Executive Summary

We the Doers convened a diverse group of former senior-level civil servants to answer the question “What would it take to be able to remove true underperformers from federal service within six months while still ensuring due process, adherence to merit system principles, and protecting civil servants from whistleblower retaliation and politically motivated firings?”

In other words, what system would you design if you did not know if you would be (a) a manager saddled with an employee with significant performance or conduct issues that the employee was unable or unwilling to correct, or (b) an employee reporting to an unreasonable, unethical, or arbitrary manager? What system would you design if the goal was to maximize the effectiveness and efficiency of the federal workforce and ensure it remains nonpartisan?

This unique group included former federal human capital executives and attorneys involved in the employee removal process. Most importantly, it included 10 former or current federal managers with a combined 181 years of experience across 10 different agencies who had navigated a gauntlet of bureaucratic obstacles to collectively address 14 serious performance and eight serious conduct issues as either a first- or second-level supervisor.

The qualitative and quantitative data provided by these managers paints a picture of a process that is lengthy, time-consuming, arduous for the manager and expensive for the taxpayer. In the 12 cases for which managers provided a detailed analysis of the time and resources involved, an average of 19 months elapsed between the time the manager initiated the process and the time the employee resigned, retired, transferred to another agency, or was fired. For the 5 cases in which an employee was actually removed from federal service, it took even longer: an average of 21 months.

During this time, the supervisors estimated that, for cases of unacceptable performance, first- and second-line supervisors spent an average of 542 hours, for an average estimated cost to the taxpayer of $53,452 per case. For the conduct cases studied, first- and second-level supervisors spent an estimated average of 292 hours and $28,458 in taxpayer funds. These cost estimates include only the first- and second-level supervisor’s time and do not include the time of legal or human resources (HR) staff; the associated cost of the supervisor’s and HR and legal team’s benefits; the pay and benefits of the employee as he or she continued to collect pay and benefits while the process ground on (and often while the employee was on paid administrative leave); and the cost of the work not being accomplished.

This group of current and former managers identified five key root causes of dysfunction in the current process:

1. There is no consistent process for employee removal. It varies by agency, bureau, the employee’s Collective Bargaining Unit, and even the agency HR and legal staff assigned to the case.
2. Underperformers often game the system — and the system makes it easy to do. Managers described numerous ways employees could leverage processes designed for other laudable goals to delay or avoid removal.
   1. Employees filed Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) complaints against their manager, alleging discrimination on the basis of race, gender, age, and/or disability in 10 out of 12 cases, and in two of these cases, the employees subsequently took their case to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC). None of these complaints were found to have merit or be valid.
   2. Employees filed grievances against their managers in seven out of 12 cases. In no cases were the grievances upheld.
   3. In six out of 12 cases, employees filed for reasonable accommodation during the performance improvement period or after a disciplinary or adverse action was issued, and in some cases, used the denial of the requested reasonable accommodation to support a claim of discrimination on the basis of disability. None of these claims of discrimination on the basis of disability were substantiated.
   4. Employees requested and received leave under the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) in 3 out of 12 cases, delaying removal.
3. Managers are encouraged — and often incentivized — to leave poor performers on the job. In other cases, they are encouraged or incentivized to transfer these employees to other agencies where the unacceptable performance/behavior continues and becomes another manager’s problem.
4. Managers perceive that agency human resources and legal staff are often too risk-averse — and do not factor in the risks of leaving employees with serious conduct and performance issues on the job.
5. Many managers feel they have insufficient tools and training to create the clear and fair performance standards necessary to hold employees accountable for poor performance.

We the Doers then developed specific recommendations to remove these barriers.

