Federal employees may see faster path to promotions

Federal employees may soon see opportunities for faster promotions, under a new proposal from the Office of Personnel Management.

In a proposed rule this week, OPM detailed plans to eliminate the currently required 52-week — or one-year — waiting period for many federal employees before they can qualify for a promotion to the next grade level.

Eliminating the one-year wait before a promotion will reduce administrative burdens, add flexibility, reward high performers, and strengthen federal recruitment and retention, OPM said.

“Federal employees should be rewarded for what they can do, not how long they have waited,” OPM Director Scott Kupor said Wednesday.

The decades-old “time-in-grade” rule is “an arbitrary and unnecessary obstacle preventing agencies from promoting qualified employees to higher-graded positions with the skill sets agencies need,” OPM wrote in the proposed rule, scheduled to publish to the Federal Register Thursday.

“Removing the 52-week waiting period reinforces the principle that promotions should be based on demonstrated ability and merit — particularly the skills and readiness needed to perform the work — rather than time served,” OPM said.

The government’s time-in-grade restrictions have been in place for General Schedule employees in competitive service positions since the 1950s. When the requirement was first established, it aimed to prevent a top-heavy workforce with too many federal employees being promoted too quickly.

In its proposed rule, OPM argued that the time-in-grade requirement is no longer needed. Agencies now have other rigorous qualification standards in place, rendering the Korean War-era policy outdated.

OPM said eliminating the waiting requirement will also help agencies better compete for talent by more closely aligning the speed of government promotions with those in the non-federal sector.

In a recent interview with Federal News Network, Kupor previewed the agency’s plans to eliminate time-in-grade restrictions.

“If somebody does a fantastic job, even if they’ve only been doing that job for six months, we shouldn’t have a time-based restriction to our ability to promote and recognize that individual,” Kupor said earlier this month.

Removing the 52-week waiting requirement aligns with broader hiring reforms under the Trump administration, including moving toward skills-based hiring and de-emphasizing employee tenure. In March, OPM issued a separate proposal to prioritize employee performance over tenure in agencies’ reduction-in-force (RIF) retention registers.

“Eliminating the [time-in-grade] requirement will help dispel the myth that promotion automatically follows a set period of time spent in a particular grade and instead emphasizes the importance of the qualification requirements,” OPM said.

The proposal this week also attempts to correct “inconsistencies” between federal pay systems. The current wait period requirement for promotions applies to GS employees but not to Federal Wage Grade employees, OPM said. The restrictions are also not required for excepted service positions but can still be used at an agency’s discretion.

“This disparate treatment of employees under varying appointments and pay plans highlights the inequities of retaining [time-in-grade],” OPM said.

Since the 1990s, OPM has on multiple occasions proposed eliminating the time-based requirement for promotions, but none of the past proposals were ever fully implemented. In 2008, OPM issued a final rule eliminating time-in-grade restrictions but withdrew the final rule a year later. At the time, OPM announced plans for “a more comprehensive review of pay, performance and staffing issues,” but that review was never finalized.

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