162. Memorandum From the Director General of the Foreign Service and
Director of Personnel (Barnes)
to the Deputy Under Secretary of State for Management (Read)1
Washington, April 3, 1978
SUBJECT
- Reluctance to Take Assignments
Reluctance on the part of Foreign Service personnel to accept the
assignments offered or proposed to them has probably grown in recent
years, but it is still a problem of modest and manageable dimensions if
one views the Service as a whole. It is only one factor in the
assignment equation and, with few exceptions, does not seriously impede
the assignment process. An analysis of the various causes of the
“reluctance factor” is attached.
The basic question is how much effort we need to put into the business of
assigning employees to jobs that are not only appropriate (in terms of
grade, qualifications, experience, etc.) but which more or less satisfy
the employees’ personal and professional desires as well. There is no
doubt that assignments could be made more expeditiously if we paid
attention solely or primarily to the needs of the Service. But such
assignments, made with little prior consultation and without taking into
consideration all the relevant factors as seen by the employee, would
certainly result in greater discontent, more broken assignments,
expensive transfers, etc.—in other words, significant inefficiencies as
a (delayed) consequence of greater efficiency in the assignment process
itself.
The “open assignments” system makes the employee more fully a part of the
assignments process and provides a technique for overcoming the
reluctance factor. In some cases it entails significant prior consul
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tation between counselors and
employees. Occasionally it means that the employee, after lengthy
discussions, has to be brought to realize that the available options are
very limited, that his top choices are simply not available, and that he
must reduce his expectations. This approach is particularly important
now, given the congested conditions in the Service which most employees
are aware of in general terms but which they do not understand in detail
and in all their implications.
Statistics are not fully available but we believe our record for
assignments kept is markedly better under “open assignments” than under
previous systems. Further evidence of success is that by the end of the
assignment cycle we have made very few forced placements and there are
virtually no unassigned employees in the staff and officer corps up
through the intermediate grades. (The senior problem is of course
compounded by a surplus of officers over positions.)
Not surprisingly, reluctance tends to be a more serious problem in areas
where career structure seems deficient and where promotion opportunities
and new and more challenging jobs appear to be lacking. This relates
specifically to certain classes of staff employees. However, as the
Service profile lengthens and promotions become less frequent, the
reluctance factor could come to affect officer placements more
adversely. At present, officer “reluctance” is as often fed by competing
opportunities or by overly solicitous supervisors as it is by
unrealistic expectations on the part of officers.
In short, this problem is one of many we grapple with in making
assignments but one we believe “open assignments” and other techniques
keep within manageable dimensions.
Attachment 1
Paper Prepared in the Bureau of
Personnel2
Washington, undated
Reasons for Reluctance
The reasons for the reluctance of Foreign Service employees to accept
jobs are so various that it is difficult to generalize about the
problem. Still, a few widely applicable observations can be
made:
(1) The policy of “open assignments”, now in its third year, has
misled some employees to think that they have a right, if not to
choose
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their jobs, at
least to turn down those they don’t like. PER has taken great pains to make clear that this is
not the case—that “open assignments” means no more than (a) better
information about available jobs than has existed in the past, and
(b) a right to be heard and considered by a rationally organized
personnel system.
(2) Reluctance to accept assignments appears to be a more serious
problem among staff and support personnel than it is for the FSO Corps. There is an obvious reason
for this. While hardship posts frequently offer significant
professional compensations for FSO’s—for example, a middle grade officer can be DCM at a small embassy in Africa when
he could not even be section chief in a large Western European
post—there is no corresponding incentive for staff personnel.
Moreover, these people do not generally believe that the sacrifice
involved in going through with a hardship assignment enhances their
presently limited promotion prospects to any great extent. This
means that for most of them the pay differential is the only
attraction of a hardship post and often it is not enough.
(3) Among officers the severity of the problem varies from one cone
to another, but administrative and consular officers may be a bit
more inclined to resist assignments than those in the political and
economic cones. Again, the lack of adequate professional
compensation at hardship posts probably plays a role. So far as the
consular cone is concerned, the fact that there are more jobs than
officers at certain levels no doubt makes it harder to persuade
individual officers that a certain hardship post or unattractive job
are the only ones for them.
(4) The growing atmosphere of humanitarian concern in our society has
made itself felt in the traditionally disciplined ranks of the
Foreign Service. On the whole, considering the size and complexity
of our Service and of the systems that have been devised to operate
it, we have been remarkably successful in taking account of special
needs, whether related to children’s education, working spouses,
health, compassionate factors, or whatever. Our very success in
doing this, however, has nourished the tendency of employees to
assume that their personal requirements will be honored as a matter
of course.
(5) In a period of slow promotions, officers are especially sensitive
to a job’s potential for moving them ahead in the Service. This
means different things to different people, depending on grade,
cone, specialty, etc. For example, almost all officers from the
middle grades on up are concerned to get supervisory experience,
believing (with reason) that demonstrated ability to manage the work
of others will improve their chances of reaching the highest levels
of the Service. (This is particularly true in the political and
economic fields, where supervisory jobs at the lower and middle
levels are very few and far between.) It is not surprising,
therefore, that officers are occasionally inclined, during the
earlier stages of the assignment cycle, to resist jobs that seem
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deficient in promotion
potential while holding out, as long as there seems to be any hope,
for ones that clearly have it. On the other hand, many officers
appear reluctant to accept out-of-agency assignments (details or
Pearson program3) which often include substantial
management responsibility. It appears this attitude is due to a
feeling that at a time of slow promotions it is dangerous to be out
of the mainstream of Foreign Service assignments.
(6) PER and the employee who is up
for transfer are often not the only players in the assignments game.