Specifically, we urge Congress to address some of the statutory barriers to a more streamlined, faster, fairer, more transparent process by:

• Revising 5 U.S.C. § 7513 and 5 U.S.C. § 4303 to prohibit agencies and bureaus from (a) adopting additional procedures for removing employees for cause or conduct, beyond that in the revised code and OPM’s implementing regulations/guidance; and (b) entering into Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) that would adopt any additional procedures, waiting periods, or employee protections related to for-cause removal. This process should be streamlined compared to the current process and fully documented so that all parties in all agencies — employees subject to disciplinary action or removal, supervisors, and agency HR staff and attorneys — have a shared understanding of the steps involved and do not need to rely on the tacit knowledge of agency HR staff.
• Revising the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978 and 5 U.S.C. Chapters 12 and 77 (which govern the Merit Systems Protection Board and appeals process); Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, as amended, and the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 (which governs the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission); and the Civil Service Reform Act, Whistleblower Protection Act, and 5 U.S.C. § 1212 (which govern the Office of Special Counsel) to consolidate all post-removal appeals and investigative processes for federal employees into a single adjudicatory body. In light of the recent Trump vs. Slaughter decision, it will be critical for Congress to explore legal options to ensure the long-term credibility and functionality of the adjudicatory board by making this body truly independent at an operational level. This should include strong requirements for transparent procedures, clear recusal rules, and strong removal protections for Senate-confirmed appointees.
• Revising the Equal Employment Opportunity Act of 1972 such that the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission will revise 29 C.F.R. Part 1614 to either (a) raise the threshold for acceptance of complaints to agency Equal Employment Opportunity offices and limit the initial scope of investigation, or (b) eliminate individual agency EEO offices and move all complaints to the single adjudicatory body that we recommend above.
• Requiring agencies to track “time to fire” and other key workforce metrics listed in detail in the body of this report, and to create a centralized case management system (ideally as part of the planned Core Human Capital Management (HCM) platform that OPM kicked off in October 2025).
• Requiring GAO to conduct an annual review of a small sample of these data at each of the 24 CFO Act agencies, to ensure that agencies are following the new process, respecting due process for employees, and accurately reporting data.

Statutory and regulatory changes are necessary but not sufficient, of course. Much of the group’s discussion centered on the gap between theory and practice, and the often wide gulf between directives issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) and actual implementation (or lack of implementation) in agency human resources offices and agency legal offices. Culture matters, and changing the culture from a risk-averse, compliance-focused culture to a culture that balances compliance with timely results will require hiring supervisors, HR, and legal staff with the right mindset; providing appropriate professional development and coaching; and creating the right incentive structures.

We the Doers therefore also recommends the following changes at the executive branch level to make this culture shift:

• Professionalizing employment and labor relations by ensuring adequate resources and training, aligning performance plans with the goal of balancing speed and due process, and requiring HR staff involved in the discipline and removal process to pass a certification test on the new government-wide process.
• Providing documentation resources so that anyone involved in addressing performance or conduct issues understands their role and the steps in the process, such as checklists, templates, and just-in-time training videos.
• Creating a centralized case management system — ideally within the new HR 2.0 Core HCM under development at OPM — to allow supervisors to see where their employees with performance or conduct issues are in the removal process, and to be able to view their direct reports’ electronic Official Personnel File (eOPF) and prior performance appraisals and mid-year reviews.
• Requiring agencies to request agency-funded medical second opinions for most Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) or Reasonable Accommodation (RA) requests from employees with an active Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) or who are in the discipline or performance improvement process, as already permitted by the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), and 29 CFR 1630.14.
• Holding supervisors and HR and OGC ELR staff accountable — and rewarding and incentivizing them — for addressing performance and conduct issues.
• Including an evaluation of how aspirants to the Senior Executive Service (SES) have successfully addressed performance or misconduct issues in the SES selection process.
• Creating a library of sample performance standards by role, to ensure consistency and accountability and to facilitate the development of a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) if necessary.

