The collective agreement for the employees of the German states once had a section on performance pay. It was deleted without replacement from 1 January 2009.
For federal employees, an evaluation based on fieldwork in 2009 looked at how performance pay was handed out. It found a tendency to spread the money broadly and to rate generously. The fear of demotivating weaker performers was given as one reason for the broad spread. In some agencies, the option of dividing the money by pay group had led to what the evaluators called counterproductive rating contests.