Comments on: Federal Managers Pass Off Bad Workers with Great Evals

By: legion

legion — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 15:11:32 +0000

James,
The lack of integrity is bad, but it's an unsurprising response to the civil service system - it's so incredibly hard to actually demote or fire bad workers that this is literally the only way many supervisors have to get rid of losers.

In other words - hate the game, not the player :-)

By: Randall

Randall — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 01:59:53 +0000

Mac, I agree with you all the way. The problem that I see is how in federal service managers get offended that they would even be accused of such an unethical practice. Everything is done by the book, all promotions approved are well earned. Yea right,and politicians don't lie!

By: Mac

Mac — Wed, 31 May 2006 23:56:27 +0000

Oh please.

Promoting a slacker or problem employee out of your department is a time honored trick at most major corporations.

As an IT consultant I've worked for many Fortune 500 companies, and I've seen this paradigm at virutally all of them.

The Feds hardly have a monopoly on this sort of behavior.

By: John Burgess

John Burgess — Wed, 31 May 2006 22:59:09 +0000

The article errs in saying that managers fear being sued. Most managers know that they cannot be held personally liable.

What bad OERs can produce, though, are unending pains in the ass. Even though a given personnel action may be ungrievable by definition doesn't mean that the adversely affected employee won't grieve or that the union won't support the grievance, all the way to the bitter end.

I recall one grievance filed against me that had to do with something that was explicitly spelled out in the labor contract as non-grievable. It still took up six months of my time and three separate levels of hearings before it got the wooden stake.

And I was dealing with another grievance six months after I'd retired!

Avoiding confrontations involving HR/Personnel is simply pain-avoidance. If you can make the pain go away by making it someone else's pain, that's sometimes an effective solution to the immediate problem. It does nothing to solve the underlying problem, of course.

By: Randall

Randall — Wed, 31 May 2006 21:35:18 +0000

How true it is. Come to Tinker AFB in Oklahoma City. It's well known that good workers get low evaluations while bad workers get higher numbers. 81 points seems to be the magic number to promotion. Managers will deny this, but they do not want to loose good workers so they give them lower evaluation numbers, while they want to be rid of the lazy unmotivated type of worker so they get higher marks thus making them more promotable. Whats really sad is that the AFL-CIO crybaby members usually get the best numbers and are at times are some of the worst workers. I should add that a lot of supervisors in my workplace are high-school graduates who are not qualified to make an objective evaluation of a worker. Not all federal workers are poor employees, and not all federal managers are lacking in qualifications, as for me, I am a blue collar worker trying to finish a BS in business management, but if the system does not change I will go from a hard worker with low numbers to a screw-off with high numbers. Thanks for letting me vent.

By: James Joyner

James Joyner — Wed, 31 May 2006 20:40:55 +0000

Don: I've heard the saying but it was seldom true. OERs were inflated, to be sure, but across the board. Still, the top blocks were almost always given to those the commander legitimately thought were the best. While I sometimes differed with the commander's judgment--showboaters occasionally beat the system--I never had a sense that they were giving out the best ratings to those who were the worst officers or soldiers.

By: Donald Sensing

Donald Sensing — Wed, 31 May 2006 20:35:17 +0000

James, when you were on active duty, surely you heard the saying, "Screw up, move up."

By: Spam filterning 101

Spam filterning 101 — Wed, 31 Dec 1969 18:00:00 +0000

Links: commonly pitched via bulk email, but what about cost? Answer: Every email campain is different have a promotional newsletter or do you need our Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Rhode Island South -Federal Managers Pass Off Bad Workers with Great Evals Outside Beltway - Many federal managers give highly inflated evaluations to bad employees in hopes they will get promoted to another assignment , a practice dubbed Export Packing, reports Government Executive magazine s William Rudman. Hiring a federal