Recently finalized rules requiring that employee performance evaluations fit a mandated pattern will apply to the rating cycle closing next month, OPM has said, a process that will involve “calibration” by senior agency officials that potentially will reduce many of the ratings set by employees’ supervisors.

While a recent memo on carrying out the changes does not specify an implementation schedule, in response to questions from FEDweek, OPM said that what it calls “standardized” rating “applies to both the FY26 and FY27 performance appraisal cycles.”

“Agencies must establish a calibration program for the FY26 performance appraisal closeout no later than September 20, 2026 (end of FY26 appraisal cycle). Additionally, agencies must design their new GS performance management systems, and have them approved by OPM, prior to October 1, 2026 (for FY27 implementation),” it said.

“Applying a standardized distribution of ratings, and designing and implementing a calibration program, is effective for the closeout of the FY26 cycle,” it said, adding that it “will be publishing FY2026 performance appraisal cycle close-out guidance separately. We expect that guidance to be released in the next few weeks.”

A manual for “performance management officers”—agency lead officials for implementation—attached to the memo does not specify a pattern for agencies to achieve. “Any guidance from OPM that contains requirements for agency compliance has been or will be issued in a formal memorandum,” OPM said.

However, the manual gives as an example a target of 10 percent of employees rated as Level 5 (outstanding) and 20 percent rated as Level 4 (exceeds fully successful), within possible ranges of 5 to 15 percent and 15 to 25 percent. Almost all of the rest presumably would be rated at Level 3 (fully successful).

That would largely mirror policies already in place for senior career employees, whose limit of 30 percent at the top two levels combined has been seen as a precedent for wider application.

As in prior guidance, the manual says that the patterns will be an aggregate agency-wide—while allowing for variation by component, occupation, geography and other factors within an agency—and that supervisors will not need to follow a pattern in assigning ratings within their work unit.

Barring a substantial change in patterns of how supervisors assign those ratings, the higher-level action will have to bring many of them down to meet the desired overall pattern. OPM has said that in 2024, nearly 43 percent of employees below senior levels on a five-level system received a Level 5 rating another nearly 22 percent were rated as Level 4 and all but a few percent of the rest were rated at Level 3. Under four-level systems, 55 and 34 percent were rated in the top two levels.

Making ratings comply with the required pattern will involve “calibration” panels of representatives from the performance management officer and executives, senior managers, HR and other senior officials from multiple agency units who are to “develop defensible distinctions among high performers.”

They are to focus on what did the employee accomplish; what effect did those accomplishments have; how challenging was the work; was performance sustained; and how did the employee contribute to mission success.

It gives as an example a scenario in which eight employees in a unit have been rated at Level 5 but only two such ratings are permitted for that unit. In choosing the two, it says, considerations should be what evidence distinguishes the top performers, what accomplishments produced the greatest mission impact, were achievements sustained, and can distinctions be documented objectively.

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