**Resolving Performance Issues\
**Pilot Offering: Introduction to Supervision Series

A Telecast Originating from the

BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona

August 22, 2002

This transcript is from the closed-captioning file produced during the
telecast.

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

M. Dukes: Good morning, BLM and welcome to this first in the series of
introduction to supervisory courses. Today\'s session is resolving
performance problems and my name is Melissa Dukes and I\'m the human
resources officer for the Colorado State Office.\
\
S. Long: I\'m Sherian Long and I\'m the human resources officer for
California.\
\
M. Dukes: Welcome to today\'s session. This is a first for us as an
interactive broadcast. We\'ve never done this before. I know a lot of
you have been on interactive broadcasts and you know when you can talk
the green light comes on and when we\'re talking and you\'re not
supposed to talk the red light goes on. This is different. We want you
to think of this as a virtual classroom. If you have a question when
you\'re in a classroom at the National Training Center f you\'re polite
you raise your hand, the instructor calls on you and we get into the
dialogue starting with your question. To do in that a push-to-talk
environment you need to push the button on your push-to-talk microphone,
just say your name, Carl, Washington Office and I know Carl is out
there, so I used his name and then release your button and when we hear
you we\'ll come back and say, Carl, you had a question. That way we\'ll
know to dialogue with you and hopefully we can answer your question at
that time.\
\
S. Long: Yesterday we were in here rehearsing because this is a new
forum for us to be

instructing in a virtual classroom and one thing that struck Melissa and
I this is just boring to listen to the two of us talk. We missed you.
That\'s what we need, is for you to talk back to us. Think of it in
terms of we\'re all in this room together. So, please, feel free,
interrupt, ask your questions and I think we can really have an
interesting question out of this.\
\
M. Dukes: What I would like to do is to give you a brief history of what
this Introduction to Supervision series about. I know all of you as
supervisors in your first year follow the rules and went to your 40 hour
intro to supervision course, you sat in a room with a number of other
Federal managers sitting at a desk talking about basic personnel and
human resources rules which is fine but it\'s hard when you go back to
work. All that information is hard to remember. Particularly when
you\'re walking into your first performance issue or your first conduct
issue or maybe you\'re struggling on an EEO issue. The folks here at the
National Training Center also thought that might not be the best way to
have people learn the topic, so they pulled together a group of managers
and human resource specialists, including my good friend Sherian and
what they would like to do is redesign the intro to supervision class
and make it a six-month session that included some satellite broadcasts
such as one we are

doing today. We have some others scheduled on various topics. We also
have some online coursework that you do like we do with the IT security
and credit card class that you answer at your desk when you have time.
There\'s also going to be directed reading and possibly some group
projects. So it might be a 40-hour class but it\'s a 40-hour class in a
six-month period. What we decided to do, they invited Sherian and I to
participate in the inaugural session so we can see if it works, see if
the concept is a great idea, but more importantly address what is
obvious from the enrollment figures a critical need for supervisors out
in the field. What we\'re going to do is this session first, the next
broadcast session, in fact, addresses conduct. So those are the partner
employee relation issues, performance and conduct. So that session is
tentatively scheduled for the first part of \'03. I know they are going
to be working on their design stuff in November. So look forward to that
session and look forward to the rest of the intro to supervision series.
One thing we did do is in a normal classroom you stand up there at your
flip chart and you say, well, what are your expectations as a student.
Since we have two hours, we had to keep everything tight, so we asked
you in advance what your expectations were.

We captured those and I have those over here. They ended up being six
basic issues. The first one you wanted to know were regulations and
process. What are the rules that we follow in handling performance
issues or what are the procedures you follow? The next one, how do I
write better critical results? That was a big question for a lot of
people. Third issue was what documentation is required? If I\'m dealing
with either performance or conduct issues. Then we had some other
issues, how do I motivate my employees to improve their performance? How
do I build a cohesive workforce? And this one we actually had it show up
on a number of employee surveys, and what they wanted to get out of this
class was, how do ideal with disruptive behaviors? Hopefully we\'re
going to address most of these issues. Some of them may show up more as
a conduct issue than a performance issue, but we do have them laid out
and hopefully we can talk about most of them during our two-hour session
today. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: Let\'s get started because over the next two hours, we have
three goals that we are hoping to achieve. That will be that you are
going to be willing, ready and able to first build your Baseline EPPRR
that\'s going to be results driven and it will be what you want your
employee to accomplish over the next 12 months.

Secondly, we want you to be able to differentiate between your conduct
in performance issues, and, finally, so you can resolve your performance
issues in a timely fashion. In order to deal with performance issues,
there is no doubt you\'re going to be using a number of the OPM
leadership competencies. If you turn to page 1 in your participant guide
you are going to see a few of those list there had for you. It\'s pretty
much a given you are going to have to be using your human resource
management competency but there are some others, too. Think about it.
You have strategic thinking. You are now going to be decide what are
those objectives and priorities you are assigning 12 months out to be
covered. There is the accountability. It is accountability for
employees, but it\'s accountability for you, too, because you have
certain responsibilities as a supervisor that you need to address. The
written and oral communication. Incredibly important that you be clear
and concise in whichever method you are using. Finally, those
interpersonal skills. You\'re going to have to be delivering some
information to employees that\'s rather on the negative side. Certainly
they are going to take it as quite negative and they have a whole range
of emotions in the way they react to that. So you need to be able to
draw upon your interpersonal skills

so that you can react appropriately. You can also find a list in
Appendix A of your workbook, a list of all the OPM competencies and
definitions that go with them. Now, part of being ready, willing and
able is for you to understand, so why is it important that a supervisor
knows how to deal with performance issues? Well, I can give you a few of
those answers. One, you want to get the best you can from your
employees. Secondly, you need to achieve your work objectives. Many of
you have regular workload measures that you are accountable for. So you
need everyone to be able to perform. You want to maintain your office
morale. When you have someone who isn\'t pulling their weight and it
seems they\'re not accountable, it really does affect the morale of the
other employees in the office. Besides which, most of us have pretty
lean staffs and we can\'t afford to be carrying someone who isn\'t doing
what they are supposed to be doing. Also, you want to solve major
problems before they become \-- go from minor problems to major
problems. I guarantee you this stuff is not going to go away. And the
longer you wait to deal with the issue, the more serious it\'s most
likely going to become. Now, I want you to turn to page 2 of your
participant guide and you\'re going to do a

brainstorming exercise there. I want you to work together with the
people that are in the room with you and if per chance you\'re in a room
by yourself, you feel free to talk out loud as you discuss it. But we
want you to answer that question about what is important for supervisors
to know relative to dealing with these performance issues. We\'re going
to give you about 15 seconds, going to come back then and see what other
responses you\'ve come up with. .\
\
S. Long: Ok. Let\'s see what kind \-- let\'s see what kind of answers
you\'ve come up with. Just use your push-to-talk butt un and identify
yourself. Someone? Remember, this is interactive. Well, I do have a list
of your names, so how about if I call on Mike Nash in North Dakota. Have
you got any kind of an answer?\
\
Caller: I just got the ones you threw out. Stop minor problems from
becoming major problems.\
\
S. Long: Does anybody else have any others?\
\
Caller: Hello.\
\
S. Long: Yes? Anyone?\
\
Caller: Pasquale in Montana.\
\
S. Long: Go ahead.\
\
Caller: Salem, Oregon.\
\
S. Long: Does anybody have any answers to the question?\
\
Caller: Morale.\
\
S. Long: Morale.\
\
M. Dukes: Who was that?\
\
S. Long: I don\'t know.

Who was that?\
\
Caller: Pasquale in Montana. Does anybody else have any other thoughts
whatsoever?\
\
Caller: Carson city, dealing \-- performance problems deal with
effectiveness of performance.\
\
S. Long: Correct. It does. It has to do with the effectiveness of their
performance. I have another suggestion for you. Think about it. You\'re
actually doing a disservice to your employee by not addressing it. Do
you realize that when their performance continues at below par they\'re
losing credibility of their peers, and they are losing their respect.
That is not something any of us would want. You need to work with that
employee to get that improved.\
\
Caller: This is Gary.\
\
S. Long: Any other ideas?\
\
Caller: This is Gary in needles. Your employees will lose respect for
you if you don\'t act.\
\
S. Long: I think that\'s an excellent one. We need to be cognizant of
that, because as supervisors, we are watched by other employees. They
know that we have certain responsibilities and they\'re looking to find
out whether or not we are carrying out our responsibility. Ok? Who was
the first one that responded?\
\
M. Dukes: Who you didn\'t call

on was Pasquale in Montana.\
\
S. Long: Ok. We have for you today a book. This one is on making your
team a winner. That\'s for being the first brave soul to be able to
speak up. We have some others that we\'ll be giving out throughout the
show and we will be sending them to you sometime later this week. Let\'s
think for a second about your roles as a supervisor. Do you know that
you\'re the person who is primarily responsible for ensuring that the
employee is given a reasonable opportunity to be able to improve?
There\'s ways you can do that. It might be because you\'re going to do a
counselling session with the employee. It could be that you\'re going to
get them some formal classroom training. Or it might be the informal
OJT. Also there is that intensive coaching that may take place or it
might be something as simple as they have given you a work product and
you are going to give them some verbal feedback to let them know what
kind of issues you see on there. The good news is that in most cases
once an employee has had some of these additional efforts made for them,
they\'re going time prove, and you won\'t have a problem any longer.
Don\'t forget, it is your role as a supervisor to facilitate the success
of your employees. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: First objective in this course is to build a baseline EPPRR
and to do that you really need to understand the basic rules of the
EPPRR

process. The first one is that an employee is supposed to get their
EPPRR, employee performance plan and results report, their performance
planning part, within 60 days of the rating year, or if they\'ve started
a new job within 60 days of them starting the new position. The next
thing is you\'re supposed to conduct at least two formal progress
reviews each year. What that ends up doing is you have your planning
session and your progress reviews and your formal assessment process so
you are meeting four times formally. But that isn\'t the only time you
talk to the employee. If they have problems, you need to discuss those
problems with them as the problems arise. As Sherian said, it\'s the way
you make a minor problem remain a minor problem. You address it before
it becomes a major issue. One thing that people always look at
performance and they think it\'s just a performance issue. There are
also pay issues associated with performance and the most critical one is
within grade increase. Within grade increase everyone assumes it\'s a
length of service, and everybody assumes they get it because I have been
in my position one year, two year, three years. That\'s partially true.
You have your length of service but you also have acceptable level of
performance and if you as a supervisor certify that acceptable level of
performance

