US government restarts Presidential Rank Awards to recognise ‘truly outstanding performance’ by federal officials
The US government has set out plans to revamp how federal employees are rewarded for good performance, with plans including a relaunch of the Presidential Rank Awards – the most prestigious and lucrative awards available to career employees.
In a memorandum to agency heads, Scott Kupor, the recently-confirmed director of the US Office of Personnel Management (OPM), set out guidance on how departments can “create a high-performance federal workplace culture where outstanding employee efforts are celebrated and rewarded”.
Kupor’s memorandum has set out how the government would recognise high performance while seeking to end inflation in employee performance ratings. The OPM had previously said that performance management across the federal workforce had “fallen short of what the American people should expect” for decades, and instructed agencies to ensure “that a disproportionate number of employees are not rated at the highest performance levels” and to “make meaningful distinctions based on relative performance”.
Implementing awards for teams and individuals
The updated guidance on awards sets out two levels of award programmes, covering organisational and team level, and individuals.
For team-level awards, the OPM sets out two potential schemes – incentive programmes that deliver rewards to groups of employees who meet or exceed pre-established levels of organisational performance; or gainsharing, where employees are rewarded for achieving efficiencies. On gainsharing – or similar goalsharing initiatives – the OPM would work with the General Services Administration to provide further guidance on these programmes, and help implement a pilot programme to test these approaches.
For individuals, the OPM has said it will relaunch the Presidential Rank Awards for career officials. These awards, which were paused in 2024-25, will be restarted as “the most prestigious and lucrative awards” available to career officials. These are intended to reward “sustained extraordinary accomplishments” in the distinguished executives category, and sustained accomplishments in the meritorious executives category.
A distinguished executive award winner receives a lump-sum payment equal to 35% of the employee’s salary, along with a certificate and pin. A meritorious executive award winner receives a lump-sum payment equal to 20% of basic pay, along with a certificate and pin.
How to run awards for federal officials
Under the OPM guidance, agency leaders should be involved in determining the agency’s nominees for Presidential Rank Awards, ensuring these awards are being used to “motivate truly outstanding performance by career… employees”.
Other awards for individuals highlighted in the OPM guidance are agency-run awards, such as awards run by each agency’s secretary of state; special act awards focused on rewarding employees who identify fraud, waste, or abuse within government, or who identify actionable opportunities to improve operational efficiency; performance-based awards that recognise employee excellence over a performance appraisal period; performance-based pay adjustment; time-off awards; and quality step increases on pay within grades.
In the guidance, the OPM urged agencies and departments to “conduct comprehensive reviews of their awards and bonus policies to ensure consistency with this guidance and remove any barriers to meaningfully rewarding the most deserving employees”.
Agencies are encouraged to apply a holistic approach to their awards policies by including time-off awards and quality step increases in addition to cash awards – and are also told that “tolerating low performance results in a lack of trust between employees and supervisors, and supervisors are expected and obligated to identify unacceptable performance via the appropriate performance rating”. Increased rigor in the assessment of individual and organisational performance will provide for a larger pool of funds from which high performers can be “rewarded appropriately”, according to the OPM memorandum.
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