Army speeds firing process for civilian employees

A recent Army memo speeds up the process of firing underperforming civilians while giving them less time to defend their work.

The policy, issued July 7, lays out a monthlong process for reporting, investigating and opting to remove an employee. The changes follow Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s September 2025 directive to fire unsuccessful employees “with speed and conviction,” aiming to rid the department of those it feels are hindering its progress. And it puts the Army’s 188,000 or so civilian workers on unsteady footing as the service plans to continue cutting those jobs in 2027.

The guidance provides paths to firing for two sets of Army civil servants: one for general schedule employees and others who comprise the vast majority of the workforce; and a truncated one for those who staff exchanges, bowling alleys and other facilities that generate revenue, known as “nonappropriated fund” employees.

For most civilian workers, the process begins when a supervisor decides someone is falling short. That could be tied to a lackluster annual performance review, complaints or incident reports, or supervisor notes, according to Hegseth’s guidance last fall.

“Unacceptable performance is defined as any Army civilian who fails to meet the expected results in one or more performance element(s),” Army spokesperson Christopher Surridge said in a July 24 email. “Performance evaluations and terminations for unacceptable performance remain based on non-discriminatory, merit-based criteria.”

The supervisor then has seven days from the “date the performance is determined unacceptable” to contact their local personnel office, like a branch of the Civilian Human Resources Agency, to propose the worker be fired. Next, personnel and legal staff must respond to the supervisor’s request within 10 calendar days, the memo says.

The clock begins when the service issues a formal notice that a person could be removed. An official one or two levels senior to the supervisor, or someone outside that chain, has 30 days from the written notice to decide whether the worker should be penalized or fired.

The employee under investigation now has seven calendar days, “or as consistent with collective bargaining agreements,” the memo says. The policy explicitly does away with the flexibility offered by earlier versions that gave workers at least seven days to defend themselves.

Surridge said the change aligns Army policy with the timeline set by DoD. A spokesperson for the American Federation of Government Employees, the largest union of federal workers, did not respond to questions about the memo by press time.

Hegseth’s guidance last fall outlined the criteria decisionmakers should use to judge an employee’s performance, including consistent failure to meet deadlines or quality standards, inability to perform key tasks, and repeatedly making errors that hurt an agency’s mission.

“The effect of an employee’s performance on mission execution is a primary consideration,” Hegseth’s memo said. “Any operational disruption underscores the necessity of removal to maintain a ready workforce.” 

It also offers templates for proposed firing notices, removal decision memos and other steps of the process. Those point workers to the federal Merit Systems Protection Board if they want to appeal.

To incentivize a fired worker to leave sooner, commanders can offer bonus pay, early retirement or up to 12 weeks of leave as a deferred resignation. That echoes the Trump administration’s effort to cull the federal workforce last year, first by encouraging staff to choose to leave on their own, then by cutting positions outright.

The process is much shorter for the Army’s 24,000 or so nonappropriated fund employees. When a supervisor asks to fire someone, their personnel and legal offices have 10 calendar days to decide whether there’s enough evidence to move forward. Then, an official has 30 calendar days to rule on the worker’s removal. 

The Army has already lost more than 32,000 civilians — about 15% of the workforce — since the beginning of President Donald Trump’s second term in January 2025, when it hovered around 221,000 employees, according to government data.

The civilian workforce is the backbone of the U.S. military, lending specialized expertise accumulated over the course of years or decades in government.

“Army Civilians are integral to supporting critical capabilities that do not require military-essential skills, including combat training center operations, acquisition, cybersecurity, depot maintenance, and family services,” the service said in its 2027 budget request, noting that the “indispensible” workforce provides “stability, operational excellence and long-term capability.”

The Department of the Air Force, which oversees the Air Force and Space Force, and the Department of the Navy, which manages the Navy and Marine Corps, did not answer by press time whether they are crafting similar guidance for their own civilian corps.

The Army policy also tries to incentivize good behavior to retain its top performers: Supervisors can offer their employees time off, performance awards or a salary bump as a reward for good work, the memo says.

If an Army civilian is married to another federal or military civil servant, the service is making it easier for them to travel together to the spouse’s new job. Instead of requesting up to one year of leave in three-month increments, Army employees can ask for up to 12 months of unpaid leave up front, and extend that to 18 months in total.

The update “directly promotes continued employment for impacted employees, and removes unnecessary administrative burdens,” Surridge said.

It could also become easier to use leave other employees have donated to a shared emergency pool. The memo says the service will build an electronic system to manage the process of claiming donated leave, replacing government forms that take longer to approve.

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