or if you choose to do nothing and the employee gets their within grade
increase, the performance up to the effective date within in grade is
considered to be acceptable. So you need to pay attention to that. You
are required to evaluate the performance at the end of the rating year.
If you don\'t, the employee is assumed to have achieved their results
whether they did or not. So there\'s no accountability on the part of
the employee without the actual end of year rating. One thing I know we
have a lot of employees who change positions, we bring in a lot of new
employees throughout the year, and I have actually, and I know in
Colorado, employees who started in June. So what do you do? That\'s not
90 days to the rating period if you wait your full 60 days to give them
the standards. What happens, person starts in June, you give them their
standards the middle of August, they have to be on those standards at
least 90 days. So you can\'t rate their performance until the middle of
November. If I did my math right. So you need to make sure that the
person is on the standard at least 90 days. The last thing, and we\'re
going to go into this in a lot more detail, but it\'s the other piece of
a performance process that people don\'t always think of as a
performance issue and that\'s the probationary period. When we hire an
employee, particularly first time in the government, we get their

application, it\'s well written, they had a great interview, good
reference checks, we know they\'re requested to do the work, based on
everything we assume. The last part of the examination process, in fact,
is that first-year performance. You need to consider that as part of the
examination process. Yes, you assume they can do the work based on all
of your homework, but you still actually have to give them the and see
if they can do it. That\'s what a probation period is for. And sometimes
it just doesn\'t work. They either \-- it\'s not a good fit for them, or
the organization is not a good fit. Let\'s be serious, we\'ve all met
people who find the Federal government too bureaucratic, too
controlling, it\'s just not the place they want to work because we have
too many rules. And Sherian and I can give you some good war stories
about that. I will give you a real quick one. I won\'t tell you when
this happened so you won\'t know if it\'s Colorado or not, but we had an
Loyee who nine months into their first year, management was having some
conduct problems with them as well as some performance problems. They
laid it out for us what they were seeing, we didn\'t think they could
solve it. We thought these were actually some serious deficiencies and
we recommended that they terminate them during probation. But management
was convinced

this could save this employee. 13 months into their hire, which is one
month after the completion of the probation period, we did our first
disciplinary action on this employee. Of course, I wouldn\'t say I told
you so, but in the back of my mind, I knew the manager had really
regretted not using the probation period properly. So you do need to use
that probation period as part of the Performance Management Process, as
well as part of the staffing or examining process. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: We\'re going to talk about writing those critical results now.
I want you to refer back to Appendix B in your workbook on page 17 in
your guide. We\'ll be looking at the EPPRR form that\'s there. I want
you to first off watch the date that \-- on the form. I\'m still seeing
forms come into our office that have a date of \'95. That was the
original form. But later on it was determined in the courts that those
were invalid because of absolute standards. So it was modified on the
front page when they added an additional paragraph to qualify a little
bit on our standards that are there, and that was in December of \'97.
So although there was an additional change later on, make sure you\'re
using one that\'s dated at least of 12/97. Did you ever think about what
the purpose of having an EPPRR in the first place is? It\'s a
communication tool.

That\'s all it is. It\'s your way of letting the employee know what it
is that you are expecting them to be performing. The EPPRR form that we
use now has two parts. If you look at it, there on the first page is
where you find your critical elements that Melissa showing you now and
this is really what we used to call the elements. On the second page,
your performance indicators, that is the actual standards. That is the
difference in the one that we used to use with the 5 level. You had to
write all of the elements and the standards. And it\'s not the same way
any longer. So let\'s take a look at that critical result portion in
there. This is what you want them to accomplish over the next year. What
you ought to do to get started on it is think about what\'s in their
P.D. in the first place and what are the organizational goals that you
need to be accomplishing and how can those two fit together? When you
are writing what they are doing, these things must be measurable,
observable and achievable within the time frame that you\'ve got. One of
the problems that I see, and I imagine I\'ve been as guilty of it, too,
when I was first doing this, on writing the EPPRRs we have a tendency to
write activities and we\'re saying that, they write reports, or they
preside over meetings, or they conduct the meeting, preside over
programs.

All those are activities, but when we think about it, what was the
outcome of that? There was nothing there. A lot of times you\'ll see if
you are using a lot of verbs, that\'s probably what you are doing. You
have said the activity, but you haven\'t said what is the outcome, and,
remember, these things are supposed to be results driven. So if you\'ll
look on pages 3 and 4 in your guide, you\'re going to find a couple of
samples that we\'ve put there for you. Also, don\'t get intimidated by
it. These things that you write don\'t have to be perfect. All they have
to do is be clear so that you\'re communicating to the employee what it
is you are looking for from them. In this first example, it says the
employee conducts inventories and completes written reports on the five
areas assigned within the established time frames on one per month. This
one is both measurable and observable. It\'s got activities in there,
but it\'s got outcomes, too. So you know and the employee knows what it
is they actually have to do. There is another example there that we\'re
not going to go over right now, and you\'re looking at and that
thinking, oh, good night, is that what they\'re expecting, that I\'m
going to write something long like that? This really isn\'t necessary.
We\'re going to use that particular one in a role play. Let\'s move onto
the performance indicators.

The question is, how are you going to know whether or not they\'re
successful in what it is they\'re doing? Standards are really something
that\'s going to define the quality or the quantity of \-- the
timeliness or the manner of performance, or it could be any combination
of those things together. If you look at page 2 on that EPPRR form, now
you\'re seeing the performance indicators, just read those and recognize
that is a standard and do you see any room for error there? Probably
not. Those are as written absolutes. That was the reason why that other
paragraph was added in the beginning of this EPPRR where they said that
it\'s recognized that nobody is perfect and that, in fact \-- you\'re
going to make some errors and it\'s used some words there to help soften
that absolute error. For most employees that\'s probably going to be
fine because you are probably not going to have any problem with them.
The problem that arises is does the employee understand that when you
are dealing with someone who is not meeting your expectations? So
you\'re going to have opportunities to be able to flesh some of that
stuff out. Also, I want to make sure that you really are judicious about
circling the word \"all.\" I would say well over 50% of all the EPPRRs
that come in, you will see that supervisor has simply gone down and
circled \"all\" all wait down without thinking in terms of does this

standard have any relationship to what we\'ve got as the element on
there? Because if you put it there, now somehow you\'re going to have to
make that connection and defend it, particularly if this is something
that at some point in time should go into a formal stat us and possibly
even into litigation. So how in the world can we expand on these things
so that it\'s a little bit clearer as to what our standards are? Well,
you could do it through a counselling session. You might do it through a
memoranda that you\'re going to give to an employee. It could be even
something that is in the standard operating procedures that are for your
office or, in some cases, you may need to thrill go back and write a
formal revised standard for that particular element. There are some
really good points about our pass/fail system. It certainly doesn\'t
require nearly as much writing on our part, but it does require that we
have a whole lot more communication now between us as the supervisors
and the employees themself. I think one of those areas where it really
becomes important that we start doing something about this communication
is when you\'ve got your marginal performer. In your mind you know
they\'re not working up to the full par, but they\'re really not at that
point of failing, either. Those marginal ones are the ones where it\'s
the early stages, and it\'s so important for you to

intervene and address that. Remember, you cannot say results achieved
minus, like we used to be able to get C minus or something in school.
You either pass this one or fail this one. The system also requires that
you be able to pinpoint the midpoint at what time is ok if I do this
much, then you\'ll be passing, but if you don\'t make that one, now
you\'ve failed. That is a hallmark in the law that says we must be able
to identify that and I\'m not certain if we always even think about that
kind of thing. Also, when you are writing these clarifying memos or
whatever on the standard, and typically we use words like, oh,
\"usually\" or \"rarely\" or \"timely,\" the question is, what does that
mean? I have a meaning. Melissa has a meaning. Probably you all do, too.
But you actually have to articulate what is that? Are you going to
accept three rewrites or one rewrite or whatever the issue might be that
you\'re doing. Remember that the whole purpose of this is, does the
employee know what he\'s got to do in order to retain his position? Now,
to kind of help you have an opportunity to think about some of these
things and apply it, I want you to turn to page 4 in your participant
guide and we\'ve given you four critical results, examples, there, so,
again, I want you to take a few minutes with the folks you are with or
by yourself and go over them and decide, are these results written
correctly or not?

And then we\'ll get back to you in just a couple minutes.\
\
S. Long: Ok. Hopefully you AUM have had an opportunity to go over those
four and would somebody be willing to speak up and tell us what you
think about the first one?\
\
Caller: Wes from Hollister.\
\
S. Long: Ok? What did you find?\
\
Caller: I would say they\'re bad because they\'re not measurable.\
\
S. Long: Good point. They\'re not measurable. How would you monitor it
to know whether it\'s been occurring or whether it\'s been successful?
If you were the employee, would you know what the supervisor was looking
for? Anyone?\
\
M. Dukes: We\'re going to make poor Wes \--\
\
S. Long: Anyone else have any comment concerning the first exercise?\
\
Caller: This is Phil from Medford.\
\
S. Long: Go ahead, Phil.\
\
Caller: I thought more measurable goals, especially in assuring
progress, would help make this more understanding for the employee.\
\
S. Long: I think that\'s a real good point. How about the second one on
communication? Someone else have a comment? Don\'t forget, interactive.\
\
M. Dukes: Wes, you can always come back, it\'s ok.\
\
Caller: I would once again say they\'re not measurable.\
\
S. Long: What\'s wrong with

them? You don\'t think they\'re measurable? You don\'t think you would
know whether someone was successful?\
\
Caller: We need to define \"actively participates.\"\
\
S. Long: Good point. I wanted to say something about that particular
one. Let me say that here it says that I have to actively participate in
organizing this public meeting and this is something that happens a
whole lot here in BLM, a lot of employees have to do that. What if I
went to this particular public meeting and I had a whole group of
protesters come and they staged this big protest and I stood up and I
was verbalizing a position that was contrary to BLM. Is there anything
in the standard that I failed? Think about it. Not really. Didn\'t say
anything that I had to espouse the BLM position. It said I had to be
active. Sure enough, I was active. Might not have been what you are
expecting, but I met the requirements here of being active and
participating there. Be careful what you write. You might get the same
thing back.\
\
Caller: This is Steve in Carson city. The challenge with all this is to
\-- you could write a whole page on each one of these to spell out
details and, of course, nobody is going to advocate doing that, but you
have to do something that is measurable, and the key is to understand.

That\'s the reason for having repeated meetings, to make sure you have
this one-to-one mutual understanding and then you can pick out some
succinct highlights would that sort of indicate whether the measures are
met.\
\
S. Long: You sound like a plant in the audience for us. You couldn\'t
have been more correct in what you just said. It does require that
communication, and for most people the verbal is going to be fine, so
they understand what it is you want or are expecting from them. Take a
look at number 3. Particularly for those of you who have bargaining unit
employees.\
\
Caller: This is Phil in Medford.\
\
S. Long: Ok.\
\
Caller: I thank you responses to grievances might help like in an
effective manner or something more finite detailing what you want.\
\
S. Long: Ok. Let me point something out to you. Remember earlier on I
said that when you are writing your critical results that you need to be
thinking about what\'s in the P.D. because it\'s work you assigned? On a
steward, if any of you assign them to be a union steward? Do you assign
them any kind of work whatsoever? Think about it, the answer is, no, we
don\'t. You should never, ever find anything in any EPPRR that deals
with the union duties that any steward has.

