Embodiments of a method and a device are disclosed. In an embodiment, a method for performing physical layer operations in a communications network is disclosed. The method involves determining a desired error management mode for a receiver at a first network node, at the first network node, embedding an indication of the desired error management mode into a forward error correction (FEC) frame, and transmitting the FEC frame from the first network node. In an embodiment, embedding an indication of the desired error management mode into an FEC frame includes embedding an operations, administration, and management (OAM) word into the FEC frame to communicate the indication of the desired error management mode.