
making the decision to detail or temporarily promote someone. Then I
thought, well, you know, I bet there\'s different policies in different
states that deal with how details and temporary promotions can be
handled and I know I have a union agreement that speaks to it. So I
would want to make sure I touched base with that. But actually I was
thinking, in real world situations, it\'s usually pretty difficult to
really estimate how long a project is going to take. You know, complex
resource issues have to be resolved and collaboration certainly takes a
lot of time. Gayle, what might we do if it\'s more than 120 days?\
\
G. Donahue: You\'re exactly right, Julia. What I\'ve seen in my
experience is that most of these assignments like this do go longer than
120 days, and our recommendation from management, from HR\'s standpoint,
what we recommend to management on a regular basis, is that if you have
any idea it\'s going to be going longer then you advertise the job. So
what we\'re going to do is look at another scenario, which is slightly
\-- a slight change to scenario number 1. It\'s a minor change, more
than 120 days, but it\'s a very big difference. Let\'s change the
scenario. I would like to see you \-- this is a small change like I
mentioned, and in your book on page 17 you\'ll see that it\'s
highlighted on there. That\'s the only change on that scenario, more
than 120 days. So what should I do as a supervisor? Here again you\'re
going to want to go through the same thought process. If the project is
going to take you more than 120 days, there\'s really only one option
here, the action has to be competitive.

So, Julia, you\'ll need to get information into our office to be able to
compete that position for us. You cannot \-- you cannot just choose the
employee you want in this case ahead of time. We\'ll have to advertise
and then make a selection. And it\'s the same for a detail. And the
documentation is similar to what we talked about in the previous
scenario. You\'re not alone with this. You\'ve got your local HR staffs
or your staffs at the State Office that can help you. We can help you
sort out the gray areas in this. And here again n some states, the
policies, because of the union, because of local HR policies or
management policies, temporary promotions may be affected differently. I
think this is a good place to review the correct answer to one of your
questions in the pre-course quiz. Question number 5: when there is a new
project in the office and you as a supervisor would like to detail or
promote someone in your office to the new assignment, when must you
advertise the position? Anybody out there willing to tackle that one?
Gee, I think I might have given you the answer already. Ok. Well, let\'s
see \--\
\
Caller: This is Jody in Havre. C.\
\
G. Donahue: What do you think is the correct answer?\
\
J. Dugan: I think Jody was telling us the answer was C.\
\
G. Donahue: Sorry, Jody. That\'s correct. When the work lasts longer
than 120 days.\
\
J. Dugan: I think by like to give Jody a book for answering that
question correctly. I think you did a little bit of a trick question
there, and the trick was the word \"must\" and Jody caught that. So we
would like to send you out a book called resolving conflicts at work. We
hope you enjoy and that thanks for chiming in.\
\
G. Donahue: Julia, what do you think of that scenario? How close to
reality do you believe that is?\
\
J. Dugan: I think it was a real situation, but in that scenario we were
talking about a project that really is going to take an employee\'s time
100% and I think many new assignments take far less than 100% of an
employee\'s time. I was thinking of an example where I asked an employee
to provide some really specialized technical assistance to a watershed
community group, and that group met twice a month. So the employee had
to go and interact with that group and help them design some projects.
Well, that twice a month was certainly far less than 100% of their time.
So what do I need to think about when it\'s not 100% of their time?\
\
G. Donahue: What you have to remember as a supervisor and manager is
that a major duty is a duty that takes at least 25% of that employee\'s
time and in order to allow for a promotion, it also has to be \-- that
25% has to be higher graded work.\
\
J. Dugan: Ok. So is if a major duty takes up less than 25% of an
employee\'s time, I don\'t need to worry about documenting the work in a
PD or having employees compete for the work; is that right?\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s correct. You really don\'t have to do that. But my
caution would be that if you are going to continue to provide that kind
of work and those kind of assignments and they\'re on a regular basis
over a period of time, that could impact the person\'s position and
their grade. So you need to be cautious about how you do that, and you
might want to share those kind of assignments amongst your other
employees if they\'re available.\
\
J. Dugan: Thanks, Gayle. I think that\'s a really good clue and I need
to watch out for that. Todd, why don\'t we talk about the differences
between grades because I think that\'s sometimes puzzling to
supervisors.

T. Ryan: As we promised, we\'re going to try to show you how you can
determine the difference between grades. Previously in the two scenarios
we\'ve done to this point, we gave you the fact that they were \-- it
was higher graded work. It\'s not that easy. You\'re going to be
required to try to figure out whether the work that you\'ve been given
is higher graded or not. What we\'re trying to do with this next section
is to not teach you how to classify, per se, but rather show you where
to look, give you the method on how classification is accomplished so
that hopefully you would be able to recreate it when you need to and be
able to figure out and look up the difference between the grades.
There\'s plenty of people out there that can help you do that. Most of
you or all of you have an HR office locally or at the state level and
they\'re there to help you in this process if you have any questions.
First of all, there are multiple kinds of position classifications
standards. They\'re written in different formats. We\'re only going to
concentrate on one of them and that one is the Factor Evaluation System.

Over the course of the last 15, 20 years, that\'s the type of standard
that the office of personnel management have published. To assist in
doing that, I would like for you to go to page 18 in your guide. On page
18 what you\'ll see there is a table. The table at the top is labeled
\"professional work.\" Following that there are some additional tables
and those tables are actually of a similar type. It\'s describing
different kinds of work. All work is classified as professional,
administrative, technical, clerical or other. In this case we\'re going
to, for an example, show you what the classifiable differences in a
standard pattern in a professional occupation. So that is the table on
page 18. Gayle is going to assist here, going to be highlighting some
things as I discuss it. First of all, in the Factor Evaluation System
there are nine factors. The factors you see written on the left-hand
side of the table are the nine. That Position Description that you have
is probably \-- has in it factors, all nine of those, and a discussion
about the type of work. These tables follow what\'s known as typical
pattern. Meaning that usually, generally, usually, normally, a PD is \--
the classifiable differences between grades follows these patterns.
These patterns are derived from the introduction to the classification
standards. There are many types of \-- well, let\'s take a look here.
Get ready, Gayle. Under \-- go to the column on the table, professional
work, GS-11 and GS-12. Follow down the columns until you see guidelines,
3. Up to that point all the factor levels have been the same level. At
this point you see that between the GS11 and 12 the factor level
description changed from 3-3 to 3-4. Go to complexity, you see that the
factor level description changed from 4-4 to 4-4 or 4-5. Going to scope
and effect, you see that the factor level description changed from 5-3
to 5-4. What that means is in that a typical pattern, you would expect
to find classifiable differences between a GS11 and 12 in factors 3 and
5 and maybe in factor 4, or in guidelines, scope and effect, and
potentially in complexity.

Now, those factor level descriptions are related to point totals. If you
go back to page 20 of your guide, and we\'ll just look at guidelines
here again, remember the difference between 3 and 3-4, what you find is
that there is a difference between 275 to 450 points under guidelines.
Now, those point totals when, when you add them up, add up to a given
total, and you take those and go to grade conversion table, and that is
how you assign a given grade. That table is located in page 21 of your
guide. Now, the classification standards themselves are written \--
there\'s lots of them, but they all \-- follow these same principles
when they\'re written in the Factor Evaluation System, and like I said,
they\'re done by occupation, where they specifically talk about for that
occupation the differences in each one of those factor levels. Getting
that information should assist you or help you in being able to
determine the differences in grades and all the classification standards
are actually online all the time at OPM.gov.\
\
J. Dugan: Boy, Todd, that was some pretty complex technical charts you
went over there. Can you tell us what\'s really the bottom line here for
supervisors and managers?\
\
T. Ryan: I think you\'re right, I believe that \-- we\'re not going to
make classifiers out of you with that little piece there, but what I\'m
hoping is that we\'re able to show you that \-- where to look to
classify a position. All positions descriptions have with them
evaluation statements prepared by a classifier that should be describing
what their thought process was when they classified the position and
showing these factor level descriptions. That means that you should be
able to take a GS-9PD and GS-11 PD with the factor statements, figure
out where they\'re different and concentrate in that area of the
description to determine what the difference in grade is.\
\
J. Dugan: Todd, I think what I\'d suggest is that you supervisors out
there, when you get a chance, grab a PD, sit down and give it a try
going through these charts, and I\'d even say get your HR person to sit
down with you and lead you through it. I think you\'ll find it\'s pretty
meaningful when you do it once.