That would definitely be an illegal action on our part. So don\'t fall
into that trap. Finally, the last one\... One more? The last one was
sneaky, we agree. How about this last one?\
\
Caller: Carson city. I\'d say that\'s not too bad. At least you have a
date, and you probably have some idea what a comprehensive is, but there
might be some milestones as to what constitutes a program that you can
still improve it by like there\'s a plan of action of some kind.\
\
S. Long: You\'re absolutely right. This is the closest one to being
pretty good, and this really isn\'t something you couldn\'t live with,
because you have those opportunities to do exactly what you said. You
meet with your employee. You indicate what are those milestones, or
maybe you\'re going to ask them to develop the milestones and come back
and talk to you about them so that you can ensure that these are all of
the things that you are looking for in that particular plan. It\'s
interesting, these particular ones are not all made up. I actually took
them from EPPRRs that have been turned into our office. I just changed
some of the names and locations a bit. So knowing that we\'ve actually
got these things out there means we really do have a lot of work that
needs to be done yet. If you\'re having any kind of a problem writing
your critical

results, contact your HR office. They\'ve probably had a lot of
experience in this and they will be able to help you through it. We also
have a number of dos and don\'ts for you and those under Appendix C your
guide on page 20. If you want to take a look. There are a few I would
like to point out to you. For example, determine how you are going to
monitor. If you are going to set up an element, you need to know how in
the world you\'re going to know whether they\'re successful. Set those
expectations based upon position requirements, not on the employee. Also
don\'t include KSAs. Those are something used during the recruitment
process and have nothing to do with the performance process. And don\'t
use the backwards standards. What we mean when we say that sit could be
something like, fails to turn in their work 50% of the time. Does that
mean if I don\'t turn it in 60% of the time I\'ve exceeded my standard?
What you want to do is always include those things that show what the
expectation is that they accomplish that they would turn their work in
like 80% of the time. Also, whatever you do, don\'t wait until the very
end to tell the employee that there\'s a problem. Because that alone is
going to cause a lot of conflict. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: One thing Sherian and I had talked about when we were first
getting ready to do

the broadcast was a percentage standard because one of the things, I
have actually gone through the \-- I can\'t use the appropriate word
because we\'re on satellite broadcast \-- but very hard situation of
firing someone for performance, and it was a processing clerk in
personnel who was expected to produce accurate personnel actions at
least 85% of the time. My unsatisfactory level, I was working for the
Navy at the time, so my unsatisfactory level was 80% or less of her
actions were inaccurate. Well, we serviced 2,000 employees, so she
serviced about 500 on her own. I have to tell you, calculating a
percentage for someone who processed that many actions in a given
grading period, I kept on working on my percentage, unfortunately she
was, I think, at the accurate level of 30%, so it wasn\'t the hardest
percentage I had to ever calculate, but by the time we got to the judge,
and the judge threw out some of the charges as to the deciding official,
and I ended up with a 72% accuracy rate, when I had started initially
with 30, and at the PIP time. So sometimes those percentage standpoint
\-- standards can really create a problem for you. But, you know, I\'m
as much as anyone as a supervisor, I can tell people Howle to write a
good standard but I go to an HR Specialist when I have a problem on my
own. The next step and this came up a lot, is in your expectations
differentiating between performance and conduct.

It\'s a hard thing. Sometimes you wonder is the employee being willful
or are they just kind of not getting the point? But then reality that is
how you start to differentiate between a performance conduct and \--
performance problem and a conduct problem. In a conduct problem, what
you\'re going to run into is the employee knows the rules, knows the
procedures, knows the processes, but they won\'t follow them. They
won\'t follow your expectations because they choose not to. This is they
are breaking rules, regulations, standards, your expectations. You
can\'t, in fact, have a performance problem where an employee knows how
to perform accurately, they just choose not to. So you do run into that
\-- while it feels like a performance problem, it really is a conduct
problem. Performance problem occurs when the person actually can\'t do
it. I think the old phrase, by if I could but I can\'t so I won\'t.
Sometimes it\'s because they don\'t know how emulate the proper
behavior. They don\'t know the rules and regulations governing it. It\'s
not that they\'re choosing or willfully being a a poor performer, it\'s
just they don\'t know how to do the thing properly. The reason you need
to know that difference, there are a number of reasons, but one of them
is how you solve them in fact is different.

To motivate an employee who elects to be incorrect is willfully wrong,
how do you deal with that is different than a person who just doesn\'t
get it, they don\'t understand your expectations, they don\'t know how
to do the process, they are not good at that particular piece. You need
to focus on whatever it is that you are addressing. If it\'s a conduct
problem, you need to treat it as a conduct problem. If it\'s a
performance problem, you need to treat it as a performance problem. And
then decide how you want to handle it. That isn\'t to say in reality an
employee who has performance problems won\'t also have conduct problems
at the same time. But the problem itself, you can\'t define it as both
and work it as both. That specific behavior you either work it at one or
the other. Sometimes as you are coaching this employee they may tell you
that it\'s their personal life that\'s causing this inappropriate
behavior or causing them to fail their standards, and that\'s fine that
they share that with you, and that, in fact s important inform for you,
but that\'s not something you can fix for them. Most of us are not
licensed psychologists or psychiatrists. We\'re not counselors, but we
are required f the employee raises that issue to us, to counsel them on
the Employee Assistance Program and recommend that maybe they get help
to deal with their personal problem.

But our issue is they need to be performing or they need to have
appropriate conduct. This is actually a fairly hard distinction to make
in some cases. So we\'ve given you some case studies, starting on page 6
and what we\'re going to do is walk through each of them individually.
There\'s a little more \-- they seem on the surface, I think, to be
straightforward but there\'s a little more to these when you start
breaking them apart. So what I\'m going to do is give you a few moments
to read case study number 1 on page 6 and we\'ll get back together in a
minute and come up with your answers and see how you perceived case
study number 1. .\
\
M. Dukes: So case number 1, Dave, a reckless driver, but he is required
to drive as part of his job. Do we perceive this as a performance
problem or a conduct problem? Anybody? I don\'t want to \--\
\
Caller: Elko\--\
\
M. Dukes: Is this performance or conduct?\
\
Caller: We think it\'s a performance problem.\
\
M. Dukes: And why is that?\
\
Caller: Well, since \-- since it\'s part of his job to drive a vehicle,
we think that it\'s a performance issue.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. So you think he doesn\'t know how to drive a vehicle
safely and that\'s the issue we\'re struggling with here.

Caller: Maybe the four-hour defensive driving wasn\'t enough or he needs
additional training.\
\
M. Dukes: That\'s true. Elko, need additional training and this is a
hard one. While it\'s a job requirement, I kind of thought of it as a
conduct problem because if you\'ve got a driver\'s license in your
state, one would hope you would know how to drive safely, but you\'re
right, it depends on what causes him to drive badly. But once again,
conduct and performance are a little hard to distinguish. Anybody else
have any other opinions or ideas on this before we move on to case
number 2? Ok \--\
\
Caller: This is Hector in Ridgecrest. I think it\'s a conduct problem.\
\
M. Dukes: And why did you think that, Hector?\
\
Caller: Unless it was written on his EPPRR that he was required to drive
safely, then \-- that\'s why I think. It\'s not clearly stated in his
EPPRR,, of what the requirements for driving safely were.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I think that was one of the points that maybe we need to
clear up a little bit, is you can actually have something on an EPPRR
and it still might be a conduct problem. So even \-- it probably is a
good idea to have some standard operating procedure or something in an
EPPRR if it\'s that critical that an individual drive safely, but just
because something is in an EPPRR doesn\'t make it necessarily a
performance problem. But it could be performance or

conduct. Let\'s go on to number 2, which is Bob, the property
specialist. Once again we will take about a minute to have you go over
and look at and that see what you think. Just remember, there are no
right answers on this. You as the supervisor work with your HR
Specialist to figure out what\'s the best answer for your case. But
let\'s look at number 2 and see what you come up with. .\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Does anybody have an answer to case number 2? Bob, the
property manager, visual inventories are not matching the records. Do we
call this performance or conduct?\
\
Caller: Dick in Medford.\
\
M. Dukes: Let\'s go to Dick. I heard your name first but I didn\'t hear
where you were from.\
\
Caller: I\'m from Missoula and I was thinking it might be a performance
issue, especially if he doesn\'t know how to resolve the discrepancies
between the inventory and the property record.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I think that\'s a good call. Because he is certifying and
he may well be doing the visual inspection but he might not understand,
you\'re right, how to correct the performance standard. Did anybody have
a different take \--\
\
S. Long: Let me interrupt for a second there in Missoula, you\'re
getting a lot of echo and you need to call into that

number so we can get that taken care of. Go ahead.\
\
M. Dukes: Sorry, Dick. But it was a good answer. Anybody else have a
different take on case number 2? Anybody see it as a conduct problem,
not a performance problem?\
\
Caller: Lynne in Elko again.\
\
M. Dukes: Yes. What did you think?\
\
Caller: We thought if it was deliberate it was more of a conduct
problem.\
\
M. Dukes: I think you\'re right, once again, we\'re going back to the
willful part, did the employee choose to do this badly or did they just
not get it. I think you\'re right. Once again, the employee motivation k
I do it, but I choose not to do it or I just don\'t know how to do it
right, kind of differentiates between the performance or conduct
problem. Case number 3 actually we did not get from your feedback, but
interestingly enough, someone in their student expectations identified a
similar situation as a problem in their office. So we thought that was
kind of entertaining. But let\'s go to case number 3 on page 7, and this
is Terry the contact rep in your public room. Take a moment again to
discuss among yourselves, is this a conduct or performance problem.
We\'ll get back to you in a minute. .\
\
Caller: This is Phil from

Medford.\
\
M. Dukes: What have you got, Phil?\
\
Caller: I believe this to be a conduct problem considering itself she
eventually provided needed services to visitors, but I would think that
would \-- that she chooses not to do that initially.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Anybody see this as a performance problem?\
\
Caller: This is Gary in needles.\
\
M. Dukes: Yeah, Gary.\
\
M. Dukes: I see it initially as a performance problems because that\'s
her job. It can get \-- if it continued and got worse, then it could be
a conduct.\
\
M. Dukes: One thing and this is something that I don\'t know how many of
you have ever looked at generational issues, but when Sherian and I were
working on this, I live in the south for quite a while, and people were
effusive, to say the least. So you could come from Chicago or Seattle
and they would actually perceive you to be standoff issue because \--
standoffish because you weren\'t the way they were. So sometimes there
are regional differences where people aren\'t perceiving themselves as
being rude. They\'re just being coldly efficient and business like. You
sometimes run into this with generational issues. I think I\'ll be
dating myself, but one thing we discovered is when I grew up, my parents
friends were always Mr. and Mrs. and very professional and

we had that distance because they were grown-ups and I hire students
today, and I don\'t think they refer to anybody as, you know, Mrs. Long
or Miss Dukes. It\'s going to be ma LISa and Sherian. So sometimes there
are generational issues where you are behaving the way you are peers do
but it\'s not in fact the way we want you to perform. You are right, it
can be a conduct problem. Or they\'re being as courteous as their norm
behavior would be. So I think you found in all of these is sometimes
they can be conduct, sometimes they can be performance. It\'s a little
more complicated than a superficial review would indicate. Any other
questions before we move on? If not, Sherian will take over the next
section.\
\
S. Long: I wonder how many of you remember that Rogers and Hammerstein
song that says \"I will never walk alone.\" That\'s what will happen in
these cases. You have an HR Specialist who will be with you throughout
the entire process from the time \-- how do I counsel this employee to
ultimately in litigation if that\'s what the case may be. Sometimes, I
know, it\'s going to feel like they\'re putting through these hoops
about there really is a method to what they\'re doing. What they are
trying to do is to ensure that if we are in litigation that you and the
agency are ultimately going to be able to prevail.