Our Approach

This report combines storytelling, process mapping, and qualitative user experience research. It is based on interviews and working sessions designed to illuminate the first-hand experiences of federal managers who had dealt with serious employee misconduct and performance issues through the employee discipline and removal process. Our interviews and working sessions with these managers focused on:

1. Understanding how the statutory and regulatory rules operate in theory and in practice — and why a gap exists between theory and practice;
2. Identifying pain points in this process; and
3. Analyzing the root causes of these pain points and what would have to change to make the process faster and more predictable while maintaining fairness.

We did not set out to conduct a statistically representative study of all federal removals. In qualitative user experience research, small samples are often sufficient to identify recurring workflow problems, especially when participants have deep experience with the process being studied. Usability research has long found that a small number of participants can reveal many of the most common usability problems. Basic themes emerge within the first several interviews and often stabilize as additional interviews confirm, rather than fundamentally change, the pattern. While our findings are not statistically representative of all federal agencies or all removal actions, they are valid and useful for identifying common failure points, testing whether formal process maps match lived experience, and generating reform recommendations for further validation.

For this report, we interviewed 10 current or former federal managers who had been involved in removing, attempting to remove, and/or protecting employees from unjustified removal or other adverse action. These managers had a combined 181 years of experience across the following agencies: Agriculture, Commerce, Defense, General Services Administration, Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Interior, Treasury, Office of Management and Budget, and Office of Personnel Management.

These managers had navigated a gauntlet of bureaucratic obstacles to collectively address 14 serious performance and eight serious conduct issues as either a first- or second-level supervisor.

Of the 14 issues handled under 5 U.S.C. § 4303 for poor performance:

• Three resulted in the employee passing his or her Performance Improvement Plan and returning to “fully successful” performance, though in two of these cases, the employee found employment in another agency shortly thereafter.
• Two resulted in the employee’s retirement.
• Two resulted in the employee resigning. One resignation occurred after the employee was confronted with evidence from a police wiretap showing the employee had been making harassing phone calls to the manager’s private residence.
• Two transferred to another agency or bureau. One transfer occurred because the employee was able to find another job before the removal process played out. The other occurred as part of a mediation agreement.
• Five were removed from federal service.

For eight of these 14 cases, the supervisor provided detailed level of effort information about their experience based on their recollection. For this subset of eight performance issues, an average of 19 months elapsed between the time the supervisor first identified the performance issue and the time the employee retired, resigned, transferred, or was fired and removed from federal service.

Of the eight issues handled under 5 U.S.C. § 7513 for misconduct:

• One resulted in the employee’s retirement;
• Two became bogged down in the agency’s Equal Employment Opportunity (EEO) investigation process and the employees are still on the job (and management is still responding to allegations) despite (in the manager’s view) continued failure to perform assigned duties; and
• Five resulted in the employee’s removal from federal service.

For four of these eight cases, the supervisor provided detailed level-of-effort estimates based on their recollection. For this subset of four cases, an average of 18 months elapsed between the supervisor initiating the first disciplinary or adverse action for misconduct and the time the employee either retired or was fired and removed from federal service.

For both types of cases, we asked the supervisor to estimate the number of hours spent actively working on the case by the first- and second-level supervisor, and we then translated these hours into a cost to the taxpayer by applying the hourly equivalent of a GS-15 step 5 2026 federal salary with Washington DC locality pay (since all managers were DC-based) when the individual was a GS-15 manager, and an hourly equivalent of the midpoint of the 2026 Senior Executive Service pay band when the individual was a member of the SES.

We acknowledge that this data set is quantitatively small and not necessarily representative of the removal process across all agencies.

We also consulted with process experts who have experience across multiple roles in the federal discipline and removal process, including former senior executives involved in federal human capital policy, an agency attorney, a former Equal Employment Opportunity Office manager, and senior agency HR officials.

While We the Doers typically focuses on the experiences of non-political appointee civil servants, for this report we also interviewed two former Merit Systems Protection Board officials (one Democrat and one Republican) to better understand the post-removal appeal process.

We also created and shared a straw-man diagram showing how the process had played out in our experiences and prompted our participants to share where their own experiences aligned or differed.