T. Ryan: I also hope that you learn that it\'s not quite as subjective
as you might have thought it was. I also believe that those are the
tools that should assist you in being able to figure out how \-- should
be able to assist you in figuring out the difference in grade. Up to
this point we\'ve talked about temporary work, we\'ve talked about
higher graded work, we\'ve talked about where to look to determine the
differences in grades, and we also talked about the classification
process and the law. Gayle is going to answer some very common questions
HR gets in these areas.\
\
G. Donahue: I will, Todd. Thank you. Let\'s look at a few questions and
if you will turn\' page 22 of your guide, frequently asked questions,
I\'m going to briefly talk about those. The first question is what
happens if you think the work is higher graded and HR doesn\'t? Well, I
have to say the bottom line here is it\'s the supervisor\'s
responsibility to recommend what the grade and title and series is and
it\'s HR\'s determination to come up with that final grade. Question
number 8 is \-- this is a good time to talk about question number 8.
This is the supervisor determines the grade of the position. Who would
like to answer that one? Is anybody out there willing to do that? I
think I already prompted you on that again.\
\
Caller: This is Anna from Colorado.\
\
G. Donahue: Hi, Anna from Colorado.\
\
Caller: The answer is false.\
\
G. Donahue: You\'re right. That\'s very correct. Here again it\'s the
supervisor\'s responsibility to describe the employee\'s duties and
responsibilities and it\'s \-- and to recommend to classification what
it should be, and it\'s the classifier or HR\'s role in making that
final determination. Thank you. Another question that we commonly have
is, if you\'re unsure how long the project is going to last, as we were
just talking about a couple projects that were time sensitive projects,
we always recommend, and I think I might have even said this earlier,
that if you have any doubt in your mind that this project is going to go
beyond that 120-daytime frame, then let\'s do a competitive action. The
cautions would be when you don\'t do that \-- or submit an action for
competitive, you might find yourself advertising while someone is
promoted into the job, and then the promotion may end and you still have
your work to complete, and that\'s the hard thing for employees in your
local office to accept, because they see that you\'ve given that
employee an unfair advantage. It can cause grievances. It can cause low
morale and hurt productivity. That really also \-- that kind of scenario
also basically undermines the merit system.\
\
J. Dugan: Gayle, I want to ask you a question here. I know this has
happened to me. It\'s probably happened to a lot of others out there. I
started out thinking the work would be less than 120 days. The work went
on and on, and I have a person that I temporarily promoted, the 120-day
clock has run out. What action do I need to take in relation to that
person?\
\
G. Donahue: Well, like I mentioned, if that 120 days ends, we\'re going
to have to take them out of that promotion and they no longer can be
performing it, or they will not get paid for performing that, and what
you would have to do is submit an action for recruitment and this person
who has been performing this work for the last 120 days is going to have
to apply for the work that they just have been doing.\
\
J. Dugan: So I\'d have to take away both the work and the pay.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s right.\
\
J. Dugan: That could be difficult.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s why we always recommend when you have any doubt,
it\'s getting up to that 90 days, 100 days, we know how work goes, it
goes beyond 120 days. Thanks for that question, Julia. Here\'s the third
question we have. What if the employee is located at another location
during that time? Well, the key points here for this scenario \-- or
this question is that you are not responsible for the Position
Description or the personnel action that\'s associated with that. But
you are responsible for coordinating the beginning and end dates with
that employee and the new supervisor that will be supervising him under
that \-- him or her under that project. So what we\'re going to do now
is Julie is going to talk about a different project \--\
\
Caller: This is Melissa.\
\
G. Donahue: You have a question?\
\
Caller: You talk about, I don\'t know if you\'re going to do it later,
the difference between particularly like in accretions where we have the
duties written in the PD and it essentially quotes directly the class
standard and maybe when we conduct an audit and the audit doesn\'t
support the language in the PD?\
\
G. Donahue: Melissa, we\'re going to talk about accretions in a very
short time. Do we want to defer that until that period?\
\
J. Dugan: I think maybe so, and, Todd, let\'s just make sure that you
cover the audit piece that Melissa asked when we talk about accretions.
Would that work?\
\
T. Ryan: Certainly.\
\
G. Donahue: Is that ok with you, Melissa?\
\
Caller: I would be happy with that.\
\
G. Donahue: Ok. Great. We\'ll move on, then w Julia, and she\'s going to
talk about certifying the PD. Julia?\
\
J. Dugan: Before moving onto some other scenarios, I want to take a few
minutes to talk about the answers to a couple of questions on the
pre-quiz. They may have seemed pretty mundane but they actually are
pretty important. First let\'s look at question number 9 and that
question asked: what is an OF-8. It\'s not some kind of UFO for those
every you who chose that answer. It\'s actually answer D, the optional
form 8 is the PD signature page and this form is required as
documentation for a supervisor certification of PD accuracy, and you can
see somewhat fuzzy OF-8 on page 33. You might want to turn to page \--
the page to that 33, because we\'re going to talk about another pre-quiz
question, and that was one where you were asked a question about signing
paychecks. That was question 10. We asked you, have you as a supervisor
ever signed an employee\'s paycheck? Well, that question threw me a
little bit first because I don\'t know how long it\'s been since we
actually had paychecks. And I don\'t think I ever actual signed a
paycheck, but our automated time and attendance system is called
paycheck, and I certify those every two weeks, and so I thought, yes, I
guess I have signed a paycheck. But actually the real answer is, yes,
it\'s true, that you\'ve signed a paycheck, because every time you sign
an OF-8, you\'re actually allocating funds for the position and for
funds to be given to an employee.

