The Foreign Service Journal, July-August 2004

level as FSOs, but without any of the perks, respect or opportunities for advancement. When the Family Member Associates program was created in 1998, the department’s goal was to increase the professionalism of family- member employment and create an appointment mechanism that would allow EFMs to earn credit toward retirement. By providing “real” oppor- tunities for family members, the department hoped to improve the recruitment and retention of FSOs. It was a worthy goal, but the reality is that the department has missed the target. There is little “buy-in” from management and HR officers to ensure that EFMs are afforded truly equal status with FSOs, or even FSNs! In these “real” EFM jobs, we continue to have to fight our own HR office to receive our highest previous rate of pay and are rarely able to convince HR that we are worthy of having our back- grounds reviewed for the Superior Qualifications Rate. Nothing is more frustrating to an EFM, already relegated to a significant pay cut from a U.S.-based job, than learning there are mechanisms to rec- ognize private sector experience but HR didn’t understand the process, or didn’t bother to inform the EFMcandi- date of the options. That the hiring rules preclude salary grade adjustments once we begin working and have the opportunity to do a little digging into the archaic Foreign Affairs Manual rules, and discover we could have been more fairly compensated, is yet another bureaucratic barrier. By excluding the EFM piece from the Foreign Service staffing puzzle, your article seems to confirm that FMA are no closer to being considered professionals than when we were known as “the PITs!” Terri Lawler Smith Eligible Family Member Embassy Ankara More on CAJE Alex Ludwig’s article on the Computer Aided Job Evaluation pro- gram ( FSJ , April) was both interesting and insightful. It’s gratifying to me, as an HR practitioner, to see this topic given the thought and time it deserves. Implementing CAJE is a huge change for overseas missions, and Ludwig pointed out legitimate concerns. However, I don’t think he fully conveyed why this change was undertaken in the first place and how the benefits of this transition to a new way of evaluating jobs outweigh some of the negatives. CAJE is an off-the-shelf system that is being used widely in the U.K. and around the world. It has been tailored slightly in order to give value to some of the unique skills our over- seas locally-hired employees must have to work successfully with the U.S. government. All agencies and all regional and functional bureaus were invited to participate in the development of CAJE. As a result of their input, changes were made to the basic tool. Ludwig is right on the mark in many of his observations. CAJE does measure five factors: knowledge, responsibility, intellectual skills, communication and work environ- ment. He accurately notes that the local employee system is based on “rank-in-job” rather than “rank-in- person.” This has always been true and is unlikely to change, CAJE or no CAJE. The old system, based on the Local Employee Position Classification Handbook, was a “standards-based” system. The standards were written in the 1970s and most were never updated. They had arbitrary limita- tions and in many cases were almost impossible to understand and explain. The classifier had to write a long, often convoluted “analysis and evalua- tion” based on a comparison of a real job to the 1970s standards. Lacking accurate, up-to-date standards, it was difficult for different classifiers to come to similar grade determinations. Without any uniform guidance across different categories of jobs, it was extremely difficult to convince employees and their supervisors that their jobs were being classified fairly in relationship to other jobs. Ludwig does not support his assertion that “the CAJE calculus implicitly assigns more value to the work done by FSNs in the admin/GSO fields — thereby dis- criminating against the rest.” My personal experience implementing CAJE at three posts does not support this. Some management employees — those with huge responsibility for funds, property or other employees — tend to get significant credit for “responsibility.” Political, economic and public diplomacy employees tend to get high scores for knowl- edge, intellectual skills and commu- nication. Some of the higher-level management jobs tend to score well in these areas, too. It’s not just political assistants that should be given credit for being “con- summate diplomats.” I’ve seen many shipping assistants and HR assistants who exercise high-level interpersonal skills in influencing people, complet- ing difficult negotiations, and solving tricky long-term problems important to mission goals. These employees deserve credit for these skills and CAJE can give it to them. The CAJE questionnaire is on the HR/OE Web site, and I’d encourage interested employees to look specifi- cally at the questions under “intellec- tual skills” and “communication.” These questions are designed to try and tease out some of the indefinable interpersonal and “human” skills. One thing that always bothered me about the old system is that supervisors quickly learned to take 12 F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L / J U LY- A U G U S T 2 0 0 4 L E T T E R S