Quite often employees get strong support, from their post overseas
or the bureaus in the Department that are interested in them, for
their own notion of what their onward assignment should be; this
support occasionally encourages them to resist the more modest—or at
least different—plans which PER has
in mind for them.
Attachment 2
Paper Prepared in the Bureau of
Personnel4
Washington, undated
Discussion by Category
Staff and Support Personnel
An increasing number of secretaries and of communications personnel
are objecting to their onward assignments and fewer than in the past
are volunteering for hardship posts. The C&R panel tries to take account of personal
preferences, but it has had to resort fairly often to forced
placements in order to meet Service needs. These usually end up
working out one way or another but the struggle is inefficient and
time-consuming. The secretarial panel, on the other hand, has made
forced placements only very rarely, preferring to accommodate and
adjust wherever possible.
One of the difficulties with C&R
assignments is that there are only about 150 supervisory positions
in the C&R field overseas but
approximately 200 senior communicators (R/RU–6, S–4 and above).
Often these people have to be assigned to positions lower than their
personal grade. Junior communicators, too, are unhappy over the
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dearth of supervisory
opportunities for which they feel they are qualified and which they
think would help them to advance in rank.
Secretaries also balk occasionally over the grade of the job they are
assigned to. However, the reasons for their reluctance to take jobs
are so various that one hesitates to generalize.
Junior Officers
Junior Officers present little difficulty, in part because there are
more jobs than people and in part because first-tour officers are
not permitted to negotiate for their assignments (although they may
express preferences). The results have been good in recent years;
while these assignments are certainly directed, there have been
virtually no instances in which it would be appropriate to call them
forced placements.
Middle Grade Officers
In the political and economic cones, there have been almost no
assignments in recent years that could properly be called forced
placements. During every assignment cycle there is a period during
which fairly large numbers of officers are reluctant to accept
certain jobs until they are satisfied that the more attractive ones
they have put at the top of their preference lists are beyond their
reach. So long as it does not take too long or become too unwieldy,
this scaling-down of expectations is a good thing: it means that our
officers accept jobs which are less than their top choice with a
better will and with more understanding than if they had been
assigned arbitrarily at an earlier stage.
It is quite clear, all the same, that some areas of the Department
suffer from persistent and deeply ingrained unpopularity with FSO’s. This is especially true of the
functional bureaus (with the exception of PM) and, in particular, of INR and CU. Indeed it
has not been uncommon for some positions in INR to go unfilled for fairly long periods of time.
Variations in the popularity of the different regions of the world
constitute much less of a problem for political and economic
officers. It is true that a large majority of officers yearn for
Europe at one time or another; but we seem to have enough
enthusiasts for all parts of the world so that political and
economic positions rarely go begging for candidates.
There may be a growing problem with labor-political positions
overseas. FSO’s, including officers
with labor as a primary or secondary functional skill, are more
inclined than they used to be to view the labor specialty with
skepticism, believing that it almost guarantees a slow rate of
advancement in the Service.
The problem of reluctance exists in the consular area but is limited
in scope. The reluctance of employees to go to a post with a bad
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reputation is quite often
mitigated by the career opportunities such posts offer. Sometimes
officers are able at these posts to go into positions higher than
their personal rank.
Occasionally there are management and supervisory responsibilities
that would not be found at a more attractive post. This has meant
that there have been few forced placements of consular officers:
three in 1976 and none in 1977.
One problem which may be peculiar to the consular cone is a modest
shortage of officers, at certain levels, in relation to the
positions that have to be filled: it is a “deficit” cone. This gap
is met in part by excursion tours of officers from other cones. It
does tend, however, to persuade officers who are members of the
deficit cone that they should not or need not let themselves be
forced in the direction of a single unattractive option. Obviously,
where several offices or posts are bidding for the services of a
single officer that officer is in a better position to bargain for
the assignment he views as most desirable.
Counselors for the administrative cone in PER/FCA regard the problem of reluctance to take
assignments as a serious one. They have not had to make many forced
placements, but there is a great deal of reluctance on the part of
their officers to go to undesirable posts and officers often have to
be led and cajoled into accepting them.
Senior Officers
Seniors require rather delicate handling. They derive a certain
amount of (real or imagined) leverage from their experience and
maturity as well as from the fact that the Department regards them
(by definition) as people who have excelled. Since there is a
shortage of appropriate funded positions in relation to the numbers
of senior officers available, their assignments often call for a
reduction of inflated hopes and expectations. Some of them have to
be persuaded to go into positions which, even though graded at
senior levels, have in the past been regarded as more appropriate
for grade 3 officers. For example, it is often close to impossible
to find a senior officer willing to accept assignment to O–2
political or economic counselor positions. Another complication
results from the fact that a fair number of senior positions are
still held by middle grade officers—usually FSO-3’s; a senior officer cannot properly be assigned
to a position, even though it may be graded at the senior level,
which would make him subordinate to an officer of lower rank.
The senior assignments office in PER
estimates that 15 to 20 percent of senior officers have rejected
specific assignments during recent years and that a larger group,
perhaps as much as 25 percent, have been “deft enough to decline
assignment proposals without a negative word”. The senior officers
who demonstrate reluctance to accept assignments
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tend to fall into the middle group in
each class—not the stellar performers and not those rated in the
lower deciles by the selection boards. A significant factor in this
attitude is the expectation of successive transfers to positions of
increasing responsibility as measured by the classification attached
with specific positions. In general, senior officers find it
difficult to accept that after twenty years or so of advancement
through positions of ascending responsibility they are faced with
the prospect of moving laterally to assignments which offer no more
psychic gratification than the jobs they have already done—and
carried out to the fulsome praise of their past supervisors.