So you\'re really signing the paycheck when you sign the OF-8, and
you\'re not just signing it for two weeks. You\'re signing it for years
to come. There\'s another piece of the OF-8 I really want to direct your
attention to, and it\'s the fine print. I know you can\'t read it in the
copy in your guide, and I\'m not sure I could read on it an original
OF-8 but it\'s pretty important. That fine print states the following:
you certify this is an accurate statement of the major duties and
responsibilities of this position and that the position is necessary to
carry out the functions of the government and that this information is
to be used for statutory purposes relating to appointment and payment
public funds. That\'s a pretty official statement. So as a supervisor,
you need to be sure you know what you\'re certifying and that it\'s
accurate. Well, Gayle, I think that\'s about enough about official forms
and certification. Can we get back into another scenario?\
\
G. Donahue: Sure. We\'re actually going to work on a scenario where
we\'re going to have you all involved in this one and you\'re going to
be working with your small groups in this scenario. This will be, like I
said, your first group exercise. It will cover \-- it\'s on page 24 of
your guide. It\'s scenario number 3. It involves the Paradise Field
Office again. As Todd said, we\'re going to use that throughout the
entire session here. The new \-- and new interpretive work is to be done
by a park ranger. This new work is GS-7 and is less than 120 days. This
is very similar to what we\'ve been working on in the last two
scenarios. Remember to refer back to the flow charts that are on page 15
\-- the flowchart on page 15 to help you answer some of the questions.
Now, I want to show you, make sure that you know that you\'ve got that
field guide, the Paradise chart, up there, and the group we\'re going to
be working with, they\'re the park rangers right here. So that\'s what
you want to be concentrating on. And remember, it\'s new interpretive
work. We\'ve determined the grade level. It\'s GS-7 grade level and you
want to assign it to one of your 5s and it\'s for less than 120 days.
What options are open to you? We would like you to get into your small
groups, identify the options to getting the work done, identify
advantages and disadvantages to those options. So let\'s take four
minutes and work on that.\
\
G. Donahue: We\'re back. I would like you to volunteer, if you would,
and give us some your suggestions on how you would handle this. Who\'s
out there ready to tackle this? I know there\'s a lot of people out
there from Montana. Someone from Montana willing to jump in here? Well,
let\'s see. Idaho has a lot of people on this participant list here.
Remember, we really talked about this in the first two scenarios that we
walked through.\
\
J. Dugan: And we\'ve got another prize available, another great book.\
\
G. Donahue: There\'s a carrot here. Oh, let\'s see. Should I call on
somebody?\
\
T. Ryan: Now there\'s plenty of right answers to this question, so I
don\'t think anybody is going to be wrong on this one if they do
respond.\
\
G. Donahue: I guess I\'m going to have to give the answers? Let\'s see.
Let\'s look for \-- is Janell Bond out there? She\'s from Montana.
Hmm\... Ok, Dee Baxter, how about you, Dee? Well \--\
\
J. Dugan: I think they all went on break and didn\'t come back.\
\
G. Donahue: Did we go to sleep? Ok. Let\'s see, let\'s try Idaho. Who\'s
in Idaho. Gary hunter? How about if I give one of the answers?\
\
T. Ryan: Go for it.\
\
G. Donahue: Well, remember the key here was that it\'s 120 days or less.
So this means you could select one of your \-- one of the park rangers
at the GS-5 level and promote that person for that 120 days. Or you
could detail that person.\
\
T. Ryan: We just have been notified that the push-to-talk network is not
working properly.\
\
G. Donahue: That must be why we\'re not getting anybody to answer.\
\
J. Dugan: Thank heavens.\
\
G. Donahue: Gee, I just thought somebody didn\'t like me out there.\
\
J. Dugan: I guess you\'ll just have to suffer with us talking amongst
ourselves as we go through this. How about you, Julia? I already said
promote and detail one of your employees. What would \-- what would be
another thing you would look at?\
\
J. Dugan: Well, you know, we\'re talking about new interpretive work,
and we wanted to assign it to one of the three current GS-5 park
rangers, but I\'m not so sure that\'s always the best option. I might
think about \-- first I might think about cost, if I spread that work
out among the existing people and made sure I kept it down at less than
25%, I would keep my costs down. But that sure wouldn\'t provide much
career opportunity for someone. But also, if I gave it to the GS-5 \--
to one of the GS-5s, I would certainly want to do what you suggested,
which is to do it competitively because that could be a group where we
could develop hard feelings if someone got a special opportunity.\
\
G. Donahue: I would totally agree. It\'s perfectly legal to do it not
competitively but that was going to be one of my suggestions, even
though it\'s less than \-- it\'s 120 days or less, I think it was 90
days, you can still have a competitive action. And you could, another
option, would be to rotate that assignment between the three 5s that you
have.\
\
J. Dugan: That\'s true. You don\'t just have to think about it 25% of
any given day. It\'s the time in total. So I could have someone do the
work for two weeks or a month and rotate it off to someone else?\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s right. Yes.\
\
J. Dugan: That might be a little tougher to coordinate and it might
require some repetitive training, but I guess that\'s an option.\
\
G. Donahue: That might look more like an opportunity to train people,
too. Of course, it doesn\'t always work for all supervisors.\
\
T. Ryan: I just would like to point out that you as the supervisor know
your people the best, and probably would make \-- could take any of
those choices, depending upon the personalities of the people you have,
realizing that these are people in these occupations and that they do
have feelings.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s correct. Well, we\'ve sure given you a lot of
information up to this point and we\'d like to take about a 10-minute
break. The rest of the course is devoted to having you as the
supervisors and employees in training out there to problem solve the
scenarios. So \-- in classification and position management. So we\'ll
be back in 10 minutes. .\
\
J. Dugan: Welcome back to classification and position management. So far
we\'ve covered Position Descriptions and the certification of position
descriptions, some of the classification law, the differences between
grades and some ways to help you estimate that, and we\'ve talked about
assigning new higher graded work to employees. Well, Gayle, let\'s get
right back into putting that information to work through another
scenario.\
\
As Julia mentioned we talked about in the previous scenarios 120 days,
more than 120 days and less than 120 days. It was for a noncompetitive
detail or a temp promotion. This is going to be scenario number 4 and
we\'re going to be asking you to respond on this one and work in your
small groups. On page 25 you\'ll find scenario number 4. This is the
same scenario as number 3. So you will \-- now need to know the length
of time is more than 120 days. With your small groups come one possible
answers and questions for your grade. I want to emphasize, Todd\'s put
the Paradise Field Office back on the Elmo. We\'re going to be using
this and you can see it\'s the same group of employees we\'re working
with. To summarize a little bit, I would like to remind you it\'s new
interpretive work. It\'s GS-7 level work and you want to assign it to
one of your GS-5s and it\'s for more than 120 days. Get into your small
groups, identify the options and give us the pros and cons of those
options and we\'ll come back in about four minutes to do that. we\'re
back. I would like to apologize previously to the individuals that we
called on, and there were no responses. We found out the push-to-talk
wasn\'t working. Hopefully it\'s working again. If it isn\'t, I would
encourage you to send in faxes to us with questions. So, if it is
working right now, I\'d like to hear from anyone out there that could
come up with their options. At least one option.\
\
Caller: This is Marion and South Dakota.\
\
G. Donahue: I think I heard two people at the same time. How about
Mary?\
\
Caller: I just wanted to bring up possibly something that could be done
if you were looking at cost savings and not necessarily improving the
employee is that you could look at the GS-7 and see if there\'s some
GS-5 duties that could be reassigned and put the GS-7 duties to the
interpretive specialist that\'s already there.\
\
G. Donahue: What great answer. I think that deserves a prize, Julia. I
was going to have Julia take that on because we didn\'t talk about that
in the previous scenario, and that was also the option in the previous
scenario. That\'s a real good one.\
\
J. Dugan: Gayle, I think I would like to give Marion a book that calls
\"in praise of good business,\" because cost effectiveness is part of
good business. Marion, that will be coming out to you.\
\
G. Donahue: I want to repeat what the option that Mary \-- is it Marion
or Mary?\
\
J. Dugan: Marion.\
\
G. Donahue: That Marion had come up with, and that was to assign that
higher graded work to the current GS-7. That\'s a very cost effective
way to \-- for that new assignment.\
\
J. Dugan: But Gayle, I had a point I would like to ask you about on
that. I agree, we already have a GS-7. We can give that work to the
GS-7. This was a maybe rather lengthy project, more than 120 days,
right? That means I have to figure out someway to offload some of that
GS-7\'s work to someone else, right? Because I can\'t expect him or her
to take on a whole new project. Don\'t I have to be a little careful
about offloading some of that GS-7 work to one of the if Is?\
\
It\'s possible, yeah, you want to be careful and be sure you\'re looking
at the grade level of the work that you\'re offloading from that 7 to
the 5. It\'s possible that, you know, the way the classification system
works and the way positions are designed in the organization, they\'re
not 100% that grade. So there may be some work that you can be taking
from that GS-7 that is considered lower graded work.\
\
J. Dugan: So I\'d really need to talk with the employees and figure out
what\'s the appropriate work to give to someone else.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s correct.\
\
J. Dugan: That\'s helpful.\
\
G. Donahue: It\'s very possible that that is not an option, but it\'s
very important to consider.\
\
T. Ryan: Let\'s see what other solutions we might have.\
\
G. Donahue: Let\'s see. Anyone else want to chime in here?\
\
Caller: This is Barb is Lewistown.\
\
G. Donahue: Barb, what did you come up with?\
\
Caller: Well, our group came up with either to just advertise it or if
possible to split the duties up among the three \-- the details of three
GS-5 positions and giving them all an opportunity for the experience.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s great. Let me repeat what Barb said. She said to
either compete and it have one perform the work. That\'s what their
group came up with. Or to divide the assignment up amongst the three