We used their detailed feedback to make significant changes to the original draft and produce a comprehensive current-state process diagram, but this approach is more akin to drawing a trend line through a scatterplot than it is to a single source of truth. The formal statutory and regulatory framework provides only the axes on which these former federal officials’ experiences are plotted. Where the experiences fall within that grid depends on details of what happens in practice across the various agencies, bureaus, collective bargaining agreements, internal policies, HR offices, legal offices, deciding officials, and the risk tolerances and capacities of the individual people involved. That variation is itself one of the central findings of this report.

We leveraged all this user research to craft the recommendations in this report, and we provided all participants with an opportunity to review the draft and provide comments.

Our Goal: A Streamlined, Fair Removal Process that Supports an Efficient, Effective, Trustworthy Government and Is Codified in Law and Regulation

Our Vision for an Efficient, Effective, Trustworthy Government

In We the Doers’ first report, Former Civil Servants Speak: How to Achieve Real Government Reform in a Post-DOGE World, we outline our vision for a customer-friendly, cost-effective federal government that delivers outcomes that matter to the American people in an ethical, reliable, trustworthy manner. (See Appendix A for more details on what this vision entails.)

An Effective, Nonpartisan Civil Service is Absolutely Critical to Achieving this Vision

To deliver on the vision of providing services and achieving outcomes that matter in a customer-friendly, cost-effective, and timely manner, we need outstanding civil servants.

These civil servants need the technical skills to do their jobs — whether as frontline workers fighting wildfires, providing healthcare to veterans, or assisting senior citizens with filing for Social Security; slightly more behind-the-scenes work as FEMA employees processing claims for homeowners’ assistance in the wake of a natural disaster, reviewing and approving grants to community organizations, or auditors identifying fraud, waste, and abuse; or in support functions, such as HR, IT, and procurement, which allow frontline workers to do their jobs more efficiently and cost-effectively.

They also need soft skills, especially customer service and communication, to effectively serve the public and coordinate with internal and external stakeholders.

And they need not only the skill, but the “will” — the drive to do their best, day in and day out.

This is only one half of the equation, however. The civil service must not only be optimally designed to support excellence; it must also remain rooted in the merit system principles. The system based on these principles was designed to ensure the civil service remained professional, merit-based, and nonpartisan — rather than stuffed with a president’s unqualified political cronies through the “spoils system” that existed prior to the passage of the Pendleton Act in 1883 — and to ensure that employees had appropriate due process when threatened with a disciplinary action or removal from federal service.

An Effective, Nonpartisan Civil Service Requires Balance Between Supporting Managers and Affording Employees Due Process

Because having civil servants with the right skills and will is critical to delivering an effective, efficient, trustworthy government, the federal government needs to be able to remove employees whose performance or conduct falls short of acceptable standards within a reasonable time frame. The process must align managers’ incentives with this goal, enabling them to remove employees without an undue burden of the managers’ time or professional reputation. The process must also align the agency’s senior leadership, HR office, Office of General Counsel, and HR and employment policies with this goal, and should minimize the total time elapsed between the identification of the performance or conduct issue and the removal to avoid further disruption to the effective functioning of the organizational unit.

At the same time, because maintaining a nonpartisan civil service is necessary to deliver an effective, efficient, trustworthy government — and because some managers may act in an arbitrary or capricious fashion, or retaliate against a whistleblower illuminating fraud, waste, or abuse — the need to streamline the process for managers must be balanced against the need for due process for the employee. The system must include appropriate checks and balances by neutral third parties to avoid abuses of power, and to ensure that employees who actually are performing well and add value to the taxpayer are retained.

