The 2019 promotion exercise: just like every year, R&D provides you with its forecasts for the distribution of promotion quotas by grade and by DG.

In our communication of 6 November (link) we have already informed you of our analysis of the 2018 promotional exercise. It fully confirmed our forecasts concerning the random distribution of promotions between DGs and grades resulting from the application of the distribution formula that DG HR stubbornly does not want to change.

R&D is always at your side to assist you in the preparation of your self-assessment and dialogue with your evaluator!

The appraisal exercise has just started with the self-assessment phase and the dialogues with the evaluators will follow very quickly: R&D provides its guidance for this phase (see attached file).

R&D has organised a helpdesk to offer you individual help. Like every year, you may send your request for assistance (email: REP PERS OSP R&D, tel: 55676).

“Would I be lucky enough to be in the right place (DG AND grade) to hope for a promotion?” This is the real question to ask yourself and what the promotion exercise has been reduced to!

Although these dialogues are intended to evaluate your performance in 2018, it is quite normal that you also ask about your chances of promotion for this year.

Your superior will not be able, however, to provide you with much clarification as he is totally unaware of whether or not your DG will receive the necessary quotas: this blackout undermines the trust between staff and middle management, since the organized lottery makes totally random the link between merits and promotion…

R&D will never accept that the promotion exercise continue to be a lottery!

Since DG HR has not yet modified its formula, R&D will now provide you the estimates of quotas that will be allocated to your Directorate-General for this new 2019 exercise.

The fact that these forecasts have become an essential working tool both for the evaluators – who even told us that they were waiting for this information before starting the dialogues – and for the human resources managers who, within each DG, coordinate the promotion exercise, gives us every reason to be proud.

Nevertheless, our commitment remains to do everything possible to make sure that this promotions lottery ends and is replaced by a credible, fair and transparent exercise.

Having said that, R&D is happy to give you some essential information.

COLOR LEGEND:

: DGs will have full freedom to promote all staff having attained the average length of time spent in grade and make a large number of quick promotion proposals

: DGs will be able to offer all staff having attained the average length of time spent in grade and make a limited number of quick promotion proposals

: quotas will only allow to offer the staff members having attained the average length of time spent in grade

: quotas will not allow to propose all the officials having attained the average length of time spent in grade

: quotas will be largely in deficit and several officials will not be able to be proposed although they have attained the average length of time spent in grade and have good merits

 

As to grades SC1 and SC2, DGs should, for the first time, receive quotas.

As in 2014, the ongoing internal competitions will negatively affect the promotion quotas allocated to the DGs: the staff will again pay the bill for the “tenure – double promotion” of colleagues in cabinets!

In the context of the painful end-of-mandate and end of reign practices, DG HR, faithful to its mission of a foot soldier, unfailingly puts its talents at the service of the colleagues in cabinets, regardless of whether it comes to parachuting to managerial positions with the help of flash nomination procedures or establishment through tailor-made “internal competitions” …

But DG HR, so generous and dedicated to some “happy few”, does not give any gifts to the staff!

Thus, as already in 2014, the “tenure – double promotion” of the laureates of these ongoing “internal competitions” will be largely deducted from the quotas calculated for this promotion exercise.

As the new Contract Agents GIP have demonstrated in 2017, DG HR is an expert in taking with one hand what it gives with the other … alas, colleagues who give are always the same and they never take!

R&D repeats its demands

Our commitment remains to do everything possible to make sure that this promotions lottery ends and is replaced by a credible, fair and transparent exercise. Thus, R&D, as in previous years, requests that:

·         the formula ensuring the distribution of quotas be modified so that it ensures equal treatment irrespective of your DG or your grade

·         the AD and AST Promotion Committees meet before the launch of the exercise so that DG HR can, in full transparency, inform them of the decisions taken for the exercise and put an end to the blackout which is in force until now.

Cristiano Sebastiani

President