Government Employees Unenthusiastic about Top Promotions

A new survey, conducted by the Senior Executive Association (and reported on at GovExec.com) found that many federal employees were leery of seeking promotion to the top Senior Executive Service level. If you’re like this PSLawNet blogger and have a hard time keeping all the federal designations straight, check out the PSLawNet Federal Government Resources for a quick explanation – in brief, SES employees are the top managers and supervisors who are not political appointees. The survey found that concerns over work-life balance are a bigger impediment to younger employees (half of all respondents under 40 versus 40% of those over 50). It also found that the higher one’s salary is, the less attractive the attendant pay bump in moving to SES becomes (employees at the top of the GS scale can make over $150,000 annually, while the base SES salary runs from about $120,000 to $180,000).

Interestingly, the survey found a disconnect between the chief human capital officers (CHCOs) survey responses and the GS-14 and -15 respondents, where the CHCOs thought the monetary benefits to the SES rank are the most influential, and the people considering applying for promotion were much more heavily swayed by “the chance to contribute more meaningfully and creatively to their agency’s mission.”

So what do you think?

[polldaddy poll=3092988]