Many times I rant and then lose steam because nothing comes in to back it up beyond the sound of my own voice. This one just fell in my lap from one of my net groups. Justice for one at huge costs for all.for everyone. Now perhaps the lady was unfairly treated. Perhaps she just thought she was. Perhaps the supervisor was unfair, a turkey, a bully, a bigot...the big question is, does it matter? The First World is VERY rich by human standards but those riches are never infinite. That is why economics is called the dysmal science. You choose A and give-up being able to have B or C or D or.. The dirty little secret is that perfect justice is unattainable this side of heaven. Even if the lady wins, it is not the same as being treated in ways she felt were just in the first place. Money and vindication are better than not having it but not the same as praise on the job and an upward career path. Similarly making society carry the turkeys, the problem children, the prickly, the unlucky has its costs as well. Performance in a work place tends to define itself around a norm. If some get away with something then others adjust their behavior. We used to aim at median behavior with the excellent not getting full rewards and those who couldn't keep up getting dumped. If we keep defining normative downwards the effeciency level of the organizations will drop. Actions and consequencces folks. No free lunch.
Scott
Federal Times
June 9, 2003
Pg. 1
Removing Poor Performers
Why It's So Hard and What You Can Do About It
By Mollie Ziegler
In October 1999, managers at Naval Sea Systems Command told Cynthia
Guillebeau, an engineer, that she was failing to complete assigned tasks.
Her performance would have to improve.
Citing numerous specific examples of unacceptable work, her supervisor,
Steve Castelin, developed a performance improvement plan with specific tasks
and deadlines. The deadlines were extended twice, but Guillebeau still
failed to complete her projects. On March 31, 2000, nearly five months after
the first warning, Guillebeau was fired.
But the story does not end there. Three years, two appeals and a
discrimination complaint later, the Merit Systems Protection Board sustained
the dismissal. Guillebeau has since appealed her case again - this time to
the federal circuit court. Her attorney, Elizabeth Newman, does not dispute
the Navy's claim that Guillebeau failed to complete tasks assigned her;
rather, she argues, the performance standards given Guillebeau were too
strict.
While the circumstances of this case may be unique, it illustrates why many
federal managers find the process of trying to remove poor performers so
daunting.
Trying to dismiss a poor performer takes terrific amounts of time, distracts
attention and energy from other matters, causes stress, saps morale, and can
invite discrimination cases in response.
An analysis of federal hiring and firing data clearly shows that poor
performers are rarely, if ever, fired.
In the past five years, for example, eight Cabinet-level departments -
possessing a combined work force of about 486,000 - did not fire a single
employee for poor performance, according to OPM data. Those departments were
Labor, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development,
Transportation, Energy, Education, Veterans Affairs and State (although
State claims it fired 12 employees for poor performance in 2002, which is
not accounted for in OPM's data).
Of the departments that did fire employees for poor performance in that
time, all but Agriculture dismissed fewer than 1 percent of their work
forces. But OPM estimates poor performers comprise 4 percent of the work
force.
There is no reliable data on how many employees in the private sector are
fired for poor performance.
Some agency heads are now trying to get out from under the cumbersome
performance-based removal procedures established by the 1978 Civil Service
Reform Act. Homeland Security Department managers already are free of those
rules. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld is pressing Congress for
legislation allowing greater hiring and firing flexibility for his civilian
work force. And the Education Department last month signaled its intentions
to seek similar flexibility. None of these departments, however, has yet
detailed the new rules they have in mind.
"The system for managing the civilian work force clearly is not working
well," Rumsfeld said June 3. Provisions in a Senate bill introduced June 2
by Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, would give Defense Department managers more
control to reassign and dismiss employees. The House passed a similar bill
last month.
Although dismissing a poor performer under traditional rules is a daunting
endeavor, the alternative - tolerating a poor performer - can be damaging as
well. For one thing, it can sap morale among employees who must take up the
slack of a poor performer.
A recent survey indicates that half of all federal workers think their
agencies fail to effectively deal with poor performers. The Office of
Personnel Management's Federal Human Capital Survey was conducted last year
and released in March.
The survey results are an alarm bell for federal managers and policy makers,
OPM Director Kay Coles James said in March.
"The strongest question in there - where everybody agreed across government
- is that we don't do a good job with poor performers," James said. "If we
don't listen to that and do something, then we're wasting this gold mine of
information."
Many experts agree.
"The findings in the OPM survey show that employees are saying they're tired
of picking up after poor performers," said John Palguta, vice president of
policy and research at the Partnership for Public Service, a Washington
organization that promotes public service. "There's a growing recognition
that they face an unacceptable situation."
How Managers Cope
The two major paths managers follow to remove poor performers - Chapter 43
and Chapter 75 of Title 5 of the U.S. Code - are both criticized as being
overly bureaucratic, time consuming and confusing.
"As a supervisor, I have a choice to make: Is spending two years of my life
to remove a poor performer a good use of my time?" said an Agriculture
Department manager in St. Louis, who asked not to be identified.
It seems easier, in many cases, to take other actions short of dismissal,
such as denying poor performers raises or demoting them. If conduct problems
exist, managers may find it easier to dismiss an employee for misconduct
than for poor performance.
"Many poor performers are also just bad employees in general, so you're
lucky if a poor performer comes into work and punches you out," said Bill
Wiley, a former Merit Systems Protection Board employee who has written
books and CD-ROMs to help managers effectively manage poor performers. "That
way you can just fire him."