5s, and that\'s correct, the three 5s could possibly \-- were you
talking about rotating the work among the three 5s or dividing the
assignment among the three 5s at the same time?\
\
Caller: I guess it would depend on the assignment. Either option would
work, but if we could detail each of the three 5s, it gives them the
opportunity to attain the experience.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s a good option. You know, I don\'t think there\'s any
other options that I can think of. How about you, Todd or Julia, could
you think of any other options?\
\
J. Dugan: Besides the temporary promotion or detail or giving work in
someway to the existing employees? I can\'t think of anything else.\
\
T. Ryan: Well, we didn\'t hear from the group about how they would enact
this.\
G. Donahue: That\'s true.\
\
T. Ryan: The further piece of this is what to do to enact it.\
\
G. Donahue: Out there would somebody be willing to call in and tell us
ho you would enact this?\
\
Caller: Hello, this is Kim Becky in billings.\
\
J. Dugan: I think we had Becky in billings, is that right?\
\
Caller: I have a question on the pre-quiz, number 5, the question was
when must you advertise a position, and the answer was when the work
lasts longer than 120 days. Isn\'t this what we just had with this last
scenario?\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s right, but the last scenario, it was 120 days or
less. This scenario we\'re just working on is 120 days or more.\
\
Caller: That\'s what I meant, the current scenario, 120 days or more.
And then the answer to that question was, you must advertise if the work
is more than 120 days. We probably made a few assumptions and the
assumptions were you were definitely going to give it to a lower graded
employee and that the work was considered higher graded, and it was
going to be more than 120 days. So that was a very tricky question and
Todd thought that was, too. So \--\
\
Caller: So do I like get a book?\
\
G. Donahue: Do I get a book?\
\
J. Dugan: Well, I have books left and I think this might be a good one.
This is called first among equals, and we\'ve been talking about how do
we divide up work between equals, do we giver it to one person or spread
it out. So, sure, we\'ll be glad to give you a book.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
G. Donahue: You repeat who you are and where you\'re from for me?\
\
Caller: Becky in billings, Montana.\
\
G. Donahue: Becky in billings.\
\
J. Dugan: And, Gayle, I think we had someone in Colorado trying to call
in. Colorado, are you still there?\
\
Caller: Yeah, this is Melissa. One of the things we talked about was
detail versus temporary promotion, even though it\'s more than 120 days,
you can detail for somebody up to year, but we\'re talking, once you
start getting to four-plus months, it\'s probably more fair to give them
the temporary promotion after, of course, you\'ve competed it as opposed
to giving them an extended detail.\
\
G. Donahue: I\'ll repeat what ma LIS ha to say about that. What Melissa
in Colorado talked about was that their table would prefer to promote
the employee even though I don\'t could detail up to a year to this kind
of higher graded work. Of course, it has to be competitive, but it\'s
always a management prerogative whether or not they want to compensate
through salary with that, and that was a really good point to make
there, Melissa. Thank you.\
\
Caller: This is Dee Baxter from Montana.\
\
G. Donahue: Dee Baxter from Montana.

Caller: Yes, I had a question, I guess you\'re talking about detailing
current employees, and one of the things I would think of is you already
have a certain amount of work and you just have a certain number of
employees, and if you promote one of them to do the other job, then
it\'s a domino effect and somebody else has to pick up the slack, and
how do you propose making sure everything gets done, because at the
beginning of the year you set your targets that you want to get done,
and if you basically take one person out of the mix, you\'re not going
to meet your targets.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s a good point. Maybe Julia would like to respond to
that because that does come up \-- that question comes up all the time.
There is a domino effect, and I would like to hear what Julia has to say
about that.\
\
J. Dugan: I think that\'s really right. Almost on a monthly basis we
have some new work or project layered on our existing work when we\'ve
already established our targets and the only way I can answer that is
that has to be a negotiation sort of between the supervisors and line
managers, what\'s going to fall to a lower level of priority and that\'s
an ongoing dialogue. But if you don\'t have that dialogue and it comes
to the end of the year and someone\'s missed a target, it\'s probably
going to be an uncomfortable discussion. So make sure you\'ve negotiated
how you\'re going to accomplish the work that you can accomplish with
your existing staff far before you get to that end of the year
performance review with your manager.\
\
Caller: I can see an issue, too, where the people left still doing the
work are getting more work to do because somebody else has taken that
promotion. So how do you compensate those people or are they just
expected to pick up the slack?\
\
J. Dugan: Actually, there\'s a number of ways you could compensate them.
You can give them a star award for extra work accomplished in that
year.\
\
G. Donahue: That\'s correct.\
\
J. Dugan: I think you bring up a good point, we shouldn\'t forget
there\'s people who have to pick up extra work when a new project comes
along and we want to make sure they feel valued for having picked up
that work.\
\
Caller: What is the book that you gave Becky?\
\
J. Dugan: The book I gave Becky was first among equals and it\'s by
Patrick McKenna and David MEISTER. Sounds interesting about how to group
of people who are peers.\
\
G. Donahue: We appreciate your questions in this area. They were very
valuable questions. We\'ve certainly looked at a lot of situations
involving assignments that has to do with new assignments for employees,
yet we know often that assignments come over time and they come
incrementally to employees, and in fact, it could change their job, and
this is where Todd\'s going to talk about and take us into the topic of
accretions, a topic very important and near and dear to a lot of
supervisors. So, Todd, you want to talk about accretions?\
\
Certainly. Accretions are slightly different than what we\'ve talked
about to this point in that an accretion is a permanent action. You are
permanently promoting someone and they\'re going to remain at the grade
you would promote them to. That\'s called a discretionary action. If you
go to page 26, it is a discretionary action. If you go to page 26,
you\'ll find some material on discussions on what an accretion is, and
there you\'ll see some extracts from the law. You\'ll also see some
supplements that are \-- that are issued by the Department of Interior
and some supplements that are issued by the Bureau of Land Management
they actually follow through page 26 and 27. I\'m not going to go into a
great deal of details those because I want to get to more scenarios but
I would like to say as you read through this material, you\'ll note that
there are quite a few rules surrounding an accretion action, and quite a
few requirements, hoops to jump through, and the reason that those are
there is because it is a noncompetitive action, it doesn\'t require
following merit promotion principles, and so all those rules are in
place to try to ensure that it\'s as fair a process as possible.

On page 28 we have prepared a flowchart that discusses \-- or shows how
a thought process might work for an accretion. What I\'d like for you to
get out of this chart, really, is I\'m going to put it on the Elmo
really quickly here and talk a little bit about it and it may be a
little easier to follow in your book, but first of all the work \-- I\'m
just going to get you started through this chart. It\'s fairly
self-explanatory and easy. If the work is taking at least 25% of the
time, that meets the first condition to consider whether you possibly
have an accretion. If not, you don\'t, and you have to either redo the
PD, redescribe it, or if it\'s less than 25%, maybe you have to do
nothing. If they answer that first 25% is yes, then you have to redo the
PD because a major duty to be an accurate PD must be described in the of
PD.

