Federal leaders - paying for staff perks out of pocket?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gs-14, gs-15, and SES (or equivalents): in what circumstances do you pay for things out of pocket for your staff?

I am a newer GS-15 and am just curious how others handle this as I have often found myself questioning what is appropriate. In my federal experience, I’ve had leaders who give a small token gift around end of year holidays (think mug etc) and would take their direct reports out to lunch at end of year. This would include feds and contractors.

As a supervisor, I have always had a combination of local and non local staff. So instead of a lunch, I typically have given a small gift card or similar at end of year ($10-20). I’ve also often done a small gift card at Public Service Recognition Week to cover a cup of coffee, which is something I picked up from my leadership. I coordinate baby and wedding showers, and give gifts for that as well as for first time home purchases. I do these things for both feds and contractors. I also occasionally buy lunch - maybe 1-2x year, typically in a situation where lunch may be $10-15 per person. I budget a few hundred dollars for this sort of thing from my personal funds throughout the year.

Too high risk from ethics perspective. Is your ethics lawyer ok with all of these?

nothing in ethics rules prohibits this and it is common practice

says you or your ethics officer? def not common in my agency.

ethics rules say employees cannot buy gifts for their supervisors but not the other way around

and in my agency, it is definitely common for the senior staff to either outright pay for or kick in a lot more toward a baby gift, holiday lunch, retirement gift, etc.

+1 on the ethics rules interpretation

[Anonymous]

I take my staff out for really nice dinners when we are on work travel. I won’t pay for any alcohol, but will cover the meal that might cost me $400-500 for 3-4 people.

pre-COVID we had a quarterly team lunch that I always paid for. My staff work really hard and promotions in my agency are super hard to come by. And spot awards are really crappy. Yet my staff is super dedicated. For that I think they deserve more. So I try to do small things for them beyond just saying thank you for a job well done.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Gs-14, gs-15, and SES (or equivalents): in what circumstances do you pay for things out of pocket for your staff?

I am a newer GS-15 and am just curious how others handle this as I have often found myself questioning what is appropriate. In my federal experience, I’ve had leaders who give a small token gift around end of year holidays (think mug etc) and would take their direct reports out to lunch at end of year. This would include feds and contractors.

As a supervisor, I have always had a combination of local and non local staff. So instead of a lunch, I typically have given a small gift card or similar at end of year ($10-20). I’ve also often done a small gift card at Public Service Recognition Week to cover a cup of coffee, which is something I picked up from my leadership. I coordinate baby and wedding showers, and give gifts for that as well as for first time home purchases. I do these things for both feds and contractors. I also occasionally buy lunch - maybe 1-2x year, typically in a situation where lunch may be $10-15 per person. I budget a few hundred dollars for this sort of thing from my personal funds throughout the year.

Too high risk from ethics perspective. Is your ethics lawyer ok with all of these?

nothing in ethics rules prohibits this and it is common practice

says you or your ethics officer? def not common in my agency.

ethics rules say employees cannot buy gifts for their supervisors but not the other way around

and in my agency, it is definitely common for the senior staff to either outright pay for or kick in a lot more toward a baby gift, holiday lunch, retirement gift, etc.

Yeah but to your contractors too? Like op is doing?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I take my staff out for really nice dinners when we are on work travel. I won’t pay for any alcohol, but will cover the meal that might cost me $400-500 for 3-4 people.

pre-COVID we had a quarterly team lunch that I always paid for. My staff work really hard and promotions in my agency are super hard to come by. And spot awards are really crappy. Yet my staff is super dedicated. For that I think they deserve more. So I try to do small things for them beyond just saying thank you for a job well done.

It sounds like you make them feel valued and that’s why they are so dedicated.

Not because you pay for things, but likely how otherwise treat them too.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I take my staff out for really nice dinners when we are on work travel. I won’t pay for any alcohol, but will cover the meal that might cost me $400-500 for 3-4 people.

pre-COVID we had a quarterly team lunch that I always paid for. My staff work really hard and promotions in my agency are super hard to come by. And spot awards are really crappy. Yet my staff is super dedicated. For that I think they deserve more. So I try to do small things for them beyond just saying thank you for a job well done.

Why? They're getting a MI&E that covers their dinner on work travel.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:It's a difficult issue. I'm a GS 14 and most of my direct reports make really similar money to me (they're high 13s), except I'm expected to buy them all lunches, give gifts at the holidays, bring in bagels often. I was glad when covid cut most of that out. I have 3 in daycare, so even $50 is a lot to me. At our annual BBQ, managers are expected to throw $100 in to purchase the room rental and food, plus make a dish.

Low level employees (GS7) get pretty angry when meetings roll into lunch and they can't really afford to order lunches in like everyone else.

Something that really annoys me are public meetings. We're expected to provide some sort of tray of food plus drinks. Where does that money come from? Yep, managers.

Gov is just kind of cheap.

It’s definitely different if this is the situation but working in places where managers are SES or Regulators with incomes over $225K it’s different. They make $50K-$100K more than their Staff and $100 once a year seems chintzy, although I realize that they may not be as flush as it seems, they make way more and should theoretically be able to handle more than $100 a year.

But why?! This doesn't happen in private sector companies. If your manager gets lunch, it's on the corporate credit card. Why is there an expectation that your manager buys lunch?

The majority of the fed workforce reports to a mid level manager who is likely GS13-15. The mid level managers are the ones who report to senior managers. Most senior managers only supervise other managers.

Um, I worked in the private sector--consulting--and if I took my supervisees out to lunch I paid for it, I couldn't "expense" it. Birthday cakes, a couple of bottles of champagne to celebrate a big win, donuts for everyone working on a Sunday morning.....that's all senior staff out of pocket kind of stuff in the private sector too.

Um, no! You must have worked for a contractor, not a consulting firm.

I was a VP at a consulting firm. If it wasn't billable to a client, we paid for it ourselves. Taking the team out to lunch "just because" wasn't something our firm considered overhead, there were VPs who would have expensed lunch every day and driven up the indirect portion of our labor rates like crazy.