Achieving a Stable Balance Between Speed and Due Process Requires Codifying the Process in Law and Regulation

Past reform efforts have largely rested on a shaky foundation of Executive Orders (EOs) and Office of Personnel Management (OPM) memoranda. These typically included lofty aspirations but few operational details and no dedicated resources for implementation; agencies were “encouraged” to take some vague steps to improve performance appraisals and hold employees accountable but rarely required to do anything specific. Examples include the 2019 OPM memorandum announcing the voluntary Performance Appraisal Assessment Tool and the 2019 OPM memorandum requiring agencies to review their policies for addressing poor performance and misconduct.

More recently, however, the current administration has published much more detailed guidance to federal agencies such as the June 17, 2025, OPM memo Performance Management for Federal Employees.

Yet even when EOs and OPM memoranda are more specific, they can be easily undone with the stroke of the pen when the next administration takes office or merely ignored until they are rescinded.

As an example, the first Trump administration published E.O. 13839, Promoting Accountability and Streamlining Removal Procedures Consistent with Merit System Principles, which was subsequently reversed by President Biden in E.O. 14003, Protecting the Federal Workforce. President Trump then reinstated the policies in E.O. 13839 by signing E.O. 14171, Restoring Accountability to Policy-Influencing Positions Within the Federal Workforce.

Re-writing OPM regulations is in theory a better way to make changes stick, and the current administration has taken this approach by proposing changes to OPM’s regulations to formalize the changes set forth in the June 17, 2025 OPM memorandum. Even so, regulations don’t always trickle down into actual practitioner behavior and can still be undone through tactics like suspending or requesting judicial abeyance of regulations finalized by a prior administration but not yet in effect, or by adopting new regulations after a public comment process.

Furthermore, in a post-Loper Bright era — where courts no longer defer to a federal agency’s reasonable interpretation of ambiguous statues — even a change in regulations can be easily challenged if it governs activities that Congress has not clearly placed in OPM’s authority.

Codifying these changes in statute is therefore the best way to provide continuity from one administration to another. It also increases the odds that the changes will enjoy some level of bipartisan support. Finally, a statutory fix presents the opportunity to create a single, transparent source of truth so that all parties understand the process.

Why Removals Have Historically Been So Difficult — and So Rare

Between 2019 and 2023, between 10,000 and 13,000 federal employees were removed from federal service for performance per year, out of a workforce of nearly 2.3 million employees — a rate of about 0.5%.

This statistic would suggest a high-performing workforce, but many managers will tell you that for every removal, there are many more employees with serious performance or conduct issues. Some of these managers are able to successfully coach, rehabilitate, or reassign the employee to a position better suited to their skills, interests, or temperament. Other employees spend years underperforming — going on and off Performance Improvement Plans (PIP) or cycling through various levels of progressive discipline — only to transfer to another agency (where they become another manager’s problem), be reassigned to another role (where they also may become another manager’s problem), or be permitted to retire (often without a blemish on their record and sometimes even with a legal settlement from the agency) while the process drags on.[1] And other employees are simply allowed to remain and “pass” because managers do not wish to commit the time or resources necessary to pursue removal.

Root Cause #1: There is No Consistent Process for Employee Removal — It Varies by Agency, Bureau, Collective Bargaining Unit, and Even Individual HR and OGC Staff

We the Doers started this project by mapping the federal removal process, as defined in statute and regulation and as actually experienced by managers who had successfully removed employees — and quickly discovered no single source of truth exists. If one looks at the statutes governing federal removals — 5 U.S.C. § 7513 and 5 U.S.C. § 4303 — and the implementing regulations developed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM), the federal removal process appears relatively linear, straightforward, and relatively simple. In fact, OPM’s Performance Improvement Plan – A Quick Guide depicts the Performance Improvement Plan (PIP) process under 5 U.S.C. § 4303 as a four-step, one-way process that involves identifying performance deficiencies, putting the employee on a PIP, monitoring their performance, documenting their failure to improve on the PIP, and evaluating the employee; if the employee’s performance is still unacceptable, the quick guide states that the supervisor may then “propose removal.” The Merit Systems Protection Board website actually shows the entire adverse action process — up to and including removals — as a four-step, one-way process.