Notice at that point it says you have to figure out whether or not the
PD \-- the new work is higher graded work. If it\'s not, you still have
to redo the PD to make it accurate. If it is, you potentially still have
one and et cetera following down the chart. That\'s how it works. I want
to get into a scenario here on page 30 \-- I\'m sorry, page 29, I guess
it is, of the guide. There\'s a scenario there talking about an outdoor
rec. planner, and I would like for you to sit in your groups and take
some time looking at this scenario and coming up with as many options as
possible how to deal with this work. I would like you to \-- when you
come up with the options you might here, I would like for you to
identify the disadvantages and advantages of the various options you\'ve
come up with and discuss those in your small groups and when we get
back, we\'ll delve a little into this particular scenario. I guess we
have four minutes here.\
\
T. Ryan: Before we ask for some possible solutions to this, I would like
to go to our resident management expert, Julia, and ask what her
thoughts are on this one.\
\
J. Dugan: Todd, I really want to thank you for putting together that
accretion flowchart. It\'s really a great tool. But as we sat here and
worked through the scenario, I thought, you know, there\'s a lot of work
that I have to do as a supervisor before I can even begin to step
through that chart. And I thought, you know, this rec. planner gave me a
lot of information. It\'s certainly his point of view on the situation.
But I need to really sit down with the rec. planner and ask some pretty
pointed questions. What\'s changed in your work? When did the change
happen? How is that change affected your workload? Have you been forced
to give up some things? And then I\'d want to know, does that change
require him to interact with some people he didn\'t have to use to
interact with? And, Todd, I\'m afraid I\'d have to pull out that factor
evaluation chart and actually see if I think some of the changes really
are grade impacting. I know they feel grade impacting to the recreation
planner but I\'m not so sure. So maybe you could help us go through the
scenario.\
\
T. Ryan: Yeah, I think we can, but first I would like to get some
thoughts from the participants here. What are some of your options that
you out there came up with?\
\
Caller: This is Barb in Montana again.\
\
T. Ryan: Hi, Barb.\
\
Caller: You know, after discussing it, we feel that probably making the
competitive would be the best option as far as what we can see here, due
to the fact we have other GS-9s involved also.\
\
T. Ryan: So, what you\'ve done is you said, ok, you believe that there
is a GS-11 level at work there, enough to support one 11, and so you\'ve
decided that you\'re going to advertise a GS-11 position because there
are multiple GS-9s present; is that correct?\
\
Caller: Correct.\
\
T. Ryan: That\'s exactly right. That\'s assuming that there are
sufficient \-- there\'s sufficient GS-11 level work there. Did anyone
else come up with a different answer to that? Well, what I would like to
do is take a moment and run that \-- this through the chart just to give
you a feeling for what that chart looks like and how it can look and
then give you some additional thoughts on some of the add-ons here. Let
me zoom this in a little bit. First of all, if you assume the work takes
at least 25% of the time, you would follow the chart. A PD has to be
redone. You have to do work. And incidentally, what Julia was talking
about is kind of here, this area right here. She\'s having to go out and
get a bunch of information put together. It\'s kind of off the chart.
The \-- so in this particular case we\'ve said \-- we\'ve assumed that
the work does represent higher graded work. You keep following down. Do
we have multiple employees in the position? Yes. You cannot do an
accretion, not possible.

