By Deborah J. Hopkins, March 19, 2024 For over two decades, we at FELTG have preached the delicacy and strategy required when charging an appellant with misconduct that requires proof of intent. A recent case shows us how problematic this 6-letter word (i-n-t-e-n-t)...
By Deborah J. Hopkins, March 11, 2024 Just about every week, FELTG instructors talk to supervisors who are concerned about, and even afraid of, EEO complaints being filed against them. We tell them that while the fear is real, the majority of EEO complaints result in...
By Deborah J. Hopkins, March 11, 2024 We get a lot of questions about how a supervisor can effectively address unacceptable performance when an employee’s performance standards are written in a vague or subjective manner. In fact, vague standards are probably one of...
By Deborah J. Hopkins, February 20, 2024 As I make my way through dozens of new nonprecedential (NP) MSPB cases, some grab more of my attention than others. And while NP cases don’t really tell us anything new about the law (See 5 C.F.R. § 1201.117(c)), sometimes...
By Deborah J. Hopkins, February 20, 2024 When it comes to disability accommodation, there is no shortage of pitfalls to avoid. And there is one area we constantly hear about from FELTG readers, and that’s the topic of revisiting – or revoking – an employee’s existing...
By Deborah J. Hopkins, January 29, 2024 A FELTG reader recently asked whether a newly issued Federal Circuit decision overturned MSPB’s comparator analysis set out in Singh v. USPS, 2022 MSPB 15 (May 31, 2022). For those unfamiliar with the long and tumultuous history...
Course Description It’s one of the situations most managers would most like to avoid — an employee who doesn’t show up for work. As agencies order some employees to return to the physical workplace, the[...]