But very few of the 10 managers we interviewed had experienced anything resembling the process depicted on OPM’s website.

Why?

Because the reality is that managers must not only comply with the statute and OPM regulations, but with their own agency’s regulations, policies, and procedures, as well as their bureau’s own regulations, policies, and procedures, and — on top of that — the removal procedures in the underperforming employee’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA), if applicable.

To add confusion and complexity, many bureaus have multiple — sometimes even dozens — of CBAs, each with their own individually negotiated set of additional protections for employees. Some Collective Bargaining Units (CBUs) could be as small as a single state or regional office with a dozen employees, such that an employee in the Montana state office could be treated completely differently than an employee with the exact same job and performance issues in the Arkansas office.

And even when two employees have the same performance issue in the same agency, the same bureau, and the same CBU, they are often treated differently depending on the expertise, workload, and risk tolerance of the employees’ first- and second-line supervisors and HR staff and attorneys assigned to their case. Even when the supervisor believes he or she has clear and convincing documentation of a performance issue meeting the standard of proof in 5 U.S.C. § 4303 or a conduct issue meeting the standard of proof in 5 U.S.C. § 7513, HR or OGC staff may push back and insist on additional evidence or (sometimes multiple) re-writes of the justification for removal. Some staff interviewed for this report noted that this process often significantly extended the time frame for removal, and sometimes many weeks or months went by when they did not hear from HR or OGC staff.

While the supervisor often perceives these documentation requirements as a lack of support or sense of urgency from HR/OGC, an agency attorney interviewed for this report noted that the back-and-forth is often necessary to make the action legally defensible, given the high evidentiary standards. As she noted, HR and legal staff members often see the bigger picture of how disciplinary and performance actions are being applied agency-wide. With that context, and relying on their experience, HR and legal professionals often will not take a manager at their word, but instead seek to review sufficient supporting documentation to support the proposed action. In some instances, agency attorneys find that the supervisor has unwittingly taken actions that undermine the removal case, such as approving an employee for a within-grade pay increase. While approving these annual pay increases is often seen as pro forma, doing so implies that the employee is performing at a fully satisfactory level.

In other cases, staff are overworked and do not have the time to see the case through numerous appeals. And perhaps most importantly, we believe, many federal HR and OGC offices tend to attract, retain, reward, and incentivize risk aversion, though, as noted previously, individual agency cultures and individual experiences vary widely. (See root cause #5 for a deeper discussion of this topic.)

In essence, the rules are different for every employee with an alleged performance or conduct issue — the antithesis of a fair process.

To get a sense of the actual process experienced by managers — in all its variations — see Appendix B or this We the Doers’ video tutorial.

Solution: Create a Single, Transparent, Government-Wide Process — and Require Agencies, Bureaus, CBUs, and Staff to Follow It

The current system is the antithesis of a fair and transparent process. As detailed above, two similarly-situated employees with the same performance issues in the same agency may be treated very differently — because they are covered by different CBAs; their supervisors have different tolerances for grievances and mediations; or simply because their cases are assigned to two different HR professionals or agency attorneys.[2] Similarly, two managers in the same agency overseeing employees with similar performance issues may have very different experiences, and receive different guidance from HR and OGC. One may end up bedeviled by poor performers for years to come, while another may be successful in removing them.

How would we create a single, transparent process — regardless of agency, bureau, or CBA?

First, Congress should revise 5 U.S.C. § 7513 and 5 U.S.C. § 4303 to prohibit agencies and bureaus from (a) adopting additional procedures for removing employees for cause or conduct, beyond that in the revised code and OPM’s implementing regulations/guidance; and (b) entering into Collective Bargaining Agreements (CBAs) that would adopt any additional procedures, waiting periods, or employee protections related to for-cause removal.