At this point, I\'d like to respond to a previous question. I believe it
was Melissa in Colorado that asked the question. The question was, I
believe, something like this, and chime in, Melissa, if I don\'t get
this right. The question was, what happens if the work that\'s certified
by the supervisor, the HR office doesn\'t agree with the work that\'s
been assigned? In the accretion process what actually occurs and I went
really fast when I talked about the process, there is a requirement that
the desk audit be performed any time an accretion is to occur and it\'s
at that point that that particular conflict might come to a head, if you
will, difference between the supervisor and the classifier in this case.
As we talked about in the first hour, it is the responsibility of the
supervisor to accurately describe the work, and then they\'re certifying
that the work needs to be done. Ultimately, though, it\'s the
responsibility of the HR office to classify the position. That\'s
assigning the title, series and grade, and they would do that desk audit
and the responsibility in this case and the person who gets to assign
the title series and grade, regardless of the work certified, they\'re
actually certifying \-- they\'re going against the work actually
performed. That\'s the HR office. So hopefully that answers your
question, Melissa.\
\
J. Dugan: So, Todd, that desk audit issue, I know that\'s a big one, and
it\'s really important to employees. I want to make sure we understand
where that comes in. On your flowchart, would that come in on your
second to the last box after the documents have been submitted to HR for
classification?\
\
T. Ryan: Yeah, why don\'t we switch to the Elmo and I\'ll show you with
a we\'re talking about. This wouldn\'t apply to the scenario we just
did, but if you could follow down the chart, you have an option here to
reorganize the work always because you as a supervisors have the right
to assign work, always. That\'s one every your management rights. We
talked about it previously. But in this case let\'s say in the scenario
that Melissa talked about she wants to recommended a higher grade, the
supervisor does. The paper work, and there\'s a set format for it, gets
submitted to HR for classification along with the PD. Right in here is
where a desk audit would occur. So a desk audit would happen by the HR
office, and then it gets classified. If at that point the grade doesn\'t
turn out like the supervisor likes, there is a few options to the
supervisor as HR gets to determine what the title series and grade is.
There would be some options for the employee, most notably, it would be
a classification appeal, different process that we\'re not instructing
in this class.\
\
J. Dugan: I might have one another quick one. I know a number of
locations in the Bureau are using contract classifiers and that a
supervisor or an employee might find a contract classifier could do some
of these desk audit work, is that right?\
\
T. Ryan: That\'s correct.\
\
J. Dugan: Am I correct in assuming that it\'s sort of the same way, what
that contract classifier comes up with is approved by HR and they
establish the grade and series?\
\
T. Ryan: Typically what happens in a contract situation relative to
classification is that an evaluation report is prepared by the
contractor and then reviewed by the HR office specialist, a specialist
in classification, who actually signs off on that. So the work might be
\-- actually be performed by the contract classifier, but yet subject to
review by the HR office.\
\
J. Dugan: Thanks. That helps me understand that process a little more.\
\
Caller: I have a question.\
\
T. Ryan: Who is speaking, please?\
\
Caller: This is Melissa.\
\
Caller: This is Cheryl in Idaho. I think the difference like on
accretions we classify work, not just words on a PD.\
\
T. Ryan: That\'s right. I think I also heard from Cheryl. Did I hear
from Cheryl.\
\
Caller: I have two questions. I\'m in Idaho.\
\
T. Ryan: Ok, hi, Cheryl.\
\
Caller: Hi. I\'m wondering, in the second box or third box down the line
on the left, writ says does the new PD represent higher graded work, is
that a subjective call there? So we\'re not having \-- because I was
thinking, ok, that\'s when somebody \-- a classification specialist
would say yeah or no it doesn\'t. So a supervisor is looking at and that
kind of making a subjective call there?\
\
T. Ryan: No, actually whenever you get involved or get ready to go into
an accretion process, Julia hit on it pretty well, it\'s a good idea to
get your HR office involved quite early so that the \-- there\'s a
dialogue between you and your HR office before you get way deep into the
process and find out you have a difference of opinion. If you have are
going into one of these, it would be a good idea to talk to your HR
office and make sure that you\'re sort of on the same page relative to
whether you\'re dealing with higher graded work or not before you raise
the expectations of your employees.\
\
J. Dugan: Todd, I think I would like to give a book out to Cheryl
because she hit on a sensitive point. Melissa also brought it up.
Sometimes we have disagreements between supervisors, management and HR.
Cheryl, we would like to send you a book getting past no. Negotiating
your way from confrontation to cooperation. I know this is a process
that has documentation and set steps but still I think quite a bit of it
is good negotiation. So that book will be coming out to you, Cheryl.\
\
Caller: Thank you. So I guess my other question, then, is when you Falk
about a desk odd and it where it occurs in the process you\'re talking
about the formal paper work, all the things that go along with the desk
audit, but in the second box you are \-- you are doing a little more
than just kind of in concert with the personnel people, you are doing a
little more than just kind of your best guess at whether or not that\'s
higher graded work?\
\
T. Ryan: That\'s right. I think you owe it to your employees to ensure
that they \-- that you don\'t raise their expectations, because they\'re
going to be involved in this process as well giving you information
about how the job has changed essentially, and so because of that I
would strongly recommend you get your HR office involved at the very
beginning of any sort of accretion action.\
\
Caller: I have one more question. If there\'s three people there that
you\'re talking about and this desk audit is being looked at for one
person, is there any problem with that? Do you have to look at all three
of their positions or \--\
\
T. Ryan: No, in actual practice, see, the accretion, as we showed,
wasn\'t appropriate in the case \-- in the scenario that we did. So you
probably would not see a desk audit per se. You\'re talking about really
ACCRETing a position. More than likely you would see a discussion
between the supervisor and the HR office to build a Position Description
that would then be advertised.\
\
Caller: That makes sense. Thanks.\
\
T. Ryan: Ok. Julia, let\'s go forward with another scenario.\
\
J. Dugan: Let\'s practice this again. The wildlife biologist in our last
scenario is going to have to \-- or the work is going to have to be
documented in a new PD. So with that in mind, let\'s answer one more of
the questions from the pre-quiz, and that\'s question number 6. Question
6 asked, who would you ask if you needed assistance in developing a new
PD? I think we just talked about a lot of that, and the right answer is
all of the above. You need to be talking with the employee and
understanding the changes and when they occurred. You better be
negotiating with the HR staff to make sure you\'re reading things
correctly. And another thing is there may be offices out there that have
very similar positions and maybe they\'ve already done an updated PD. So
check around. And then I think an important part is whenever you\'re
talking about an accretion, I think you should talk about it with your
own manager, because there are impacts on creation \-- on accretion that
could go out across the organization. So make sure your manager knows
what\'s going on.\
\
T. Ryan: Are we going to go forward with the \--\
\
J. Dugan: Yes, we wanted to add another scenario, didn\'t we? We\'re
going to add scenario 6 to page 30 of your guide. You\'ll see a blank
spot there right now. But we\'ve gotten so much conversation around this
accretion issue and how it happens that we wanted to go into it a little
deeper. So we\'ve developed a scenario. Todd, would you put it up for us
so everyone can read it and I\'ll read it for them also. The GS-9
wildlife biologist has come to you wanting to know why she\'s the only
GS-9 wildlife biologist in the field office. She\'s worked in the office
for the past five years, always achieved her EPPs. Since she was
assigned to the NCA, she has taken on increasingly more complex
assignments and has independently improved the program. So we have a
situation here. We have a GS-9 that\'s looking out across the other
pieces of the organization outside the NCA and she\'s saying, why am I
the only GS-9? We want you to take a few minutes to discuss this
scenario and list the steps you\'d take to handle the situation and be
able to give a response to the employee. So we\'ll see you in about
three minutes to hear your options. .\
\
J. Dugan: Welcome back. We\'d like to hear some responses from you on
how you\'d take care of this wildlife biologists requests to become a
GS-11. Do I have somebody who wants to volunteer an answer? I know this
is pretty common when someone looks out across the organization and sees
people with the same title but a different grade. They really want to
know why aren\'t they the same grade. Any thoughts out there?\
\
Caller: This is Barb in Lewistown again.\
\
J. Dugan: Hey, Barb. What\'s your thoughts on this?\
\
Caller: I guess my thoughts would be that the supervisor really should
go through the Classification and Position Management Overview and then
review the other wildlife PDs across the country that might be in the
same realm as this employee is doing and then go for noncompetitive
reassignment.\
\
J. Dugan: Ok, Barb, what if you sat down and looked at that work and you
saw that the GS-11s in the office were really doing higher graded work
than this GS-9 was, that she was actually doing GS-9 work, what would
you \-- what kind of conversation would you have with that employee?\
\
Caller: I guess what I would do is identify each one of those items that
make the GS-11 the higher graded as opposed to the GS-9 and just have
that discussion with the employee and just make sure it was very clear
and understandable to that employee.\
\
J. Dugan: That\'s a great answer, and so many times we\'re reluctant to
take that step where we have to sit down and tell a person, you\'re
really doing appropriately graded work right now. So, Todd, why don\'t
we move on from there.\
\
T. Ryan: We\'re going to shift gears a little bit here. Up to this point
certainly there have been some position management issues created by
multiple positions, but really we\'ve been talking about and
concentrating on classification for individual positions. Now I\'d like
to go to the next level, if you will, and talk some position management.
We gave you a supplement when we sent out the material, and in there it
has Position Description, there\'s an evaluation statement and there\'s
a lot of detail in there. We don\'t have time to go into a lot of great
detail, but those are provided there for you as a reference. You\'re not
really going to need them for this section, but I wanted to explain what
was going on with that. The position management is the \-- taking the
work of the organization and organizing it into individual positions. So
all these individual positions are organized into \-- into ways that are
the most efficient and the most effective and that\'s really essentially
all there is to position management. Of course, it becomes much more
complicated when you add people to those positions.

On page 31 of your guide, there are \-- there\'s a discussion of what
position management is, and then there are some dos and don\'ts
surrounding position management. I\'ve taken those dos and don\'ts by
the way are the official dos and don\'ts published by the office of
personnel management and I\'ve taken actually a few of those and wanted
to concentrate on them a little bit. I would like to mention span of
control, which is your typical supervise-to-employee ratio. There are in
the BLM manuals, 1201 specifically, a reference to span of control as
being minimally 1-to-10. What we would like to teach is that a span of
control, you should establish supervisory positions where they make
sense and realizing that supervisory positions are expensive, they\'re
considered overhead. I\'d also like to mention that you needs to use the
lowest grade possible to get the work done. This is typically measured
by using ratios of specialists \-- I\'m sorry, of technician, support
type positions to specialist positions, in other words, the more
technician positions you use to get the work done, generally the more
efficient it is because they are lower graded positions. And I\'d like
to mention as well career ladders.

Career ladders are established so that an individual can come into your
organization and move up and remain with you as long as possible to get
the most from that employee, and so where possible you should be
establishing career ladders. That\'s certainly an issue these days with
workforce planning. Finally, sometimes the scenarios that we\'re using
here today are making use of almost all permanent \-- or all permanent
full-time positions. That really is not what our workforce generally is
comprised of. Sometimes temporaries, part-time employees, contractors
make sense. I think in a previous scenario one of the respondents said
that, what do you do with the work that then pile up when you give this
higher graded work away \-- or to this individual? Well, there are
certainly ways to deal with that using temporary labor, part-timers,
detailers, contractors, and in the case of NCA, volunteers.