Whether they might consider such a fate lucky, many managers fail to take
action against poor performers because they worry higher-level management
will not support them, or that their actions will create an adversarial
situation in the office, be reversed upon review, or lead to false
accusations of discrimination or harassment.
"Managers tend to complain that you have to make a Supreme Court case and go
through endless red tape," said Hal Rainey, a public affairs professor at
the University of Georgia. "Personnel specialists have maintained that if
managers simply do their homework and do things right - keeping good
records, giving clear notice of poor performance - they can remove a bad
performer."
Either way, managers are avoiding performance-based removal procedures,
choosing instead to take informal actions, including referring the problem
employee for counseling. A 1999 study by the Merit Systems Protection Board,
"Federal Supervisors and Poor Performers," concluded that the percentage of
managers taking no action to deal with poor performers was increasing. No
more recent data are available.
Ignoring poor performance is a mistake, said Carolyn Ban, a former OPM
official and now dean of the University of Pittsburgh's graduate school of
public and international affairs. "The worst thing to do is ignore poor
performance, because other employees pick up the slack and become
resentful," she said.
The Costs of Poor Performers
Direct and indirect costs of retaining poor performers can be high. The
direct cost of poor performance translates into higher-than-necessary
payroll costs and lower productivity, according to MSPB. And such costs are
increasingly unaffordable.
"Budgets have been cut back so far that organizations can't afford the
luxury of keeping people who aren't productive," Ban said.
But there are indirect costs too. "Supervisory inaction can turn the unit's
better performers into overworked, resentful employees who, noticing the
absence of penalties for inferior performance, may reduce their own efforts
as a result," said a 1999 MSPB report.
Federal managers often say they contract out many functions because it is
far easier to fire contractors than employees if their performance is not up
to snuff.
"If you've got some employees who aren't doing a very good job, you're stuck
with them," said Robert Maranto, a political science professor at Villanova
University in Pennsylvania. "But you can hold contractors accountable in a
way you can't hold your own employees accountable."
And there is a broader image problem plaguing government that is prompted,
at least in part, by perennial poor-performing employees, some experts say.
"While the stereotype about government employees not performing well is
mostly false, the fact that we can't fire the small number of turkeys who
make us look bad tends to reinforce that stereotype," Maranto said.
One common method managers use to get rid of poor performers is to transfer
them to another office or agency without warning the new manager of the
problem. Managers rate their performance as fair in order to facilitate the
transfer.
"Managers transfer poor performers more in larger organizations because in
smaller organizations everybody knows each other and you can't get away with
it," Ban said.
Reforming poor performers is another option. While that is no easy task
either, it can bring rewards.
After being transferred to a problem division, a Census Bureau manager said
he witnessed one employee who had turned her computer terminal around in
order to dry her fingernails on the fan while another was using her CD-ROM
drive as a coffee mug holder. The biggest problem employee, though, was a
habitual poor performer who was difficult to work with and failed to meet
deadlines. He had been transferred in and out of offices for years.
But the manager worked on motivating the poor performer. To help him realize
he could be successful, he began giving him small tasks and enforced strict
deadlines. "He's doing better now, but it's taken a lot of work," said the
manager.
Redress Reform
While managers must overcome cumbersome rules and restrictions to discipline
an employee, employees are given seemingly unlimited opportunities for
redress.
Civil servants can appeal disciplinary actions at three levels: within their
agency, at one of four central adjudicating agencies, and in the federal
courts. The Merit Systems Protection Board hears employee appeals of
dismissals and suspensions. The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission
hears complaints of discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex,
national origin, age or handicap. The Office of Special Counsel investigates
complaints by whistleblowers of retaliation. And the Federal Labor Relations
Authority reviews arbitration decisions for union employees.
"The incentives for employees to appeal a disciplinary action to the nth
degree are quite robust, especially if they've been rated at least minimally
successful in the past," said Paul Light, director of the Center for Public
Service at the Brookings Institution. "So even though it's possible to
discipline and fire, many managers won't do it."
Some problem employees use the drawn-out appeals process to preserve their
jobs. One White House political appointee, who asked not to be named, said a
poor performer in his office - a midlevel office manager - retaliated
against disciplinary action by filing a frivolous complaint against him with
the EEOC.
After an audit revealed the poor performer had charged hundreds of dollars
in personal purchases on the office credit card, the manager took a firm
hand. He gave her specific tasks and deadlines and developed a repayment
plan for her to follow. She filed an EEOC complaint, claiming racial
discrimination.
Six months later, additional audits revealed the employee had mismanaged
other purchases. She quit and withdrew her EEOC complaint against the
supervisor.
Alternative Dispute Resolution
OPM officials recommend alternative dispute resolution - mediation, binding
arbitration or fact-finding efforts - as a means of solving performance
problems. The idea is to address problem situations before costly and
time-consuming litigious procedures become necessary.
"It's a very powerful and very successful way to deal with issues," said
Doris Hausser, OPM's chief human capital officer. While she said agencies
are using ADR more, no records are kept of the process because of
confidentiality agreements. "One of the great ironies about the success of
ADR," said Hausser, "is that it's not uncommon for a feature of the
resolution to be that the nonperformer leaves the work situation and that
everyone agrees to not record that."
posted by scott 10:47 AM