Congress should also revise 5 U.S.C. § 7513 and 5 U.S.C. § 4303 to:

• Specify the steps in this standardized, streamlined, transparent process; and
• Require all agency HR staff involved in employee discipline or performance improvement to be certified in this new process.[3]

OPM should create related guidance documents and templates, as needed, to effectively implement this new standardized, streamlined, transparent process.

Congress should also revise 5 U.S.C. § 4302 to (a) prohibit any “pre-PIP” notification periods that in effect delay the start of a PIP,[4] and (b) mandate that PIP periods not be less than 30 days nor more than 90 days, unless the agency has requested and received an exception from OPM on a case-by-case basis.

OPM will then need to update its regulations accordingly. The minimum 30-day period will be imposed when the nature of the employee’s work in the critical elements listed on the PIP is such that multiple tasks or deliverables under the critical element will be due during the 30-day period. A period exceeding 90 days will only be permitted if (a) the employee’s work is such that the employee is not slated to complete a deliverable relevant under the PIP in 90 days (e.g., the employee is a research scientist, and no deliverables are expected in the next 90 days) and (b) the manager requests and receives permission from the agency’s Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) to extend the PIP for this particular employee based on the nature of his or her duties.[5]

Second, OPM should update its implementing regulations to reflect these statutory changes and provide a comprehensive list of the steps in a streamlined but fair removal process. If additional implementation guidance is necessary, it should be developed by an interagency council such as the Chief Human Capital Officer (CHCO) Council and published by OPM and made widely available to all employees so that it establishes a single government-wide process. No additional agency-specific guidance should be necessary.

Third, this process should be documented on OPM’s website as a flowchart, and all HR staff should be required to attend training on the process and pass a certification test.

Solution: Track “Time to Fire” and Other Key Metrics — and Create a Centralized Case Management System

Agencies have long emphasized reducing “time to hire,”[6] but we are unaware of any agencies that track “time to fire,” let alone holding staff accountable for expediting removals when warranted.

We are firm proponents of the view that what gets measured gets done — at least, if failing to meet the metric has meaningful consequences.

However, we are also firm believers that metrics can sometimes create perverse incentives if they are not appropriately balanced with other related metrics. Timely removals should not, for instance, come at the expense of reasonable due process or adherence to quality standards.

We believe the metrics that agencies should track and publicly report should include:

• “Time to fire”:
  • KPI (Performance): Time from employee receiving an “unacceptable” performance rating of record on a mid-year or end-of-year performance appraisal review — or from when the supervisor notifies HR that an employee’s performance has slipped below “minimally acceptable” on a critical job element — to the time the employee is removed from the agency’s payroll.
    • Goal: To understand the time required to remove an employee who does not resolve performance issues. (Those who do resolve performance issues after an unacceptable rating will be excluded from this measure.)
    • Target: Average of < 6 months for cases initiated in the preceding 5 years.
  • KPI (Conduct): Time from supervisor initiating progressive discipline[7] process (i.e. contacting HR to report employee misconduct) to the time the employee is removed from the agency’s payroll. Because progressive discipline can understandably be a very nonlinear process a d substantial time may pass between misconduct incidents, agencies should also track the time elapsed between each time the supervisor initiates a disciplinary action and the time the adverse action letter for that particular disciplinary action is issued to the employee.
    • Goal: To understand the time required to remove an employee who does not resolve conduct issues. (Those who do resolve conduct issues after a disciplinary action will be excluded from this measure.)
    • Target: Average of < 6 months for cases initiated in the preceding 5 years.
• Performance- or conduct-based actions that do not result in removal:
  • KPI (PIP Outcomes): Percentage of PIPs that result in:
    • Employee’s performance returning to “fully successful” after end of PIP period
    • Employee retiring without performance returning to “fully successful”
    • Employee being reassigned to another manager without performance under initial manager returning to “fully successful”
    • Employee being downgraded (i.e. to a lower General Schedule pay level)
    • Employee transferring to another agency without performance at initial agency returning to “fully successful”
    • Employee receiving financial settlement from agency
      • Goal: To understand how effective PIPs are at motivating/coaching employees to return to “fully successful” performance, how often PIPs result in alternate actions other  than removal or a return to “fully successful” in the original position, and how many taxpayer dollars are spent on settlements.
  • KPI (Adverse Action Outcomes): Percentage of adverse actions taken under 5 U.S.C. § 7513 that:
    • Do not escalate (misconduct does not reoccur) within 2 years
    • Escalate and result in one additional adverse action but no removal
    • Escalate and result in two or more additional adverse actions but no removal
    • Result in the employee retiring before a removal can occur
      • Goal: To understand how effective adverse actions are at addressing conduct issues, and how this approach varies by agency.
• Customer service:
  • KPI (Customer Service): Average post-removal customer service rating from supervisors rating quality of service provided by HR and OGC throughout the process of a removal action
    • Goal: To understand how effective HR and OGC staff are at supporting managers through the process.
    • Target: >80% of resolved cases are rated satisfactory or above, for both HR and OGC service.

