N.J.A.C. 4A:3-2 Senior Executive Service
Every section of N.J.A.C. 4A:3-2, Senior Executive Service: 9 rules with full text, amendment history and citing decisions.
- 4A:3-2.1General provisions: State service
Two numbers bound the Senior Executive Service. No more than 1,200 positions across all State departments may be allocated to it, and at least 85 percent of the allocated positions have to be filled by people who hold career status. Career status here means permanent status in a career service title in State government, and an approved leave of absence from a permanent career position does not break it. The SES is built out of specific positions the Civil Service Commission has allocated, so it attaches to a chair rather than travelling with a person.
- 4A:3-2.2Designation of SES positions: State service
A position qualifies for the SES on what it does, not on what it is called: substantial managerial, policy influencing, or policy executing responsibility, judged position by position rather than by title or category. Substantial managerial or policy executing means significant control of substantial resources, responsibility for major programmatic outcomes, or responsibility for a major organisational unit. Policy influencing means influence on the department direction, mission, priorities or major goals. One structural rule constrains where such a position can sit on a chart: an SES position may report only to a higher level unclassified position or to another SES position. Departments submit executive and senior management plans carrying their SES position requests, and a vacant SES position whose major functions have changed without appearing in that plan is reviewed before it is posted or filled. A department head may move an SES member from one SES position to another, with compensation reviewed at the time and the Chairperson notified. Moves covering an emergency or emergent need of six months or less need no notice.
- 4A:3-2.3SES appointments: State service
The section covers hiring into the SES, but the half that matters most is what becomes of the person already in the chair. When a career service position is converted to the SES, the appointing authority has to notify the incumbent in writing that the SES position exists and give them the chance to complete the whole selection process. An incumbent who is not selected, or who declines, becomes a non-appointed incumbent and is placed in a career service position at the same class code within the same appointing authority, provided that permanent title was held within current continuous service. Three placement routes exist, one of which involves separating a provisional employee to free up the position. Where only those routes are offered, the employee takes what is offered; where an optional alternative is offered as well, the employee may choose. Layoff procedures come into play only when no placement can be made at all. A non-appointed incumbent with no career status underneath has three possible outcomes, and termination is one of them.
- 4A:3-2.4SES performance evaluation: State service
Twenty seven words, the shortest rule in the subchapter. Every SES member is evaluated annually by the department head or a designee, under evaluation procedures the Chairperson or designee sets. What the section does not do is say what an evaluation result leads to. Salary advancement after initial appointment is performance based under the compensation rule, and separation from the SES is at the department head discretion on 20 days notice, so the annual evaluation sits next to both without the text connecting them.
- 4A:3-2.5SES compensation: State service
No-range, which in this compensation plan means no class code is designated for the position at all. That one designation removes the entire step and increment machinery that governs career service pay: there are no specific steps within a salary level and no increments based on length of service, and after the initial appointment salary movement rests on performance. Payments are still bounded, by restrictions the Chairperson and the Director of Management and Budget set under their own legal authority. One protection is written in for people moving up from inside. An incumbent with career status whose position is allocated to the SES, and who is then appointed as an SES member, receives an initial salary no lower than the salary being earned at the time of that appointment.
- 4A:3-2.6SES benefits: State service
Leave entitlement in the SES turns on what sits underneath it. An SES member carrying underlying career service status receives the same vacation, sick and administrative leave as career service employees. An SES member without that underlying status falls to whatever unclassified leave plan the department uses, if it uses one. Both groups may take part in the leave related programs open to career employees and to a department executive cadre, including State family leave, Federal family and medical leave, donated leave, and the voluntary furlough program. The examination right is the one people overlook: an SES member may apply for a career service promotional examination in their current unit scope, provided the permanent title held immediately before the SES appointment would have made them eligible for it. Job band movement follows its own path, either a promotional test for a move outside the band or an advancement to a higher level within it.
- 4A:3-2.7(Reserved)
Reserved. No rule text is currently published at this citation.
- 4A:3-2.8(Reserved)
Reserved. No rule text is currently published at this citation.
- 4A:3-2.9Separation from the SES: State service
Twenty days notice at the department head discretion, and the SES appointment is over. What follows depends entirely on whether career status sits underneath. An employee with underlying career status returns to the highest class code permanent title held within current continuous service, in the same appointing authority, with permanent status effective immediately on return and seniority calculated as though it had gone on accruing in that title the whole time. Salary is reconstructed as if the SES appointment had never happened, capped so it never exceeds what was earned in the SES. Where the old title no longer exists, lateral and demotional rights are worked out as though it did. Where the return cannot be effected at all, layoff procedures apply. Removal from State service, or a return to a level lower than this section provides, goes through major discipline instead. Somebody with no career status underneath may be terminated.