There are a few key things that I want to point out to you. Number one,
don\'t talk to other employees about this particular employee\'s
performance problems. Also, keep in mind, you as the supervisor, you
have the legal responsibility to deal with performance. You cannot
delegate it to your crew leader or to a team leader or to the technical
lead, and yet I get calls on this type of thing frequently that that\'s
the person who is trying to deal with it. Remember, you cannot delegate
it. It is yours. Also, only you can sign those EPPRRs. You cannot give
that to someone else to do, either. Our final goal is that you\'re going
to take action as soon as possible to resolve these performance problems
and I guess another theme song we\'d have would be to document,
document, document. This is really one of those first steps you\'re
going to need to go through. As a supervisor, you probably already have
a folder or something like that or file on every one of your employees,
the kinds of things we typically are going to see in there is are copies
of the SR50s they\'ve received a cop he of the EPPRR, copy of P.D.s, you
may get complimentary, sometime not so complimentary, e-mails from other
people about that particular employee and you put those things in there.
But if \-- when you start having to document performance problems, this
is the place that

that\'s going to go in also. If you look there on page 8 in your guide,
you\'re going to see a listing of those types of things that you\'re
going to typically find. When you are documenting or you\'re having one
of these performance discussions, it is so important that you make note
of it. So what do you put into a counselling note that you\'re going to
make? It\'s the facts. You should be putting in when the meeting took
place and what it was you talked about. Whatever you do, don\'t put in
your opinions. It\'s not valid at this point in time. Also, include the
actions. If you\'ve agreed to be doing something to help them out, then
put that in there, but also, what do the employees say they were going
to do? Make them contemporaneous. Don\'t wait two or three weeks. You
need to do it as soon as possible after it occurred. If you \-- in fact,
by the way, these things do not have to be typed out and all that sort
of thing. Handwritten, put it on a yellow sticky if that\'s all you have
handy and toss it into the file if that you look on page 24 in your
guide, you are going to see some samples of those types of memos.
Another tip for you is, after you\'ve had one of these counselling
sessions, send an e-mail to your employee that\'s going to pretty much
document, but also clarifies for the employee, that this is what we

discussed and what we said we were going to do. It should help alleviate
any kind of confusion that might come up down the road. You know,
something you might not have thought about, but we only write down those
things that are important, so when you document one of these counselling
sessions with these folks, you\'re saying, this is a big deal. Because
we know if it wasn\'t you wouldn\'t write it down. And we\'ve actually
been sending some pretty subtle messages to our employees, because
usually when the supervisor comes about and it they say, I\'ve talked to
them a hundred times and we said, well, do you have some documentation
of when you counselled them? And majority of the time the answer is
always no. Which is sending that message out, PSST, this really wasn\'t
that important anyway. I\'m just kind of ringing your bell or whatever.
It wasn\'t important enough for me to write it down. So remember, you
really need to document this stuff. There\'s one other thing you need to
keep in mind. These employees have a right to see those things that are
in that file. That alone is a good reason why you\'re not going to write
your opinion of that you don\'t think he\'s ever going to get it or that
he\'s just a complete failure. I know one thing that does sometimes come
up, people talk about these memory joggers, and a memory jogger is \-- a
note you

have written to yourself, and it does not have to be shared with an
employee as long as you have shown it to no one else. But the moment
anyone else actually sees that, it\'s no longer considered a memory
jogger and the employee then has the right to see it. Melissa, I think
you had an issue that came up in your office one time about someone who
thought some information that they had written down was private and
turned out it wasn\'t.\
\
M. Dukes: Yeah, my boss actually keeps his calendar on Lotus notes, and
I know he does, but I don\'t look at his calendar, it\'s not really my
business and he recently got a request on an EEO case to provide his
calendar to the employee\'s attorney, or the complainant\'s attorney,
and he freaked. You know, I have personal stuff. My mom\'s doctor\'s
appointments and ta-dah, ta-dah, ta-dah, well, one it\'s in Lotus notes
so it\'s not that private. So even though he didn\'t intentionally share
it, but keeping it on the network system and it\'s public kind of shot
his argument down. Now, if he kept it in a separate diary, then I think
he would have had a better argument to go back to the Solicitor\'s
office and say I don\'t want to share this. This is my personal
calendar. But kind of got shot out of the water when it was discovered
his calendar was also maintained on Lotus notes. But, you know, Sherian,
documentation for so many people

is so \-- it makes them nervous. It\'s like I\'m not sure I want this to
be in a case file. But that\'s ok. If it\'s factual, if it\'s relevant,
don\'t be ashamed of what you wrote.\
\
S. Long: Absolutely not. It\'s going to be critical and it\'s going to
be your best friend when you go down the road and are having to defend
yourself on what you said actually took place. It does definitely
increase your credibility.\
\
M. Dukes: Documentation also showed up as an expectation. Does anybody
have any questions for Sherian or myself on this issue before we move
along? Are you all kind of comfortable with how you keep records?
Silence.\
\
S. Long: What a quiet group.\
\
M. Dukes: Actually, it could be a high level of comfort on this one. So
we\'ll move onto the next section, which is the informal methods for
resolving performance problems, and the thing you have to be sensitive
to before we really get into those methods is have you done your job?
Sherian indicated accountability is one of those competencies, but it\'s
not just the employee\'s accountability but your own. Did you meet all
those prerequisites. Does the employee have the standard? Did you give
to it them in a timely man center have they standard at least 90 days?
Have you had your counselling sessions? Did you not approve a within

grade increase? You haven\'t given them a formal rating yet. You have to
pay attention to these kind of process rules when you\'re in the
informal stage because you don\'t want to set yourself up to not be able
to address a performance problem if it gets down to the point you have
to do it formally. But one thing you also have to think about is is this
truly a performance problem? Is it a I can\'t do it, not I won\'t do it.
As we talked about in the case studies, where everybody split and we had
people who thought those were conduct and we had people who thought
those were performance, you need to work those issues with your HR
Specialist. Last thing you need to do is make sure you have communicated
your standard to the employee, and it is clear and it is reasonable,
because that\'s important in litigation, but it\'s important to ensure
the success of the employee. What I found in doing research for the
session is, in fact, most performance problems are resolved informally.
That\'s partly why you need to be so timely in your discussions with
employees on these issues. If you don\'t raise the issue when you first
perceive a poor performance problem or poor behavior, it is going to
become a habit, and that way the employee will just assume that it\'s ok
and continue to do this thing that you no longer think is a very good
behavior.\
\
S. Long: I think, Melissa, that\'s really a good point,

because what really seems to be the norm is that employees have been
doing this particular behavior for years and it just hasn\'t been
addressed, and I recognize that in most cases you all \-- we\'ve
inherited the problems like that, and we are eventually getting around
to dealing with them but this is going to be a real shock for the
employees because they think that that behavior or level of performance
is what was acceptable.\
\
M. Dukes: Definitely true. We were laughing about this when we first got
started about how we work with people and, yeah, it\'s just irritating,
and we\'re kind of, I think, relating this to marriage, our spouses have
behaviors that they\'re cute when you\'re dating, they\'re ok when
you\'re first married and about 20 years into the marriage, it\'s not
cute anymore. It\'s like, stop. Just stop. It\'s irritating. You need to
nip it in bud, so to speak. On page 9 there are some things you can do
in informally to help resolve these performance problems before it
becomes so critical. And I would like to kind of talk about those with
you, and then maybe come one some ideas of your own, if you have some
ideas that maybe we didn\'t come up with. The first one is clarify the
standard. I think it was Steve early on indicated that, yeah, we could
write a standard that\'s a page long. Well, maybe you need to.

If \-- you don\'t have to do it for your normal employees but if you
have an employee with a performance problem, maybe you need to give them
a memo that truly clarifies what you are looking for. On page 25, it\'s
going to be used in the role play s a sample of one of the clarification
memos. Increase the feedback or counselling sessions. Provide training.
If that it\'s a can\'t do and it\'s a problem where training is going to
solve it, then providing training might be a good idea. Obviously if \--
as we talked about before, if there are employ on \-- the employee has
personal problems that they\'ve addressed to you, that they think they
need help w the Employee Assistance Program is a great place to go for
that. But the question is, are there other things that you could do that
would make this \-- or that you could do to help your employee perform a
little better? Any ideas from the studio audience \-- or the people in
the classroom? Or Sherian?\
\
S. Long: Yes, I will help out. One of the things you might do is get
them a coach. Or a mentor.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Which I think is kind of different than what you meant
when we were talking about the coach or mentor or the team lead can\'t
be the person to take the performance action, but clearly can help you
resolve the

performance problem in the informal stage. Anybody have any other ideas
out there? One thing I think, you know, as part of providing training,
the alter nut to sitting in a classroom could be a developmental
assignment. That might help build the skills that are lacking, because
sometimes they\'re not \-- not knowledge issues but organizational
skills or time management skills. It could be analytical skills that
they\'re missing where going to an analysis class isn\'t going to solve
the problem as much as maybe a developmental assignment that really
builds the step by step analytical behavior. Anybody else out there? If
not, there are some other things we kind of need to pay attention to as
we\'re working this issue, and these include what happens if you\'re
having an informal discussion with your employee and they mention to you
that maybe they should just retire or resign? It\'s ok, if they mention
that issue to you, but no way are you going to mention that issue to
them. And you\'re not going to encourage it, either. It\'s just an
issue. You\'re talking about it, but your final answer should always be,
you know, an informal problem, I think we can resolve it, if you are
thinking you might want to retire and find another job, it\'s fine,
that\'s your choice but I think we can work this issue out. That way the
employee is not feeling pushed out or forced out

of the organization. Reason you want to be a little careful on that is
you encourage that or they feel you\'re encouraging them to resign or
retire, so they do so and then they file a case with the merit systems
protection board or if they are part of a bargaining unit, possibly a
grievance that states that they were coerced. So it\'s a coerced
resignation and not something they would have chosen to do. It\'s just
they felt they were being told in a subtle but direct way to leave the
organization. We don\'t want you to open yourself up for litigation on
that. So, yes, you can talk about it, but make sure it\'s their idea and
that you are not encouraging them or making them feel like you actually
want them to leave.\
\
S. Long: I would say, raw \-- Melissa, it\'s probably a good idea if
they raise it to refer them to the benefits specialist in the benefits
office. That\'s where they can get factual information relative to
retirement and they shouldn\'t be feeling appreciator from you that
way.\
\
M. Dukes: Definitely a good idea. The other thing is an employee might
say, you know, I\'m not cut out for this job, I just don\'t think I can
do it, but here\'s this \-- I\'m a GS-7 here is this vacant GS-6, why
don\'t you assign me to that job. Not a problem to discuss that issue
with the employee either, particularly if you think they qualify and
they would be successful at that.