I want to do some scenarios with position management to give you some
idea of some of the issues involved here and to do that we\'re going to
once again use the Paradise NCA. We\'re going to talk about first this
one right here, this structure right here, and then later we\'re going
to actually tried to more work with this scenario and \-- relative to
contact reps, I want to put up and read this to you a scenario and then
I\'m just going to discuss it. We\'re not going to actually have you
work on it. But let me read this so we\'re all on the same page. The
manager has noticed one of the GS-5 contact reps is handling virtually
all of the user conflict resolution. The other two GS-5 contact reps
hand off potential conflicts to the third rep. You have checked with the
HR office to determine whether the addition of conflict resolution is
grade impacting and they have informed you that it is. The estimated
amount of grade impacting work is 35%. How would you handle this
workload situation? Let me put up this chart again, and remember, we\'re
talking really about one of these individuals \-- one of these contact
reps is performing at present 35% of the time GS-6 level work. And the
issue becomes how do you handle that situation? There are multiple ways
to handle that situation, all related to assigning work. Julie, I\'m
going to go to you and ask you to give me your management perspective on
that particular scenario.\
\
J. Dugan: Well, on this scenario, one of the first things that came to
mind is you said we have three employees who are all doing the same kind
of work, but every time a conflict comes up, they send that conflict
work to one employee. So first thing in my mind is we might have a
training need here, maybe some people don\'t have the skills that they
need. But at the same time, if we did give people the chance to compete
for a higher graded position, maybe you could recognize that one
employee that has some special skills, but then there\'s the cost. So we
could take that 35%, actually say that\'s part of everybody\'s job, you
have to do conflict resolution, and manage the performance. But, boy,
that can mean we deal with some performance problems and low morale not
only from the people who don\'t like conflict resolution, but you took
away the special piece from one person. And I know many times in offices
how we resolve this is we tell those contact reps, well, go get the
specialist when that big conflict comes up. Have that GS-11 resolve it.
Well, the reality is those people are oftentimes out in the field, not
available and the work falls \'these contract reps. So I think I\'m
leaning towards trying to establish one at a higher grade and really
making sure they have some specialized skills, Todd.\
\
T. Ryan: Yes, I think there are several possibilities, but remember, you
have three contact reps, and accretion is not possible, so there\'s a
case where you would advertise a position. That\'s one possibility. A
second possibility is you would spread the work out over all three of
them. That\'s two. To the point where the amount of work is reduced to
less than 35% \-- to less than 25% for any one of them, which means many
it would not be enough work to allow for any sort of grade impact. You
mentioned the third one, which would be to have someone else of a higher
grade, maybe an outdoor rec. planner, wildlife biologist, perform that
work. And then she also grounded it in reality of, but it\'s not going
to work to do the third option, the number two option creates conflict
among people who may not want to do the work and the first option, you
can\'t do the accretion. You\'re going to have to advertise the job.

All of those have plus and minuses to them, and you as the supervisor
are the one that\'s responsible to decide how to approach that. Let\'s
take another scenario \-- let\'s talk about \-- this one we\'ll let you
work through. This scenario here where you have park rangers, remember,
you ever three park rangers and a \-- there are \-- they are 5 level and
one a GS-7 level. Let\'s put up the scenario here, and let me read it to
you and then we\'ll give you some time to work on this one. The amount
of permanent interpretive work of the staff has grown over time and now
encompasses 110% of the FTE. The work is scattered out over the park
ranger and outdoor rec. planner staff. How would you as the manager
organize the work? Try to come one at least two solutions and then
decide which solution is best in your group and then we\'ll come back
and talk about it in a couple of minutes. .\
\
T. Ryan: Welcome back. That certainly is an interesting exercise.
There\'s multiple, numerous, no correct response for this one. Let\'s
get some discussion going on how \-- what some of the solutions out
there are. Anybody like to call in with theirs?\
\
J. Dugan: We have one more book left.\
\
T. Ryan: Let\'s go. This one\'s an interesting one. Who haven\'t we
heard from in this \--\
\
G. Donahue: I\'d say \-- let\'s see. We haven\'t heard from anybody from
Idaho, have we?\
\
J. Dugan: Barb was from Idaho. She really helped us out on a number of
them.\
\
G. Donahue: North Dakota?\
\
J. Dugan: We heard from Marion.\
\
G. Donahue: New Mexico?\
\
T. Ryan: Everyone\'s scared of this one.\
\
J. Dugan: Gayle, maybe you should give them one possible solution.\
\
G. Donahue: One possible solution \--

T. Ryan: Or I can switch to the Elmo and show them one. Why don\'t we go
to the Elmo and let me say that there\'s 110% of an FTE GS-7 level and
at present let\'s take an assumption here that you have 60% of this 7 is
performing this interpretive work that\'s been classified at the GS-7
level and then as \-- as was described in this scenario, these folks and
these folks, the outdoor rec. planners and the GS-5 park rangers, that
would mean that 50% spread out all across those is the other GS-7 level
work. That means that because of the statement in there that the outdoor
rec. planners are performing some of this GS-7 level work, that means
that you have GS-7 level work being performed by GS-9s, and that\'s not
very cost effective. They\'re performing or doing work below their grade
level. What would happen, then, if you took and said, I don\'t like that
scenario, let\'s get that lower graded work away from these outdoor rec.
planners and move it over to here? That means that you have 50%, then,
spread out over here, these three guys.

