Performance Awards for Employees Who Retired Prior to December 31st

Employees who retired prior to December 31st may be added to the IC spreadsheet if the supervisor would like to nominate them for a performance award. If you need to confirm any of the data on the IC SMARTHR spreadsheet, please submit a WITS ticket.

Compensation Limits for Title 5 (General Schedule) and Senior Biomedical Research Service (SBRS)

Total compensation received by Title 5 employees or SBRS members in any given calendar year cannot exceed Executive Level (EX) I. Discretionary payments (e.g., performance awards, cash awards, recruitment incentives, Physicians’ Comparability Allowances) may be authorized in excess of EX-I but must be deferred and “rolled over” for payment in future years. ICs should work with their servicing OHR staff to ensure that the “rollover” discretionary payments are either paid in the subsequent year or continue to be withheld for payment in future years in order to allow affected employees to continue to receive base pay increases. (Monitoring “rollover” payments is particularly important for SBRS employees whose base pay is at or near the statutory EX-I cap, as payment may preclude any base pay adjustment (i.e., comparability and automatic or discretionary “spring” increase) during the same calendar year.)

Total Compensation for Title 42 (f) and (g) Employees

1. Performance awards and cash awards are part of total compensation and must be counted against the total compensation limits imposed by HHS for Title 42(f) and (g).
2. For Title 42(g), total compensation cannot exceed $250,000.
3. For Title 42(f), total compensation cannot exceed $300,000. 
4. NCC or NCCP review and approval of the Deputy Director or Director, NIH, is required for any combination of performance awards and/or cash awards that exceed ten percent of base pay within the preceding 52 weeks, or when total compensation will exceed $250,000 or $300,000 for Title 42(g) and (f) respectively.
5. Within the restrictions specified above, IC Directors may grant PMAP awards without the need for NCC or NCCP review or higher-level approval.
6. IC Directors have authority to approve PMAP awards for NIH Distinguished Investigators. PMAP awards cannot be granted that would cause the total compensation of an NIH Distinguished Investigator to exceed $300,000 or the combination of PMAP award and cash awards to exceed 10 percent of base pay. Non-performance based cash awards must be approved by the NIH Director.
7. The HHS Secretary’s approval is required for performance awards for employees’ whose salaries and bonuses exceed $300,000, as established by HHS Human Resources Manual Instruction 42.1 updated on March 11, 2015

Performance Awards for a Title 38 employees

The PMAP award for a T-38 employee is calculated on the employee’s base pay and market pay. The sum of the GS base pay and any other discretionary pay including PMAP awards is limited on annual basis to EX I.

For example, on December 31, a Title 38 PDP employee’s GS non-locality base pay was $89,370 (GS 14, step 1 without locality) and Market Pay was $90,000, for an annual pay of $179,370. The employee receives an Achieved Outstanding results rating and is granted a 2.5% PMAP award. The award would be $4,484 (2.5% of $179,370). The employee may receive the award since the compensation $93,854 (GS non-locality base pay plus the award) does not exceed EX-l. The employee’s Market Pay does not count towards the EX I pay cap.