This measures any special or unusual requirements or conditions in a job that add to the difficulty of the work but are not adequately considered by the other factors. Examples of conditions that may warrant consideration are jobs which involve:

--an unusual degree of physical effort;

--an unusual degree of required mental effort or concentration;

-- an unusual degree of environmental impact on the work.

Factors I through IV should provide adequate means for evaluating most positions; therefore, only atypical positions in the APTES category should be assigned values under this factor. Where an agency deems it appropriate to assign such values to specific positions, the circumstances and appropriate point value must be clearly expressed in the pertinent agency benchmark job descriptions. Since the factor is applicable in only unusual cases, no benchmark positions included in the initial group of proposed Government-wide descriptions provide for credit under Factor V.

In those unusual positions where credit under this factor is appropriate, point values are restricted to a 10-20 point range. Intermediate scores must be in increments of five points and scaled in proportion to the added difficulty. The maximum "add-on" for this factor under any one or any combination of elements is 20 points.

Care must be exercised not to add on values for Factor V when the identified condition in fact involves additional "know-how" which can and should be recognized under Factor I.

Care also must be exercised to avoid adding values for elements
that are not appropriately evaluated under a job ranking system.
For example, the risk involved in working in a hazardous environ-
ment can best be evaluated and compensated for on a pay
differential basis. The amount of pay differential should be based
on the degree of risk. However, if the presence of a hazard
requires additional knowledges, job skills, or responsibilities,
these should be recognized and evaluated under the four basic
factors.

The APTES system encompasses approximately 600,000 Federal employees, currently evaluated and paid under the General Schedule or its equivalent, whose duties would make them exempt under the definitions of the Fair Labor Standards Act.

Like all pay models proposed for the Task Force's evaluation systems, the APTES structure is designed to serve the two basic principles of External Comparability and Internal Equity. The construction procedure consists of three steps:

1. Surveying the non-Federal sector of the employment market by the most comprehensive and exact means possible.

2.

3.

Calculating a curve or payline which best fits these salary survey data, and
is equally consistent with the rationale implicit in the scaling of the
evaluation system.

Expanding this payline into a structure of salary ranges which meets the
anticipated needs, utilization, and career patterns of the Federal employees
whom the system will cover.

Survey Method. The Task Force recommends that the Bureau of Labor Statistics be solely responsible for the collection of salary data used to determine Federal pay at all levels. It also recommends that the surveyed sample be expanded from the "private sector" to the "non-Federal sector" so that state and local government salaries could be gathered, whenever such employees are a significant portion of the labor market, so as to provide a satisfactory data base for a particular occupation. Of the jobs surveyed by BLS for the 1970 PATC Survey, 19 are APTES benchmark positions.* These are shown in CHART I plotted at their respective salaries and point values.

Payline Construction.

The point scale on CHART I also exhibits a distinctive feature of APTES: the work span encompassed by each level becomes progressively larger as one moves upward through the scale, ranging from 90 points for Level VI to 115 points for Level I. Consequently, the interlevel work distinctions become progressively greater. Yet the inherent "value" of each point is constant. A uniform, or exponential curve, following the formula Y-ab, has been calculated to fit these 19 individual data points, as shown on CHART I.

The exponential curve was chosen to be consistent with the underlying rationale of the scaling structure as outlined above. It provides a constant percentage increment for each increase in point value (e.g., 9.62% for each 50 point increment in this case) regardless of where on the curve this interval is measured. Consequently, the interlevel percentage salary differential, whether measured at the point minimums, midpoints, or maximums, becomes progressively greater, in keeping with the progressive nature of the work distinctions.

The curve was fitted to the 19 individual points, rather than to the average salary for each level to provide the best approximation of the overall salary level (or comparability rate) for each level. To illustrate, CHART I shows that Level VI extends from 95 to 185 points. However, we have salary data on only two jobs at this level:

* Actually, four of these benchmarks have had average salary levels calculated from Area Wage Surveys rather than the PATC Survey.

Calculation of the average salary ($10,600) is an easy matter; the question is where this average should be calculated on the horizontal scale. An "x" value of 140 could be selected on the basis that this is the midpoint of the evaluation point range, but this would ignore the fact that both of these jobs have a significantly higher point value than 140. It can be presumed that such a difference is reflected in the salaries paid these jobs in the private sector. It would, on that basis, be better to use 162.5 as the "x" value for this level, since that is the average point value for the two jobs. Pursuing this refinement one step further resulted in the decision to simply calculate each point separately.

This method results in giving each of the jobs an identical weight in determining the payline. This is admittedly an inexact process because the jobs vary considerably in population, both in the surveyed sector and in the Federal service. If proper consideration were paid to these population differences through a weighting process in the payline formula calculation, the resultant curve would bear a closer relationship to the actual composition of the Federal work force. Because of the difficulties inherent in various weighting techniques, however, the simple unweighted method was used for this illustrative model.

CHART I shows that once a curve is fitted, each point value will have a corresponding dollar value. Level IV, for example, extends from $12,810 (corresponding to the evaluation point range minimum of 290) to $15,395 (corresponding to the evaluation point range maximum of 390). The determination of a comparability rate for Level IV, therefore, seems limited to one of two rather obvious choices: (1) $14,043, which is the dollar value corresponding to the range midpoint of 340 points, or (2) $14,103, which is the arithmetic average of the dollar minimum and maximum. The former was selected as being more consistent with the process by which the payline was constructed.

The interlevel differential, measured at the comparability rate, was as follows for this particular curve:

Expansion into Ranges. Once the comparability rate for each level is established, it must be expanded into a series of salary ranges of sufficient width to provide orderly progression, based upon experience, longevity, or merit, for each of the employees covered by the system. This is a matter of internal policy, based upon the composition and anticipated career patterns of the work force.

In preparing the range structure embodied in this illustrative pay model, the Task Force was influenced by the following considerations:

1. Progression through a salary range should not be a matter of longevity
alone, but should at some point become a matter of merit, so as to reward
the observable distinctions in individual performance.
The total range
provided (step portion plus merit portion) should be at least as great as
the 30% provided by the General Schedule.

2. Within-grade increases should be larger than the 2.6% to 3.3% provided by the General Schedule so as to become a discernible, positive morale factor. At the same time, providing large step raises should not peg the entry rate so far below comparability as to be inequitable to the employee.

3.

Progression to full journeyman proficiency should take less than three years
at the job levels encompassed by APTES; consequently, it should take the
employee correspondingly less than three years to reach the comparability rate.