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CORRESPONDENCE AND DIRECTIVES In chapter 1 you were given instruction on how to write the Navy's various forms of correspondence. As the senior LN, you will be handling them in a much different way. One of your primary duties as an office supervisor is to control the correspondence and directives that your office deals with in its normal daily routine. Your responsibility is to handle and route all incoming and outgoing correspondence and to make sure all directives of a legal nature are kept current and prepared following command policy. It will be up to you to determine which correspondence has the highest priority and how to route it to each worker so there is a smooth coordination of work in your office. Knowing exactly what to do with incoming correspondence is important to the efficient operation of your office and command. You must be sure you have set up a system of routing correspondence to your workers for action that considers the priority with which the action is taken. The system you set up must also allow for your subordinates to understand not only the content of the correspondence but the timeliness with which they should act on it. A correspondence read file and an action message board are two commonly used routing systems for making sure workers read and initial appropriate action items. It is also important that all your personnel are familiar with the different types of naval correspondence and directives as covered by the Correspondence Manual and the Directives Issuance System Manual. TRAINING Avery important aspect of your role as a supervisor is to make sure you maintain a comprehensive training program. The primary goal of any training given to your subordinates is to improve their efficiency on the job plus enhance their advancement opportunities. A formal training program intended to ready your personnel for advancement should be based on occupational standards. Since advancement examinations are written based on occupational standards established for each rating, any training received within the occupational standards guidelines benefits all concerned. Another reason for comprehensive training, especially for those LNs who are new to the rating, is to indoctrinate them as soon as possible to the many facets of the rating. When an NLSO or SJA office receives new LNs recently out of school, the new LNs possess only the basic administrative tools. It will take some time for these LNs to experience the many phases of the rating. Usually one tour is not enough to do the job. The importance of a sound training program cannot be overemphasized. Many sources are available to you when putting your training program together. Good guidelines for selecting and organizing your subject matter are contained in Military Requirements for PO 3 & 2. Its contents are extremely helpful at guiding you through the training development process and should result in a program that will meet the needs of your subordinates as well as the LN community as a whole. In most of your billet assignments as an LN you will work side by side with civilian personnel who augment the staffing of NLSOs or SJA offices. Quite often you will supervise some of them. Together, civilian employees with military counterparts are an integral team that contributes significantly to the mission success of your office as well as the command. In the next section we will address civilian employees and two important aspects of your supervision, namely, writing position descriptions and performance appraisals. THE FEDERAL EMPLOYEE Too often the unfamiliarity with civil service regulations causes problems in carrying out good management practices. Again, involvement is important in achieving office efficiency. To understand the world of a civil servant you should not hesitate to pursue whatever is available in the way of training. A visit to your servicing civilian personnel office should be your first stop. They not only keep up the records of civilian employees hut also maintain publications and regulations governing civil service; for example, copies of the Federal Personnel Manual, the Civil Service Reform Act pamphlet, and the Manager's Handbook. The most helpful and highly recommended guide is the local standard operating procedures (SOP). You can obtain the SOP from the servicing civilian personnel office also. The local SOP explains in specific detail how actions are handled by that servicing personnel office. Each SOP is different and should never be used at another location because it would not apply. There arc procedural differences at each Servicing civilian personnel office. The local SOP defines the procedures for all personnel actions. For instance, it explains the procedures for staffing, classification, and employee relations. These offices also conduct seminars and training for military supervisors. Your efforts to get as much information as possible will enhance your understanding of the civilian personnel who staff your office. POSITION DESCRIPTIONS One of the major tasks concerning civilian employees that you may find yourself involved in is the writing of position descriptions. Positions must be classified before employees can be hired. A position description is an official record of the work assigned by management to an employee. Position descriptions are useful in setting qualifications used in filling jobs and promoting employees. They can be used to orient new employees in their duties. The duties and responsibilities in a position description are also used in developing performance standards for the work and in deciding on (mining courses related to the work. Although different position descriptions are required for different classifications of federal employees, we will touch briefly on the General Service (GS) position description because, in most cases, it will be the GS civil service employee that you supervise. The following is a broad outline of the major elements that make up a GS position description. Most GS position descriptions are now written in a Factor Evaluation System (FES) format. The FES is a method of assigning grades in the