As an HR manager, you compensate employees by processing individual RPA actions or mass actions. For example, you compensate an individual when you appoint or promote that person, assign other pay such as Availability Pay, and grant an award. When the compensation covers a larger group of people, such as the employees at a specific personnel office, you can process a mass salary action, such as a pay adjustment.
You can process compensation for employees governed by standard and alternate federal HR systems (AFHR). For example, for AFHR employees, you can process award payments, pay adjustments, performance-based increases, and pay reductions.
See: Alternate Federal HR Systems
You can also use compensation to recruit, retain, and reward employees by granting:
Award actions to employees and groups of employees
See: Award Actions
Incentives such as Recruitment and Relocation incentives
For example, you can process an incentive payment such as a Recruitment Incentive and specify recurring biweekly payments or nonrecurring installment payments, and record the payment dates and service obligation information.
Pay increases
See: Processing a Mass Salary Pay Adjustments, Health Care Provider Pay Actions
You can view a summary of the compensation an individual receives by reviewing that person's consolidated records using Manager Views in self-service.
See: Information Overview
Federal regulation updates issued by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) affect how you compensate your employees. For example, the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act (FWFA) contains reforms that affect how you apply special rate schedules, locality pay, and pay retention when calculating an employee's pay. The RPA process captures the information required to calculate an employee's pay based on these regulations.
When you process a salary change action or an automatic Within Grade Increases (WGI) or Quality Step Increases (QSI) for GS and equivalent pay plans, the application automatically calculates the employee's pay based on the FWFA guidelines. For example, the application:
Determines if the person's position or retained grade contains a special rate table
Sets the Pay Rate Determinant based on whether the employee's Locality or Special Rate Supplement entitlements apply
Calculates the Adjusted Basic Pay and applicable Locality or Special Rate Supplements, and
The application calculates the pay increases and awards for retained grade employees assigned to special rate tables against the higher amount (special rate or locality rate) based on their duty station
Assigns the employee and position a default pay table identifier when the special rate table no longer applies
Stores the pay table identifier used to calculate the employee's current pay and PRD values in the US Federal Assignment RPA extra information
When you have a group of employees affected by a pay change, such as an annual or semiannual pay adjustment or the issuance of a new pay table, you can process an appropriate mass salary action to perform a pay adjustment for selected employees.
For employees on incremental salary schedules, you can process a standard pay adjustment and for those employees on pay banded pay tables, a percent increase. When OPM issues new locality rates, you can also process locality adjustments.
See: Processing a Standard Mass Salary Adjustment, Processing a Percent Pay Adjustment, Processing a Locality Adjustment
For General Schedule (GS) and equivalent special rate tables or special rate pay plan, grade, and step combinations that terminate under the Federal Workforce Flexibility Act, you can process a mass action that updates the affected employee and position records.
See: Processing a Pay Table Change Action
Federal agencies must certify their SES and SL/ST performance appraisal systems. After receiving this certification, you can process actions to increase the salary of SES and SL/ST equivalent employees to a higher salary cap level. Business rules apply pay cap checks based upon your agency's level of certification: full, provisional, or none. System administrators can enter and maintain certification information in a table (GHR_PERF_CERT) using an SQL script.
If an employee's Adjusted Basic Salary or Total Salary is over Executive Level III or Executive Level 1 levels, and OPM withdraws your agency's performance appraisal certification, you can neither increase nor reduce the employee's pay until certification again covers the positions occupied by these employees. When you process an individual or mass salary change action, you can identify employees who fall into this category by entering a PRD 2 in their records. The application prevents any increase or reduction to basic salary, and retains the same basic salary in the NPA.