If proper appointment authority cannot be established in these cases, termination is the only recourse. A variation request must be the only way to avoid the hardship. Agencies must have made extensive efforts to regularize the erroneous appointment before the Office of Personnel Management will consider granting a variation. A variation is granted to avoid unnecessary hardship to the employee, i.e, loss of employment, pay, grade or significant service credit. Agency made an error and the error cannot be corrected.
Employee is still on an illegal appointment.
Find out if the employee could have been properly appointed at the time the error was made. The outcome of the above 3 steps determines whether a variation request will be granted. Once on a proper appointment, the agency may want to get full service credit for the de facto employment. To do this, the agency must find out if the employee could or would have been within reach for the same appointment at an earlier date. The agency should contact the Service Center , which would try to reconstruct the register or announce through case examining.