But you need to remind them, and we would actually, if we formalized an
action like that, have them sign a statement, it\'s a voluntary action
on their part. They initiated the discussion. We are just responding to
their wish or their desire. A couple things happen on that. Since it is
a voluntary change to lower grade, we do make them sign that and we give
them highest previous rate, but they are not entitled to pay retention.
If they initiated the action. If at a later date you believe that you
need to assign them to that GS-6 job, we are going to be well in our way
into a performance plan. They\'re going to have failed that plan. And
you\'re just electing to reassign them or change them to a lower grade
in lieu of removal. So there is a due process issue if management
initiates it, but if the employee initiates the action, not a big deal.
I think generally as you\'re working on the informal things you need to
be creative on how you can help this person get their performance up to
acceptable level. Don\'t look at just the traditional things, though
traditional methods might solve their problems, as we talked about,
coaching, mentoring, developmental assign also are also good. Those are
the things you really need to be thinking about when you\'re at the
informal stage to help the employee move along. Do we have any questions
about

this particular piece of the issue? Anyone out there?\
\
Caller: This is Hector in Ridgecrest.\
\
M. Dukes: Yes, Hector.\
\
Caller: What about using the idea of alternative dispute resolution on
some activities that maybe the employee is doing and it might affect
performance?\
\
M. Dukes: If you\'re dealing with essentially really a conduct issue
that has impacted performance but we\'re talking about conduct,
alternative dispute resolution is a very good solution on that, because
you ever elected to focus on the conduct issue. And then it\'s not
really a performance problem. It\'s much more of a conduct problem. I
think alternative dispute resolution is a great thing for conduct.
Conflict in the workplace, communication problems, stuff like that. I\'m
not sure, and you might have a different opinion from me on this,
Sherian, I\'m not alternative dispute resolution or any conflict
resolution is the appropriate approach if you\'re dealing with a true
performance issue.\
\
S. Long: I don\'t really see it in that light, because really when you
are developing your standards \-- not your standards, but certainly the
elements of what you want them to accomplish, hopefully you\'re
involving the employee and talking to them because you want them to buy
into this. If you all both together agree

that this is what they want to accomplish, and they really want to work
on this year, then you probably aren\'t going to have that kind of an
issue. But remember, you are the one who establishes ultimately the \--
what the standard is and what the work accomplishments are. That\'s your
responsibility and right as a supervisor.\
\
M. Dukes: Good question, Hector. Anybody else have any other questions
or ideas that they would like to contribute at this stage? Ok. We\'re
going to take a 10-minute break. So everybody can kind of take a stretch
break. But we do need to check out there, because we have a role play
coming up, and we were wondering if Bruce Schaefer and rich Adams, if
you\'re out there, could you just push to talk and let us know if
you\'re there? SARA from ELKO, are you there? Ok.\
\
S. Long: See if we have some new volunteers.\
\
M. Dukes: We have a role play set up and these folks said they would be
willing to participate, but interestingly enough, they\'re not here. So
please, is anyone else out there interested in doing a role play? We\'re
talking a two-minute max role play where you are dialoguing with
somebody else. Anybody else interested in doing that? You get \--\
\
Caller: I\'d do it.\
\
M. Dukes: and you are?

Caller: Steve in Carson city.\
\
M. Dukes: You\'re on, bud. And you will get a cool book for doing this.
Anybody else?\
\
Caller: Phil from Medford.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Phil. You\'re also going to get a cool book. We
will see you in 10 minutes. Thank you! (break).\
\
S. Long: Ok. Let\'s get right back into this again. We\'re going to be
talking about how to give negative feedback on performance. But before I
do, I would like to find out, there were a number of sites who did not
check in when Chip was going through this earlier. We\'re wondering if
any of those have come online with us in this last hour. If so, would
you please identify yourself? Anyone? Ok. We\'re just going to go ahead,
then. So you\'re sitting there and you\'ve kind of got a heavyweight
sitting in your stomach, your palms are starting to get a little clammy,
maybe your heart is beating a little faster. Must mean you\'re getting
ready to have one of those not so pleasant discussions with one of your
employees. If you want to turn to page 9, you can follow along. Let me
tell you, it is really important that when you\'re going to be in one of
these situations that you take the time ahead of time to line out for
yourself what in the world it is you are

going to say to them because once you get under pressure, it\'s easy to
get yourself diverted. Also, consider about when you\'re going to have
this discussion. It really varies somewhat from person to person. Some
people would like it if you chose to do it on a Friday afternoon because
then they could have the weekend to think about it. But other people if
you did it to them, they would be just churning and angry because they
never had an opportunity to respond back to you. So the timing of when
these discussions take place is an important consideration. Also, when
you\'re talking, stick to the facts. You need to tell them what your
expectations were and this is what you have been receiving from them.
Keep your dialogue focused all the time to those specific improvements
you are expecting from them. Don\'t let yourself get diverted by the
excuses that you are typically going to hear. And, as you can expect, a
lot of people are going to have this wide range of emotions, and
sometimes they\'re going to go on the offensive and start attacking you
and saying all the things you don\'t do right. Don\'t get defensive
about that. Make sure that the employee clearly knows and understands
what it is that you\'re expecting from them. Something else that I think
that\'s important, too, is make sure the employee understands that you
really do think that

they have every capability necessary to improve and be very successful
in their job. Also, keep control of the situation. But, finally, it is
important that you do convey to them that if their performance doesn\'t
improve, there are consequences to it. I think to better illustrate to
you some of the ways that you can give some negative feedback, we\'ve
set up this role play, and we have a supervisor who is going to be doing
that. He\'s calling his employee in who is John and this is the
supervisor is Greg, and he will be talking to him about the deficiencies
that he\'s found and he\'s already given him some ideas of what the
problems are. You\'re going to be following along in appendix D which is
on page 21. You\'ll see the EPPRR that\'s being used as part of this
discussion. You\'ll see the e-mails and that clarification memo that
were previously given to him also. So let\'s go and see what\'s
happening in this office. .\
\
Hey, Greg.\
\
How is it going, John? Good to see you again. Have a seat, please.\
\
Actually, I\'m not looking forward to this at all.\
\
I can understand \--\
\
I got to tell you, I\'m ticked off about this. You know, I think you\'re
getting on my case, I don\'t understand why. There\'s other people in
this office that are screwing up,

other people in this office that are late, they aren\'t getting their
work done. I mean, I don\'t see you on them. But I see you on me. I
don\'t understand it.\
\
I understand \--\
\
I think you\'re after me.\
\
I understand how Coit look that way. Rest assure, I\'m not after you.
Second of all, I want to share with you, you\'re right, there are other
people in the office, we all have work to do and one of my
responsibilities is to manage the performance of everybody in the office
\--\
\
But you don\'t, Greg.\
\
Let me share with a little \--\
\
You have to set the priorities, not me.\
\
John, just like ideal with you outside of their purview, ideal with them
outside your purview, so that\'s \-- that\'s just kind of how we do
things. As professionals we kind of need to give that some distance.
What I want to focus on is some of stuff we have on our plate and some
of the kinds of things we talked about in the e-mails that we\'ve gone
back and forth with.\
\
What I want to focus on is some of the things that you\'re doing that
separate me out and treat me differently than others. I\'ll give you an
example. I\'m a single parent. I have my daughter to get ready in the
morning. I have to get her to school. I have to get myself here in the
morning. You\'re a parent, too. And you\'re doing the same thing as I
am.

You come in a little late sometimes. But yet, I mean, your boss,
wherever she is, doesn\'t question you at all. And, you know, but \-- I
come in and you\'re on me like a hawk. Understand that. What is that
about?\
\
Let me share that with you.\
\
Do you have a personal issue with me?\
\
Not a personal issue at all. I want to make sure \-- I know that you\'re
a parent and I\'m a parent, and kid can eat your lunch. They do. You\'re
a good dad. I can see the dedication you have to that. And you have a
dedication and a certain level of dedication you try to bring to work as
well, and that helps the team and helps us work together well and I want
to focus \-- what I really want to focus on is the kinds of things that
are going on at the office so we can deal with those things and kind of
keep out of the trap 6 getting into a rating situation where we\'re
looking at unacceptable. I think we have an opportunity to do if that we
focus on some of the things we have \--\
\
Things are going to have to change around here because the system you
have set up ain\'t working.\
\
Let\'s figure out how we can make things work for you and help you be
successful. Let\'s take a look at some of the \-- some of the cases that
we\'re not getting done. As I shared with you as we\'ve talked a little
bit about, we\'re not getting the cases done we

need to get done and in a lot of cases I\'m not even understanding if
they\'re getting done was I\'m not getting a report.\
\
The fact of the matter is some weeks I get five cases, some weeks 10
cases. You say do 10 a week. I can\'t do that. Also, I don\'t know what
you take into act there. There\'s all the other things going on. I have
these window applications. They take a lot of time. But I\'m getting
them late here. I have 30 days to do them. They come in late. I send
them out for decisions. They\'re coming back late, too. Greg, what do
you want.\
\
As I mentioned in the e-mail, I am taking into account when you don\'t
get as many as 10. There\'s several times when you get 8 or 5 and I have
really taken into that into account. I also do take into account the
two-year window and if there\'s some discrepancy with that and you think
I\'m not taking that into account in the right amount, that\'s something
you need to bring to me as they happen and occur. One of the thing we
talked about is that \-- and that\'s in the EPPRR, is that you need to
let me know when you\'re having difficulty meeting that, when things
aren\'t getting to you, if we have some things that aren\'t getting to
you in time, then, you\'re right, that\'s something I need to deal with,
but I need to know about it, and if you don\'t share it up front there
is a limited amount \--\
\
Knowing about it is an