classification of nonsupervisory positions, GS-1 through GS-15. Under the FES, position descriptions consist of a brief listing of the major duties followed by a description of those duties in nine FES evaluation factors. The nine factors are as follows: 1. Knowledge required (by the position) 2. Supervisory controls 3. Guidelines (for the work) 4. Complexity (of the work) 5. Scope and effect (of the work) 6. Personal contacts 7. Purpose of contacts 8. Physical demands 9. Work environment For additional information on writing position descriptions using the FES format, refer to the guide How to Write Position Descriptions Under the Factor Evaluation System. All servicing civilian personnel offices should have this guide. PERFORMANCE APPRAISALS Another important task is the writing of the performance appraisals of your civilian personnel. Performance appraisals are used as a basis for decisions to train, reward, assign, promote, demote, retain, or remove (for reasons other than misconduct) employees. Because most performance appraisals are based on locally prepared criteria, we will only briefly cover the major areas that supervisors need to be concerned with when writing performance appraisals. Specifically, they are as follows: l Advise employees on what the critical elements of their jobs are l Establish performance standards that will permit accurate evaluation of job performance on the basis of objective, job-related criteria l Assist employees in improving unacceptable performance l Reassign, demote, or remove those employees whose performance continues to be unacceptable, but only after they are given an opportunity to show that they can perform acceptably and do not improve Remember, the aforementioned writing guidelines are very general. Specifics depend on the location of your organization, the type of federal employees you are supervising, and the type of job that they are assigned. Again, you should contact your servicing civilian personnel office to obtain both the governmentwide and local directives that are established for your particular employees' job descriptions and performance appraisals. Your office may be tasked with being the central point for the processing of all indebtedness complaints concerning members of the command. Therefore, you must be familiar with the Navy's policy regarding indebtedness of its members. As the office supervisor, you will decide how to handle indebtedness correspondence by setting priorities and setting up files and tickler systems to track cases. This section briefly discusses the major parts of that policy, as well as when and how complaints of indebtedness must be addressed by the command. Keep in mind that an indebtedness problem is of a personal nature and is treated as a confidential matter between the service member, his or her division officer (or whoever the CO appoints as advisor), and your office. Public knowledge is not required unless administrative proceedings or disciplinary action becomes necessary. POLICY From start to final settlement, a monetary obligation is a private matter between the service member and the creditor. A member of the naval service, however, is expected to settle his or her just financial obligations in a proper and timely manner. The failure to pay just debts or the repeated undertaking of obligations beyond one's ability to pay is regarded as evidence of irresponsibility. It is considered in retaining security clearances, making advancement in rate or special duty assignments, recommending reenlistments, or authorizing extensions. In aggravated circumstances, indebtedness problems may become grounds for disciplinary action or administrative separation. The naval service has no authority to require a member to pay any private debtor to divert any portion of his or her salary to payment. No CO may adjudicate claims or arbitrate controversies respecting alleged debts; however, all COs should cooperate with creditors to the limited extent of referring qualified correspondence to the member concerned. Before discussing what is qualified correspondence or qualified indebtedness complaints, we will look at two acts that a creditor must follow before a CO is obligated to cooperate with the creditor. FEDERAL TRUTH IN LENDING ACT The Federal Truth in Lending Act requires a disclosure of credit terms so the consumer may compare the various terms available to him or her and avoid the misinformed use of credit. To this end, the act requires that credit terms and costs be explained to the consumer in a uniform manner revealing the annual percentage rate of the total finance charge. FAIR DEBT COLLECTION PRACTICES ACT The Federal Fair Debt Collection Practices Act prohibits contact by a debt collector with third parties, such as COs, to aid in debt collection unless there has been prior consent by the debtor, or the debt collector obtains a court order. The act defines what a debt collector is and is not. Generally, those prohibited from contacting the CO are those firms engaged in the collection of debts as their primary purpose. In other words, the original creditor has given up trying to collect and turned it over to a professional debt collects. The act does not prohibit the original creditor from contacting the command. PROCESSING OF COMPLAINTS Complaints of indebtedness are referred to the service member when the creditor's correspondence contains evidence that the debt complained of has been reduced to judgment. If it has not been reduced to judgment, the correspondence must contain a certificate of compliance (or its equivalent) and proof that the credit transaction was made following the Truth in Lending Act and its Standards of Fairness. The creditor also must submit a Statement of Full Disclosure showing the terms of the transaction disclosed to the service member when the contract was executed. If the debt collector is in violation of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act or a state statute regulating debt collection practices, return the correspondence to the sender, along with a letter similar to the sample letter in figure 14-1. |
 
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