If you were to cut that up, that\'s enough to support potentially with
major duty remember being 25% two GS-7s, however, when you have multiple
positions it\'s pretty poor position management to spread out the work
as wide as you can get it or as thin as you can get it and to support as
many grades as possible. So let\'s say that your solution is that you
want to create one more additional GS-7, and that person is going to be
performing, then, the other \-- the remaining 50% of the work. You now
have a structure of two GS-7s and two GS-5s, and in order to enact that,
you\'re going to have to get in contact with your HR office and work up
a GS-7 Position Description, potentially a duplicate of this position,
and advertise it \-- you can\'t ACCRETE it because you have multiple
park rangers present, so that would be your strategy to come up with
these two GS-7s with a two GS-5 structure for this 110%. Would anyone
else like to chime in?\
\
G. Donahue: What about just giving more of the GS-7 level work to the
GS-7 you have there, Todd, that is performing 60% of their time and then
possibly what you might have is \-- what would be left over from that?
So say you make them 100% GS-7 which is probably in real life probably
not that realistic, but that\'s what we try to aim for, right?\
\
T. Ryan: Right. GS-so we \--\
\
T. Ryan: Let\'s take a look at that. Let\'s go to the Elmo, and if you
give 100% to this person, which is almost virtually impossible, then
that would leave a remainder of 10%, which is possible, and that\'s not
\-- that\'s insufficient work to support grade.\
\
G. Donahue: But that would be my most cost effective organization,
isn\'t it?\
\
T. Ryan: It could be if you think \-- there would be no change in grade.
You have no change in grade right now, either. Another possible solution
\--\
\
G. Donahue: Let me add something to that. The manager or supervisor
could sit down with that person who is already currently the 7 and look
at that job and remove some of those GS-5 level duties and they may be
performing outside of that 40% of their job and assign them to the other
5s. Now, they might not like that too well, right? But the management
has a right to do that.\
\
T. Ryan: Yes, you could give just enough \-- just below the threshold
\-- what she\'s talking about is just below the threshold of grade
enhancing giving maybe 20% each to these, which is not sufficient to
warrant an increase in grade, but is close. 25% is the minimum
requirement. So here\'s a case where these people are going to be
performing \-- the only difference in their grade is going to be the
amount of time they spend doing something and I don\'t know if, Julia,
do you have any comments on what that might do to the morale of the
structure of these folks?\
\
J. Dugan: I think you approached it in a very analytical way, and
that\'s good, but I was thinking about the situation from the standpoint
of having to manage an interpretive program and also develop employees.
I thought, well, if we sort of spread that work out below the major duty
level that we\'d be providing everybody a career opportunity and they
would be developing some skills, but then I thought, well, if I
concentrated the work on maybe just a couple of people, created another
7, that that program might be more efficient because I know who is in
charge of interpretive work, I know where it is assigned the work, and
how to track the work. But then as I thought about interpretive work in
an NCA, that\'s tightly tied to visitor services, and I know this is NCA
is really popular and there\'s visitors out there every day of the week.
So if I spread the work out \-- if I did not spread the work out, I kept
it with just the one GS-7, because that\'s going to be the most cost
effective, how do I schedule the work? I probably have a seven-day
program. I think I\'m going to have to find a way to spread that work
out among all of them \-- maybe not among all of them, but enough that I
can cover my schedule and then I will have to look at how to grade each
of those people appropriately when the program of work gets delivered.\
\
T. Ryan: Yeah, I think all of these are considerations, and hopefully
\--\
\
Caller: This is Becky from Montana. Is there an also caution note that
if you do the bear minimum like 20% to all the GS-5s the grade impacting
work doesn\'t have to necessarily come from one duty, say interpretive,
which is a higher grade, they might be doing 5% of something else,
that\'s a GS-7 and then if they have 25% among all their duties, is that
grade impacting?\
\
T. Ryan: Yes, what \-- the way you classify a position is that when you
have an occupation, you take each of the types of work present and then
you grade them, and then you look for the highest grade there and they
are cumulative up to 25%. It\'s a typical \-- it\'s atypical in this
kind of position to find GS-7 level work beyond the interpretive. It\'s
possible. It\'s more likely that the position would be of another type.
But I hopefully answered your question that, yeah, you can accumulate it
through different occupations up to the minimum requirement of 25%.
It\'s very difficult to run right up to a certain percentage mark, a
24.999%, if you will and then look at your employee and tell them that
they\'re not a GS-7, having run it right up to the edge. I\'ve seen that
done where there\'s actually negotiations between how much time the
employee spends doing something because it is grade determining between
the supervisor and the employee. Not a healthy situation. Certainly we
don\'t recommend you get yourself in a position like that. But
ultimately you as a supervisor have the right to assign work, so you can
determine how much of a time an employee does something. I hope that
answered your question.\
\
Caller: This is Marion from South Dakota. I just wanted to bring up the
potentially maybe one of the contact reps or maybe all of the contact
reps may be able to add something to the interpretive program.\
\
T. Ryan: That\'s right, you could take some of the higher graded work
and assign it to lower graded employees no matter where they are in the
organization, just like you assign the higher graded work to the outdoor
rec. planners. So, in fact when you look at this structure from a
classification point of view, you might question the number of outdoor
rec. planners present and wonder why maybe some of those couldn\'t be
park rangers, but that\'s a different scenario. But, yes, you have the
right to assign work higher and lower, but it is your responsibility to
know as the supervisor what the consequences of that is. Sometimes
that\'s a good thing to do, because that\'s all part of the career
ladders that is part of sound management and keeping your good people.\
\
Caller: This is Barb is Lewistown, Montana. I was wondering about \--
seemed like I run into a lot of questions from individuals with other
duties assigned that aren\'t reflected on the PD that might be higher
graded. I guess, how should you respond to that?\
\
T. Ryan: Ok, higher graded work \-- excuse me, other duties as assigned
is a fairly common situation. You as a supervisor have the right to
assign work whether it\'s located in their Position Description or not.
We do ask, and it is codified in various ways that you don\'t assign
work inappropriately. For example, you don\'t ask an outdoor rec.
planner to mop the floor, clean the restrooms and things like that. It
should be appropriate to their actual occupation. But beyond that you
have the right to assign the work. As far as putting it in are their
Position Description, the need to put it in a Position Description is
driven by major duty, you must put it in at 25%, and we strongly
recommend that if you\'re going to evaluate the employee against that
\-- on their EPPRRs against that as an element against that work, that
it be in their Position Description in case you need to discipline them.
After that, there is no need beyond it be \-- the PD be good enough to
be classified by your HR office. And you do have the right to assign
work to an employee.\
\
Caller: I guess the question I run into is if they get assigned \--
other duties are assigned at a higher graded \-- I don\'t know what the
word I\'m looking for is, sorry \-- but it\'s not assigned
appropriately, I guess. They think they\'re doing the higher graded work
but none of them are within 25% \-- not a major duty. How do you respond
to those types of questions?\
\
T. Ryan: There are some things you can do as a supervisor, I think, to
mitigate some of that and your HR office can help you with that. You
don\'t have to redo a PD from scratch when you assign a duty. If the
employee believes that the work is grade impacting, you can get some
help from your HR office by actually having \-- writing out what that
work is and submitting an amendment to the \-- to the Position
Description so that a classifier can look at it and codify for you
whether the work is higher graded or not and how much of the time the
employee is performing it. That will answer many of your employees\'
questions because it will then officially put it in their PD and will
have been certified by a \-- then by a classifier at whatever grade is
appropriate. That many times can go a long ways towards, I guess,
rectifying the situation you\'re talking about there.\
\
G. Donahue: That was a good point, Todd, because I was going to ask
that, because many times employees go to supervisor and say it\'s not in
my Position Description and one of the things you can do, as you
mentioned, you can amend the position, even if it isn\'t higher graded
work, but \-- and do that with an amendment form that allows you to
describe that extra work, and that actually will relieve some tension
between you and the employee in many cases.\
\
T. Ryan: And I believe that sometimes your employees, you may be in an
adversarial situation with them, but you have the upper hand because you
have the right to assign work given to you by law.\
\
J. Dugan: Thanks, Todd and Gayle. I think that was a lot of good
information for us. Gayle, I think we probably have another question
we\'d like to cover from the pre-quiz.\
G. Donahue: Sure, I\'m not going to draw on the audience for this one,
I\'m going to answer it but I think you know what the answer might be.
The question number 11: are position management and classification \--
that answer is true, they\'re basically intertwined, and as Todd
explained to you position management means getting the right balance of
many things into your organization, and that means also the classified
positions. So now, Todd, I think we\'re ready to maybe wrap up, huh?\
\
T. Ryan: Yep, I\'ve been told that we have time enough for one more
question. So who would like to ask the final question?\
\
Caller: Can I just make a suggestion that Barb in Lewistown receive a
book because she has provide add lot of information?\
\
J. Dugan: Did we not get Barb a book? I thought we had. Thank you for
whoever called \-- Barb, was that you who called to get a book for
yourself? I hope not. We would be glad to send you a book out. This is
an interesting one, called the five temptations of a C. E, a leadership
fable and I think it\'s a good one because we\'re often tempted to push
grades up to a high level to make employees feel good about their work,
and while that\'s important, we also need to think about position
management and cost effectiveness. Todd?\
\
T. Ryan: Well, I\'d like to thank you for participating in this session
on classification and position management. It\'s a complicated topic. We
hope that we\'ve provided you some insight into classification and
position management. Gayle, do you \--\
\
G. Donahue: I really appreciate being here also. This has been a great
experience for me as well as I hope for the participants. And I think
we\'ve answered all the questions on the quiz. Maybe just one we might
not have. And I hope that maybe that you can go away from this and are
able to understand and communicate with your employees better in
position management and classification. Thanks again for having me.\
\
T. Ryan: It\'s always a good idea to let the management talk last.
So\...\
\
J. Dugan: I think all I have to say is good-bye to everyone, and thanks
for learning with us today.\
\
T. Ryan: Good-bye from Phoenix.