important thing, Greg, because I don\'t think you stay on top of things
enough and you\'re not setting the priorities in this office. Those
idiots down the hall I have to work with aren\'t getting the work done
either. If you are going to set priorities and hold me accountable, you
have to hold them accountable \--\
\
John, I set priorities for the whole office and maybe what we need to
talk about is that process and how we set the priorities \--\
\
It would be about time.\
\
Some of the stuff you talked about for the time management course that
we thought might be helpful for that, how are some of those things
going? That doesn\'t seem to be in sync with that \--\
\
The time management stuff is great, but I don\'t have time for it, Greg.
I got two things, you can either have me doing time management and
answering the phones, which is another thing we have to talk about, or
you can have me processing applications. You know, Greg, the more I do
of this, the less I do have that. You may have to live with it \--\
\
The time management tools can take up time up front but maybe what we
need to do is now that you had a chance to try to implement them and
still having a struggle, maybe that would be a good thing for you to sit
down and do and work through. Let\'s take setting priorities. Maybe we
need to get together maybe on Monday mornings and just after you\'ve got
your first cup, after I\'ve got my first

cup, found some area on my desk, I am talking about 15 minutes, not
looking to take up a lot of time, that maybe you and I can sit and work
through the priorities as we see them together. That way we could kind
of agree as we\'re going and you get a little flavor for how I\'m
looking at the priorities in the office. Then in fact, what might even
be helpful for that is if you maybe give a look at them on Friday, just
for a couple minutes before, the things you know, you\'re coming up for
the next week and you give kind of a swipe at what you think the
priorities and then when you come in, we can sit down and share those
and go through the thought process together. That might give us a little
focus. That might help you understand the expectations. I know that
you\'re trying to do a good job here and you\'ve demonstrated that \--
you\'ve demonstrated there are times when you can get the work done.
There\'s even times when you\'re over.\
\
You know I care about the work here. You know I care about doing a good
job. I mean, but I \-- certain things that are just not working. So if
it takes a meeting on Monday morning, God knows, I don\'t want another
meeting, but if that\'s what it takes, we could try that for a while and
see how it works. I don\'t know that it\'s going to help the situation,
but it might.

Let\'s try that. Let\'s go ahead and you and I meet on Monday mornings
to lay out priorities and we\'ll try with \--\
\
All right. All right.\
\
Cup other things \--\
\
Let\'s talk about that phone stuff.\
\
I\'m thinking with the phone things\...\
\
S. Long: Ok. Let\'s go back and think about what we just saw in that
particular video. Role play. Can any of you all tell us what did you
notice in there, what were some of the key points of what occurred in
that particular meeting? Ok, John? John in D.C. Can you hear us? Is he
on a push-to-talk? Ok, is there anybody else? What were some of the key
points that you saw that you thought were good about that particular
role play or maybe you think should have been handled differently?\
\
Caller: This is Phil in Medford.\
\
S. Long: I think we heard two of you at once.\
\
Caller: Jim from Portland. I thought Greg managed the conversation
really well. Didn\'t let it get out of control.\
\
S. Long: Exactly. That\'s one of the things we talk about. Remember, you
need to be in control of the meeting itself. Anything else?\
\
Caller: This is Steve.\
\
S. Long: Go ahead.

Caller: I liked how John brought in all the other people and their
problems and, therefore, you know, why are you picking on me and I
thought Greg handled it really well, because they were kind of like \--
those are separate issues outside of this relationship between these two
people.\
\
S. Long: Exactly. He wanted to keep it back focussed on what the problem
is. It is John \-- John has the performance problem. Good point. Anyone
else?\
\
Caller: Phil in immediate for. \-- Medford. I kind of liked where there
was buy-in by the supervisor and the employee to recognize stumbling
blocks possibly in the employee\'s way and that they\'re cooperating and
working together to fix whatever problems there are.\
\
S. Long: I think it\'s a good point, because now the employee doesn\'t
feel like he\'s out there on that limb by himself waiting for some one
to just chop it off. He sees them as a team now to try to get his
performance corrected. That\'s really good.\
\
M. Dukes: We have a phone call from Steve and I believe he has a
question or comment to make.\
\
Caller: I didn\'t have a question or comment. I just wanted to let you
know I was here and be available for comments.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Thank you, Steve.

Sorry about the push-to-talk problem, but we\'re glad you\'re connected
with us.\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
S. Long: We\'re going to go ahead onto our next role play, but, you
know, the truth is, you\'re never going to be good at this by just
watching someone else. You need to experience it and that\'s what the
next two role plays, and our two brave souls that volunteered to go into
the role play, we appreciate that. Melissa, the first one was Steve in
Carson city. Great. We are going back to the supervisor\'s office again.
Remember, Steve is the supervisor. \--\
\
Caller: Excuse me. This is Steve. The other fellow called in, I guess he
was Steve and I\'m steep with a P.\
\
M. Dukes: Steep, can you step back from the microphone a bit? You are
kind of echoing with us.\
\
Caller: Ok.\
\
S. Long: Could you repeat.\
\
Caller: I\'m not Steve, it\'s steep with a P on the end and maybe that
will help distinguish from the other fellow that called in.\
\
S. Long: You are prepared to do the role play?\
\
Caller: Yes, I\'m not sure if any preparation was required.\
\
S. Long: No, we didn\'t give anyone any preparation for this. You have
the EPPRR and the memos and that sort of thing in front. It\'s the same
type of scenario, again. Now we\'ll see how you will be

able to respond to it when you\'re addressing John\'s performance
problems.\
\
M. Dukes: This one is going to go a little shorter, steep, so you don\'t
have to sit there for five minutes trying to work this issue out. It
will go a little faster for you. We didn\'t want to set you up too bad.\
\
S. Long: Here it is. It\'s your office and your employee is about to
enter.\
\
How you doing?\
\
OK. Hi, John. Thanks for coming in on time. Glad to see you. Let\'s get
down to business.\
\
You know, steep, before you start, I got to tell you, this really pisses
me off. This really pisses me off. Other people in this office screw up.
There\'s a lot of other people not doing their work, coming in late,
causing problems in this office and I never see you getting on their
case. As a matter of fact, I don\'t understand why you are doing this to
me. I just don\'t understand it. You don\'t have a right to do this to
me and I\'m really sick of it.\
\
I appreciate your feedback on others, and I need all the help I can get,
goodness knows, but let\'s work with you and me in this case and go from
there.\
\
You never work with me. I mean, you should be setting priorities around
this office. I don\'t see any priorities around this office. I don\'t
see you doing your job

as a supervisor. Sometimes it seems like you\'re just a supervisor in
name only.\
\
Well, let\'s set some priorities right now, then and I appreciate again
\-- I appreciate all the input you have.\
\
Well, I got to tell you, I\'m \-- I don\'t even know if I can deal with
this right now. This is really ticking me off. For example, you\'re on
my case about coming in late a few times. But, you know, you have kids,
too, and I\'ve seen you come in late plenty of times. You know what?
Your boss is somewhere else doing God knows with what, I\'m here and
you\'re watching me like an eagle all to the time. I don\'t understand
it. I think you treat me differently than other people.\
\
Again, we can talk about \-- let\'s work with you and me instead of the
other people. Although we can talk about them, too. Let\'s \-- yeah, as
you say, I come in late occasionally and that\'s not really the focus of
what we need to work on here, although I \-- yeah, let\'s talk about the
EPPRR and the actual performance issues that we\'ve discussed with these
number of cases that you have coming in and the length of time it takes
to deal with each one.\
\
You know, some weeks I get five, some weeks I\'m getting 17 cases. I
don\'t know what you expect me to do. You say do 10 a week. I can\'t do
10 a week. They\'re coming in late, they\'re coming in at all different

times, you want me to answer the phones all day long.\
\
S. Long: Steep, good job. What did you \-- did the rest of you notice
steep was doing throughout this?\
\
M. Dukes: Trying to get a word in edgewise, I think.\
\
Caller: This is Bonnie from Elko. He was giving him positive feedback.\
\
S. Long: Ok. I heard somebody from Winnemucca also.\
\
Caller: Yes, I agree. He was defusing the attacks and trying to stick
with the issues.\
\
S. Long: Right. What about his demeanor?\
\
Caller: The supervisor\'s?\
\
S. Long: Right.\
\
Caller: It was very calm.\
\
S. Long: Right. Regardless of how upset the employee got, he remained
calm through the whole thing and that\'s an effective tool to help
defuse the situation in there.\
\
M. Dukes: Phil in Medford is up next.\
\
S. Long: All right. Phil, are you prepared?\
\
Caller: I guess so.\
\
S. Long: Same thing. Here you go. Your employee is coming in and you
start once you see him. .\
\
Hello, John, come on in.\
\
How you doing today?\
\
I\'m doing ok. How you doing?\
\
Well, you know, I\'m just frustrated about this. You know \-- God, you
know, I

wish you wouldn\'t do this to me. You know, I wish you would just, you
know, don\'t lay this on me now. This is not a good time. I mean, the
last year has been really rough. You know \-- you know that sue left and
took the kids, and I haven\'t seen them. I don\'t even nowhere they are.
I miss them. You know, this is really not a good time.\
\
That must be hard on you.\
\
Yeah, it is. You don\'t know. You\'ve got a good relationship at home.
But, you know, it feels like everything that\'s happened to me the last
year is just really screwed up my life. I mean, everything I\'ve worked
for seems to be going down the tubes, and I\'m asking you, please, not
to do this now to me. Please don\'t hold me to the fire right now. I\'ve
been a good employee in the past. And I\'ll be good a good employee in
the future but if you do this to me now, it\'s going to really screw me
up.\
\
I realize right now it sounds like you\'re not in the best place, but I
think this meeting, we can help each other.\
\
You know \-- one of the things I haven\'t told you before is that, you
know, for the last three months I have been on this medication,
something to control my mood, I guess, and, you know, one of the thing
about it, is it\'s making me groggy, makes me sleepy, I can\'t sleep. I
don\'t know, I don\'t know what

to do with it. It\'s just \-- it\'s really eating me alive, and I \-- I
mean, just don\'t do this to me now. Can\'t we wait six months? Can\'t
we just put this off six months and then maybe I\'ll be in a better
place, but I mean \--\
\
You know, John, I understand that you\'re having problems, but it\'s
just like a lot of things. The sooner that you deal with it, the better
off it\'s going to be, I think, and we have all kinds of things here
with the government with the Employee Assistance Program, like I said,
together we can work something out here \-- I can\'t correct those
things in your personal life, but maybe I can steer you in the right
course or help you out in that way, and I just want to let you know I\'m
here, but, unfortunately, we\'re in a situation where we have to talk
about performance, and I can see that problems at home and all that you
bring to the workplace, but we still have to address them,
unfortunately.\
\
You know, I know all these screwups are my fault and I feel like I\'ve
let you down. I care about this work \--\
\
S. Long: Ok. Here we are again. What did you recognize in this
particular role play?\
\
M. Dukes: Phil, how did this stuff make you feel? He\'s practically
ready to cry.\
\
Caller: Actually, it made me feel that I wanted to be very helpful and
very supportive, but at the same time I have a role and I felt that I
could help this person. I can\'t \-- I don\'t have total control over
the situation, but