These metrics would be pulled from a centralized employee performance and conduct case management system, ideally as part of the planned Core HCM platform that OPM kicked off in October 2025. Congress should appropriate the funds necessary for successful requirements gathering, development, and implementation, and OPM should stand up a technical assistance and quality assurance team to create a data dictionary, ensure HR staff at each agency are adequately trained, and ensure the data is entered consistently and accurately.

This system would also track which step of the process the case was in, the officials assigned to that step (so that managers can contact them with questions), and whether the employee had pursued or was pursuing accommodations or alleging violations of administrative law (e.g. Family and Medical Leave Act, reasonable accommodations for a disability, Equal Employment Opportunity claims, etc.) that could affect the proposed removal.

Such a system would enhance transparency across HR and OGC, and between HR/OGC and the supervisor. It would also reduce duplication of effort by acting as a single source or truth for all claims and evidence, so that different HR/OGC personnel do not need to ask the supervisor for the same information at different times. Finally, it would allow HR and OGC managers to see when a case languishes with a particular HR/OGC staff member, and to use this information to hold HR/OGC staff accountable for completing assigned tasks in a reasonable time frame.

Beyond this system — and to ensure that expediting cases does not come at the cost of due process — we recommend that Congress require GAO to conduct an annual review of a small sample of these cases at each agency to ensure appropriate due process was followed, and that data was accurately reported.

Root Cause #2: Underperformers Often Game the System — and the System Makes It Easy to Do So

As convoluted as the process described above may seem, it still does not represent the full gauntlet that most managers have to run before the employee is removed.

In reality, there are several shadow processes — or, as one workshop participant described it, “offramps from the official process” — that were designed for other purposes but are often exploited by employees to slow removal or avoid it altogether.

These processes are typically handled by different staff operating in different workstreams assigned to different offices within agencies. Therefore, it is rare for any one HR professional to understand the full picture of the situation and see all the levers the employee is pulling to avoid removal.

As a result, supervisors are often asked for the same supporting documentation over and over, sometimes in slightly different formats, to defend their actions related to a single incident (generally, a discussion about the employee’s performance, or the issuance of a PIP or adverse action).

This fragmentation of responsibility produces enormous frustration for managers, and allows some employees to take advantage of the confusion to delay or avoid removal.

Sometimes, even when there is clear, written evidence that an employee’s performance is unacceptable or gross misconduct has occurred — and even when OGC agrees that the legal standard is clearly met — the agency backs down from removal because the employee alleges that the removal is in retaliation for requesting a reasonable accommodation, or is a result of discrimination. Even when there is no evidence of actual retaliation or discrimination, some managers interviewed for this report noted that their agency sometimes determined that it was easier and cheaper (once staff time is accounted for) to allow the employee to resign or retire without a blemish on their record, in some cases also with a negotiated financial settlement paid to the employee.[8]