STATE OF LOUISIANA

DEPARTMENT OF STATE CIVIL SERVICE

BATON ROUGE, LOUISIANA

General Circular No. 001498

To: Heads of State Agencies and Human Resource Directors

Subject: PPR Requirements and Best Practices

Issue Date: August 20, 2002

This general circular is issued to provide guidelines to facilitate changes made in PPR reporting which are addressed in General Circular 001497, to provide some recommendations for best practices in managing your agency’s performance management program, and to re-emphasize some of the requirements in the Civil Service Chapter 10 Rules for Performance Planning and Review.

The Performance Planning and Review form (SF15) has been revised. All state agencies should begin using the new form immediately, insofar as practicable. Our staff will be working with Forms Management so that the form will be available through them; we will notify you via the Civil Service website when it is. The form is available now in Microsoft Word and Adobe Acrobat on the Civil Service website (www.dscs.state.la.us). Our staff has worked diligently on the revised form, incorporating invaluable input from our focus group and other state agencies, and we think you will be pleased with the changes.

Ratings and Re-Ratings conducted in the next twelve months or so will be rendered based on planning documents that were written using the previous version of the SF15. Those planning documents contain the original planning expectations and signatures. Use of those already-completed planning forms is encouraged, rather than trying to copy everything onto a new form. Simply attach a blank copy of the "new" page 1 to the old planning document and use this blended form to conduct the rating session. Performance comments, numerical calculations, etc. should be written on the original planning document. To show the final rating using the old planning form, complete the new page one according to the new instruction sheet. When conducting the planning session for the next performance period, please use the revised SF15. A similar recommendation was made when the 3/1/01 Chapter 10 rule changes required a revision of the SF15 in use at that time.

The revised SF15 includes a space for the rating supervisor’s name to be printed or typed, as well as a blank for the required signature. The social security number of the employee is no longer required on the SF15. Instead, users will be required to provide the employee’s identification number and the rating supervisor’s identification number. In the ISIS HR system, those would be the personnel numbers.

The SF15 now provides spaces for Un-Rated Reasons, which all Rating Supervisors will now be required to provide on the form. Examples of other changes you will find to the form are a supplemental page for continuation of performance expectations and performance comments and more user-friendly navigation for users completing the form in Microsoft Word.

When an employee receives an Un-Rated rating, C.S. Rule 10.4 (c) requires that the PPR form must be completed to indicate Un-Rated. Further, the employee shall be notified when a rating of Un-Rated has been rendered. We are finding that compliance with both parts of these is inconsistent. Please be sure that your forms are completed to indicate Un-Rated when appropriate, and please be sure your employees are given notification of their Un-Rated status. Failure to do either of these is a violation of the Civil Service rules. This notification must occur regardless of the conditions under which the employee has received the Un-Rated rating. For example, even if a Rating Supervisor conducts a session and renders a rating of Exceeds Requirements, Poor, etc., but it is later determined the rating is Un-Rated due to untimeliness, the form must be changed and a copy must be given to the employee. Likewise, if an employee receives no rating at all, he should be notified as soon as possible that he’s earned an Un-Rated. The deadline for an employee to request a review of a PPR rating, including an Un-Rated, is the day that falls 15 days after the anniversary date, so it is critical the employee be notified in case he wishes to exercise his right to request a review.

All Un-Rated ratings must be entered into ISIS HR just as ratings in all the other categories---Poor, Meets Requirements, etc.---are recorded. In ISIS HR, appraisal infotypes that are not populated with appraisal data will be counted as Un-Rated ratings when ZP117 reports are generated.

When entering the Un-Rated rating into your system, the user should use as a guide the copy of the official SF15 that notified the employee he earned an Un-Rated rating. ISIS HR users should enter the numerical value of the Un-Rated rating into Infotype 0025 as "000."

The effective date of all Un-Rated annual ratings, regardless of the reason, is the day after the anniversary date. This is in accordance with C.S. Rule 10.11 (a). That is the appraisal date that should be entered into ISIS HR as the effective date of the rating.

In order to have accurate PPR data for reporting and auditing purposes for FY 02-03, ISIS HR users are asked to generate a ZP117 report to identify employees with anniversary dates or Re-Rating deadline dates of 7/1/02 and later and whose PPR ratings have already been entered into the system. You should maintain the Infotype 0025s on these employees to include new information such as Rating Supervisor personnel number and Un-Rated Reasons. This means that Human Resources offices will need to obtain Un-Rated Reason data from rating supervisors for those Un-Rateds rendered effective 7/1/02 and after. We encourage users to update these records as soon as possible.