I can steer him in the right course to get help. Hopefully accomplish
the same thing as far as me getting the job done.\
\
S. Long: I think it was a good job that you did where you were showing
some empathy for him but at the same time you were bringing it back to
focus again that he still has to accomplish the goals that are set there
for him, but you gave him some other alternatives of what else co-do,
such as the EAP. Tell me, did you think it is more difficult to deal
with someone when they are emotional or like in steep\'s place where
they were more belligerent?\
\
Caller: I would have rather have dealt with the situation I had versus
the volatile situation where somebody is angry, because it just seemed
to me in that situation that this person was more open to change,
they\'re having problems and they were cognizant of and it they wanted
change.\
\
S. Long: I think that\'s a good point. Steep, what about you? How did
you feel when the employee became rather belligerent in your face,
leaning forward like that?\
\
Caller: That didn\'t bother me. I think \-- by the way, John, or whoever
\-- this is great \-- but either way \-- what I liked about the
exercises earlier on conduct versus performance, I realize that you may
often both that you have to deal with concurrently, and in both these
cases, which Phil and I were confronted with,

you kind of realize you can\'t maybe even talk clearly until you\'ve
dealt with the emotional stuff, and you kind of square that away, and
then you can also maybe talk logically about your performance things.\
\
S. Long: Does anyone else have suggestions of things you have tried
yourself that has worked really well in these types of situations? Has
anybody faced these situations before?\
\
Caller: This is Gary from needles.\
\
Caller: This is Danielle from ELKO.\
\
S. Long: Let\'s take Gary first.\
\
Caller: I have dealt with both of those types of situations. My response
hasn\'t been by the book, I suppose. I have trouble dealing with the
belligerent without becoming defensive. And when it comes \-- I\'ve got
too much feedback. Let me turn some volumes down.\
\
S. Long: That would be appreciated. He said that he doesn\'t think he
always has maybe dealt witness appropriately. Does anybody have a
suggestion of technique that worked well for you if you thought you were
successful in dealing with a belligerent employee.\
\
Caller: I\'m back if you want.\
\
S. Long: Go ahead.\
\
Caller: Most of what has worked for me is what I get back to refolk \--
re focussing, if somebody is getting belligerent, I try to get them back
down to earth and focus on the problem. Emotional can be the same thing

as belligerence. It\'s a means of manipulation. It\'s a method that
worked for them before and it has gotten them through things and they
are trying it again. Empathy is good, but it can also play into the
game, if you will, that they\'re playing. It\'s really hard to determine
what\'s genuine and what is an act at times.\
\
S. Long: Gary, I think you made a good point. You say that sometimes
it\'s because it\'s a game they\'ve played that\'s worked for them.
Remember, these are people who are not strangers to you guys. You know
them, and where you\'ve seen them try to pull those things again, you
really will guard against it. But sometimes these emotions are real for
people. That is not their typical mode. None of us know what\'s going on
in somebody\'s private life that may be influencing this. So, like I
said, EAP is really a good resource, if these things are happening that
are affecting their performance. Now, I think someone in ELKO had a
comment?\
\
Caller: Yes, I\'ve noticed\...\
\
M. Dukes: We lost you.\
\
Caller: I\'ve noticed in volatile situations I\'ve often asked the
employee if they wanted to take a time-out and, say, like come back in
an hour or so later to discuss the issue to where we\'re both in a
better frame of mind.\
\
S. Long: I think that is an excellent suggestion. It does allow everyone
to kind of defuse the situation, because it\'s like, ok, let me step
back

here and refocus my energies about what\'s going on. That\'s an
excellent idea. Steep, I think you were the one who dealt with the bad
at that time to do and we have a book for you that we will be sending
out to you. And, Phil, you get the one that\'s, \"in praise of good
business.\" This, too, will come out to you this week. Thank you both
for helping us out.\
\
M. Dukes: Good job, everybody.\
\
S. Long: By the way, that was Doug Adams who was our role play in there.
He is one of the instructors here at NTC.\
\
M. Dukes: It was interesting in the last role play where John the
employee started talking about his personal problems and as a result of
his personal problems he\'s on medication, and the medication is making
him groggy. At this stage he did not ask for reasonable accommodation,
but there is a good chance he could have gone down that path if we had
let this conversation go ten more minutes. Page 10 we have a brief
discussion on reasonable accommodation, but let\'s kind of go over the
key points you need to pay attention to when you\'re dealing with that.
Reasonable accommodation first starts with an employee saying, \"i have
a disability and I need you to accommodate it.\" This could be a
permanent situation. This could be a temporary

situation. It could be physical, it could be mental, it could be
emotional. They may not raise it in such a way I have a disability and I
would like reasonable accommodation, but they are going to give you
extremely strong clues that they\'re expecting some or asking or hoping
for some kind of accommodation. At that stage, if they actually make \--
make it known to you that they really want accommodation, you kind of
need to slow down and stop the dialogue at that stage. You are going to
want to wrap it up, but you are going to want to work with your human
resource specialist because you need to get a truly better picture of
what is going on and for that you are going to need medical information.
We are entitled to ask for medical information if the employee is saying
I need to have my job slightly redesigned in order to deal with my
personal problem. So your human resource specialist, you will never walk
alone, there you go again, talking to them, they are going to help you
draft the request for that. And there\'s a lot of information that goes
in these requests. The doctor needs to note kind of job we\'re talking
about, the kind of primary work this individual is doing, and then our
expectations and then, do they think the employee can do this work with
or without accommodation. What those accommodations would

need to be. In a case I am aware of, sometimes \-- we had one case where
it\'s hard for the employee to come to work every day because of some
physical problems but they can do the work at home. So we have put in
place a temporary FLEXIplace agreement. Sometimes you put them on a
different kind of maxie flex agreement. But each case depends on the
job, depends on the work situation, depends on the condition and depends
on the medical information you have. Sometimes you can\'t accommodate
them. Beyond saying, I can give you a month off work. There is nothing
you can do to accommodate them. The reasonable part of accommodation is
they can still do the primary function of the job and if they can\'t do
the primary function of the job with or without accommodation, you need
to move on with the performance case. If they cannot do the job even
with accommodation, you need to move on with your performance case. So
there is some data you need to get. It\'s very complicated data,
obviously with medical information it\'s sensitive data. If the employee
refuses to give it to you, then they have not formally made a request
for reasonable accommodation and you move on. But you are going to want
coaching on these. They denied to get very sensitive as we are dealing
with

medical, emotional, or physical issues. You might see them going to EEO.
You want to make sure you are not doing anything that would open you up
to a discrimination complaint. So, you\'re going to be there, I think
John raised that issue, there was a good chance we might have gone into
it on the role play. Just want you to be aware of that. But an employee
with or without accommodation is still expected to do the job we hired
them to do and you are entitled to ask and require that level of
performance. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: We would be remiss if we did not talk to you about the impact
of the bargaining agreements on the performance process. I know this is
something that really gets confusing with supervisors and certainly with
the employees, too. But you need to know, there is no substance of the
EPPRR that is negotiable. When you are establishing what the work
requirements are, you are doing that. You do not have to involve \-- in
fact, you should not involve the union or negotiate that in any way. The
same is true for the standards. You establish the standards. It is not
negotiable. But that doesn\'t mean that there might not be something in
your bargaining contract that addresses performance. For example, it may
well say in there that you\'re supposed to

have two reviews every year. Well, that\'s already in the regulation.
And I know that a lot of people ignore. That and there probably isn\'t a
whole lot of consequence. We don\'t have a patrol from Washington coming
down to see if we\'re following everything in the regs. But here you
also now have a contract violation and that would be much more serious,
and it would be a different form we would have to go into if they wanted
to file a grievance over that. We also are dealing with a lot of
standard P.D.s. In some cases, you simply have one P.D. and more than
one person in your office may be assigned to that one. That does not
mean that they have to have the identical standard. And you cannot be
compelled to use the same standard as in the case of our law enforcement
across the Bureau. I think probably one area that comes up most
frequently is you\'re going to have a talk with the employee, and the
employee, sensing that this is negative, says, I want my union steward
present. The answer is no. The union has no right to be present during a
performance. This is not discipline. There are rules, certainly, that
govern any kind of discipline case, whether it\'s a winegarden situation
or formal discussion but performance is neither of those and you need to
limit this to only yourself and to the employee themself.

Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: One could hope at this stage of the game through all your
informal counselling, coaching, training, mentoring or whatever you
ended up doing the performance is back on track and you\'ve been
successful. And if you have, that\'s the best answer and in the
government, that is the typical answer. But it is not the only answer.
Sometimes it doesn\'t work. You\'re now at the unacceptable performance.
The employee, you\'ve had your counselling, you have done everything. If
they still are not getting their performance up, at any time during
rating year, if they have \-- \-- this is where it starts to get hard
because now you are taking a formal action and in taking a formal action
you have to have a formal solution. Or resolution to your problem. If
they fail to successfully complete at least one critical result, they
don\'t have to fail on everything. It\'s just failing one you need to
give them what\'s called a performance improvement plan. Unless it\'s a
probationary employee and I told you we would come back to this,
probationary employees, you want to seriously debate letting them go at
this stage of game. You don\'t want to go through the performance
improvement plan for a couple reasons. One, it\'s at least normally 90
days. And then if that 90 days takes you into more than 12 months of
their employment, you now have a permanent employee who is

entitled to due process. There is no summary dismissal. Once they\'ve
completed their probation period. Probation period, we don\'t treat it
like a summary dismissal, you are gone today, which I know happens in
the private sector. There are a few other processes we want you to
follow. But essentially it is. It\'s a very short-term notice, and you
need to take advantage of that, letting it go is detrimental to you and
it is detrimental to the efficiency of the service. But, if you have
someone who is not a probationer, you do need to give them what\'s
called a performance improvement plan. What I would like you to do is
turn to page 11 in your participant guide. We have these cool fill in
the blank things there. We will show you what you need to write in those
blanks to just kind of reinforce what should be from a good business
practice in your performance improvement plan. And the first one says:
You have identified the critical results and performance indicators in
which the employee\'s performance is unacceptable and yo provided
specific examples of that deficiency. Both of those things are critical
and they must be in the performance improvement plan before \-- as part
of that to make it regular law tore \--\
\
Caller: That went by pretty fast.\
\
M. Dukes: You need to identify the specific period of

time the employee is being given the opportunity to demonstrate
acceptable performance. You need to state improvements that are expected
of them. What is your fully acceptable, the results you expect, you need
to tell them what it is we are looking for.\
\
S. Long: Let me interrupt, Melissa. We have someone on the push-to-talk.
Someone has a question?\
\
M. Dukes: I\'m sorry.\
\
S. Long: Steep. Before they flashed that on the screen, we were just
finding that was too fast for us on number 1.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. We need to go back to that still store, which is number
9714. I apologize for that. There we go. Critical results and
performance indicators. Since you were trying to struggle to get that
down, we\'re going to go to still store 9715, which was the second one,
identify the specific period of time n case you missed that one, too.
So, sorry about that. I apologize. I thought I had somebody telling me
we\'re running out of time. Yes, we are going after two hours. We did
time this yesterday without interaction. It took us about an
hour-and-a-half. We were hoping two hours would be enough but I think
we\'re probably going to be done in about 15 minutes after the hour. So
hang with us.

