Pay for Performance in Georgia State Government

In the mid-1990s, the State of Georgia launched a major reform of its personnel system. One part of the reform included a new approach to compensation called GeorgiaGain. With pay-for-performance as its centerpiece, GeorgiaGain was a comprehensive effort to modernize many of the state’s human resources management (HRM) practices. Its goals included the establishment of a state-of-the-art performance management system, implementing performance measurement and evaluation procedures that supervisors and subordinates alike trusted, setting up a competitive compensation plan, and streamlining the state’s position description and classification system. This article reports on the findings of major survey of state employees conducted early in 2000 designed to explore employees’ perceptions of the impact in areas such as job satisfaction, trust and confidence in the state’s HRM system, and the effects of pay-for-performance. Overall, employees were highly critical of the reform and believed that it had not produced the intended outcomes in most areas.