Re-Ratings are required when an employee has earned a Needs Improvement or Poor as an official rating. The deadline for the Re-Rating is six months after the anniversary date; it may be rendered up to 60 days prior to this six-month date. If a compliant Re-Rating isn’t rendered, the employee receives an official Un-Rated on that six-month deadline date [C.S. Rule 10.11 (b)]. The employee must be notified on an SF15. ISIS HR and other system users should enter the rating into their system. The appraisal date, in this case, should always be entered as the date six months after the anniversary date. This should be done regardless of when the employee is actually notified of the Un-Rated.

All Re-Ratings should be entered into your system as a new appraisal record. The Re-Rating covers only the period of time that falls between the date the Needs Improvement or Poor rating was rendered, and the date the Re-Rating is performed. The dates shown on the PPR form should reflect that period of time and not include the original rating period.

Some agencies will not grant merit increases for employees who have earned overall Meets Requirements or better ratings, but who earned Needs Improvement or Poor ratings for one or more individual performance factors. At a later date, the employee is unofficially Re-Rated and granted the merit increase. These are unofficial Re-Ratings and should not be entered into your system. Also, there are some cases where an employee’s permanent status is being considered on a date other than his official anniversary date. In these cases, some agencies are performing unofficial rating sessions before granting permanent status. This is an excellent practice; however, these are unofficial ratings and they should not be entered into the system. The only ratings that should be entered into the system are the OFFICIAL RATINGS or RE-RATINGS.

When a Human Resources office is notified of an employee’s transfer out or separation, determine if the employee is leaving within the window of opportunity for an official PPR rating. If the employee has received an official PPR rating by the Rating Supervisor, this record should be entered into your system. We generally advise a losing supervisor to render an official rating if the employee is leaving within the window of opportunity for rating. This alleviates, for the gaining agency, the issue of the PPR rating for its new employee.

If the employee is not leaving within the window for rating, we advise an unofficial "closeout" rating be conducted. However, closeouts are not considered official PPR ratings and should not be recorded or reported as official ratings.

If an employee is separating from state service, and is leaving within the window of opportunity for rating, but no PPR rating was rendered, ISIS HR users should delete the Infotype 0025.

If an employee is transferring to another personnel area in ISIS HR, and is leaving within the window of opportunity for rating, but no PPR rating was rendered, the user should not delete the Infotype 0025 at the time the transfer out is entered. This will ensure that when the gaining agency runs its ZP117 report, this employee’s IT 0025 will appear on the report with no values (other than the rating total of 000) and will signal to the gaining agency that a rating must be recorded for this new employee, even if it is an Un-Rated. Once the gaining agency has maintained the IT 0025 with its record, this will delimit the IT 0025 that appears on the losing agency’s ZP117 report. The losing agency should delete the IT 0025 at that time.

Please note--if an employee transfers or separates after the anniversary date (or, in the case of a Re-Rating, after the Re-Rating deadline) and an Un-Rated is rendered, the Un-Rated must be recorded and reported by the losing agency.

Do not create an Infotype 0025 in ISIS HR without populating it with appraisal data. The ISIS HR system is designed to create an Infotype 0025 approximately 90 days prior to the next anniversary date. (Exceptions to when the system would generate an IT 0025 automatically would be when an employee is a recent transfer from another agency or when an employee requires a Re-Rating, etc.)

If an employee Request for Review results in a numerical change in the employee’s rating, the changed rating must be entered into ISIS HR. The change shall be effective retroactive to the day after the anniversary date, or to the Re-Rating deadline date, as required in Chapter 10 of the Civil Service Rules.

In ISIS HR, the user should maintain the Appraisal infotype, use the original "From" and "To" dates, enter the new numerical value, enter the appraisal date as either the day after the anniversary date or for a Re-Rating, the day that falls six months after the anniversary date, and enter the personnel number of the Rating Supervisor as the appraiser. Do not enter the personnel number of the individual serving as the designated Reviewer, because then an accurate record of PPR ratings rendered by appraiser will not exist. If you wish to document that this appraisal record reflects the result of a request for review, attach a text document to the infotype. And, of course, a separate record of all Requests for Reviews should be maintained in agency Human Resources office for reporting to this department at the end of the fiscal year.

Paper agencies are required to submit all their SF15s in all rating categories to the Department of Civil Service for entry into ISIS HR. Failure to provide this information is a violation of the rules. Care should be taken to make sure the Rating Supervisors use a copy of page 1 of the new PPR form, so the additional information about the Un-Rated Rating is submitted to this Department.

Feel free to contact Ms. Teresa Persick of our Program Assistance Division at phone at (225) 342-8274 or by electronic mail at tpersick@dscs.state.la.us if you have questions about changes to the PPR form or reporting requirements. If you have questions regarding the ISIS HR system, please contact the Help Desk at (225) 342-2677.

Sincerely,

Allen H. Reynolds

Director