We\'re wrapping up now, but this is an important part. So you need to
stay with me here. As we stated, still store 9716, the stated
improvements that are expected. What do you want the employee to do?
What are you looking for in terms of product or performance? The next
thing your performance improvement plan really should include is what
you are going to do as a supervisor? Are you going to do special
training, as I think Greg had indicated in the original role play, even
though we\'re at the informal stage, he was going to have regular
meetings with the employee. Whatever it is you\'re committing yourself
to do needs to be in the performance improvement plan. The critical
thing is, once once you agree to it, you must follow through. If you do
not follow through, you have committed a harmful error. So if you agree
to meet with the employee every Monday morning at 9:00, you better meet
with him every Monday morning at 9:00. I am not going to tell you if you
meet at 9:15 that\'s a problem, but if you start meeting every other
Monday, then every third Monday, you\'re not following through on your
commitment and your commitment is critical to this process. The next
thing that needs to be in there in the performance improvement plan, it
needs to state that the employee \-- if the employee\'s performance does
not improve to an acceptable

level, a proposal may be issued to separate them from their position.
They need to know the consequences of this. And the consequences of this
may, in fact, removal. You are at the stage where you have to get their
attention. The last one is actually not a regulatory requirement but
Sherian and I put it in there because we both think it\'s an extremely
good idea, we think the PIP needs to indicate the availability of the
EAP program, as we saw with our employee John, EAP may or may not have
been a good idea, but he definitely, at least on the last role play,
probably needed some personal assistance there. So it\'s just a good
idea to keep it in there. There may be things going on in the
employee\'s personal life that they have elected not to share with you
and these are not just emotional problems. They could be financial. They
could be issues with their children. There are a lot of things that
employees are dealing with that causes their performance to deteriorate.
That is not your job to fix them, but you can make the offer of the
Employee Assistance Program. The length of time that you\'re going to
indicate is normally 90 days. It can be less, but typically it is 90
days. 90 days is kind of a personnel standard to evaluate someone\'s
performance. So you are giving them 90 days. It could even be longer,
based

on your individual experience. To actually improve their performance.
That also gives you specific time to do those things you offered or
agreed to do. But at the end of those 90 days, you have to make a
decision. Did you see the improvement that you expected and clearly
stated your PIP to the employee or did they not? If they did not, they
have now failed their performance improvement plan, and you have to do
something. The something \-- you\'re not required to offer them another
job, but you can. You can actually offer reassignment to a vacant
position, a change to lower grade to another position, or, and what most
frequently happens, is you actually propose their removal from the
Federal service. It\'s a negative thing to happen to an employee, but
let\'s take the case of John once again, you know, time management
skills are pretty much required in any job. Customer service skills are
required in almost any position. So sometimes the performance problem is
such that there isn\'t another job you can give them. I\'m sounding very
directive here, but, you know, I want you to understand that you have to
figure out not what is in the best interests of the employee, but what
is in the best interests of the Federal service and the Federal service
might be best served by terminating the individual. At that stage, if
that\'s your decision, you would normally as a first-line supervisor,
though

we might have contractual issues that change this a little bit, propose
the removal from the Federal service. It is a 30-day notice period.
There are specific things you have to include in that proposal. An
interesting point when I talked about retirement earlier, you cannot
initiate because it may be perceived as constructive removal. At this
stage we are already removing the person or proposing their removal. If
they are eligible for retirement but more importantly eligible for early
retirement or discontinued service retirement, you can make them aware
of their entitlement to retire. Sun one who is terminated for
performance for service who is eligible for early retirement, may elect
to retire. This is not a benefit offered to someone with a conduct
problem. But a performance is usually not a choice issue. They give it
their best shot, they try as hard as they can, they\'re just not
successful, there is that opportunity for them to retire and it is in
your best interests and their best interests to let them know that with
the proposal to remove they could elect to retire instead. During this
process, the employee does, in fact, have an opportunity or right to be
represented. They could be represented by an attorney. They may,
particularly if they\'re covered by a bargaining unit agreement, be
represented by a union steward in their dealings with management.

They\'re also given official time to prepare any response to the
proposed removal. Human resources office is going to work very closely
with you, but they\'re also going to work very closely with the deciding
official. The deciding official have not been an active party to this.
We cannot allow them to be an active party to the performance issues you
are attempting to address, which is not the same as saying you can\'t
tell your boss you\'re working the problem, you just can\'t give them a
lot of detail. So they will have, in fact, an objective view of what\'s
going on and what\'s in the best interests of the service. One thing you
do need to remember is that you can only use performance information
that\'s one year prior to the date of the proposed removal action or
proposed change to lower grade. You can\'t go beyond that. So even if
you\'ve seen negative performance behaviors for five years, I don\'t
worry about the first four, I\'m only going to worry about the last one.
The signing official, which is typically the next level of supervisor,
although that will vary, will render the deon either the proposed change
to lower grade or the removal letter and they will give them, the
employee them n their decision letter not only their answer but their
litigation rights. Employees have a number of litigation rights here and
this is where you\'re going to find person who made sure you never

walked alone is your best friend. All that frustration you\'ve gone
through, all that documentation, all that you need to do this, you need
to do this extra step, you need to go this extra mile here s important
if the employee elects to litigate. They have a number of options on
litigation, depending upon what rights in their mind they have perceived
to have been violated. Sherian is going to talk primarily about the
merit systems protection board, but I30 there are some other things she
wants to address at this stage.\
\
S. Long: I want to take away this mystique about what happens when you
go to the MSPB. This is the same forum we go to in a discipline case.
It\'s presided over by an administrative judge. We\'re always
represented by the Solicitor\'s-on-. As Melissa said, the employee could
be represented by whoever it is they want. The agency has the burden of
proof and you as a supervisor are going to be the key witness in this
particular case. They use different standards for proving your case
between discipline and performance. For performance we have the
substantial standard. Believe me, it is much easier to be able to prove
this than it is a preponderance. Preponderance is the one that\'s going
to say, it\'s got to be more likely to be true than not. That\'s what
they call that 51%. And the one we\'re dealing with here in performance,
it\'s just that it\'s reasonable person is

going to find, that, yeah, that\'s probably correct, even though they
may draw different conclusion. The technical aspect of this is going to
be handled by attorneys for you and the tech rep coming out of the HR
office. So you don\'t need to be could concerned. You are simply going
to be up there giving your evidence. It will usually be 30, 60 days or
so after the proceedings that you\'re going to get a written decision
back from the judge. One thing you need to be aware of is why do we fail
sometimes when we take these to court? Well, sometimes it\'s because
that standard wasn\'t fair in the first place or we couldn\'t articulate
why it was fair. Or management \-- or did not explain clearly to the
employees as to what the standards were. Here\'s a big one, management
fails to follow up during the PIP. You\'ve made this commitment just
like in the role play, said every Monday morning. Do you really want to
do that? Are you available right there in the office every Monday to
talk with him? Don\'t make these commitments that you really don\'t
think you\'re going to be able to keep. Sometimes there might be abuse,
and that more often than not is a verbal type of abuse going on of the
employee during this time. Don\'t fall into the mistake of detailing
them to another position when you need them there to perform on this
one. Finally, whatever you do, don\'t change the standard once you

have put them onto the PIP itself. We know that our time is really short
right now, so we\'re going to just quickly sum up what we\'ve gone over
today. Melissa, you have that?\
\
M. Dukes: We identified early on six key issues that you wanted us to
address in this training. We hope we\'ve addressed most of them, the
regulationed, process, talked a little bit about writing better critical
results, documentation. Had a hard time, couldn\'t quite do the
motivation, building cohesive workplace, but I think there are some of
those books, like we gave to Phil and steep, that are out there that
will help you and those resources are going to be available on the
information we send you as part of your course evaluation. And we will
give you all of the information about the books as well as some key web
pages and some other information from MSPB. We do have one last book to
give.\
\
S. Long: Yes, we do.\
\
M. Dukes: High-tech little thing here.\
\
S. Long: The book we have we are givering away this time, \"175 ways to
get more done in less time.\" Sound to me like what the BLM is always
asking us to do. We\'ll draw a name out. This is Karla James in Nevada.
Are you there?\
\
Caller: Yes, I\'m here.\
\
M. Dukes: Yea!\
\
S. Long: All right. You\'re going to be receiving

this. As Melissa mentioned, there is an e-mail that will come out with
the course evaluation and we will be listing for you a number of
resources that you can go to that are available. I think Melissa has one
right there right now. It\'s OPM has issued. It\'s an excellent book. It
is addressing and resolving poor performance and it takes you step by
step through everything you ever thought you would need to know. Also,
there is an MSPB report that is on Federal supervisors and poor
performance. It\'s another excellent resource. And we\'ll have some
other websites as well as sample of a \-- an executive summary. We
don\'t have the time to read all these management books either, just
like you, but there is a service that\'s available will give you kind of
like your cliff notes of some of these management books, and we\'ll
identify for you in the e-mail also the availability much that. \-- of
that. We appreciate very much your tuning in with us today. We hope that
you have learned something through this process. And we hope, too, that
you will follow through with some of our other Introduction to
Supervision courses or even those of you who have been around a long
time, we always need reinforcement about those things. Watch for those
coming up and be sure and register.\
\
M. Dukes: Also, since we couldn\'t do questions, if you have any
questions, we\'re in

Lotus notes, or more importantly, why don\'t you try your own E.R.
specialist at your own State Office. Thank you for tuning in.