Introduction to Supervision\
Resolving Performance Issues

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

**BLM National Training Center in Phoenix, Arizona**

**January 14, 2003**

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

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

**Announcer:** Welcome to Introduction to Supervision. A series of
interactive broadcasts to familiarize new supervisors with their role
and to serve as a review for experienced supervisors. Today\'s module is
titled Resolving Performance Issues.

And now your instructors, Melissa Dukes and Sherian Long.\
\
M. Dukes: Good morning, my name is Melissa Dukes and I am the human
resources officer for the Colorado State Office.\
\
And I\'m Sherian Long.\
\
M. Dukes: We would like to welcome you to this session. It\'s our third
time to do the session and we are excited about being here at the
Training Center and doing it again. Couple things, housekeeping things,
we would like to go over with you to make sure THPO all works well for
you. You need to think of this as a training class, not as a satellite
broadcast. That\'s why we\'re using the push-to-talk module. If you have
a question, please feel free to ask us any time during the broadcast,
except the role plays, when the role plays are going we would like you
to watch role play itself. But to do that, push down your button, state
your name, your location and then let the button up. We\'ll get back to
you, say, Kent, in meeker, what\'s your question? Hi, Kent. I know
you\'re here today. We would also like you to actively involve in the
class. Classrooms can be really boring if you have two people sitting
there lecturing. So we want you to take this chance to ask us questions
about what\'s going on in your state.\
\
S. Long: I was going to say, Melissa and I have both been in your
position of sitting out there during these and we know that there is a
real reluctance to push that button and talk. We just can\'t encourage
you enough to do that. It\'s really going to add a lot to it.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Sherian. A little bit of other things. Please
follow aLong in your participant fees. There are exercises throughout
the fees. There\'s different information that we\'re going to reference
during the broadcast. So I want you to follow aLong with that. The other
thing I would like is kind of tell you a history about this class and
why we\'re doing two broadcasts today. This started out as an idea to
redesign the introduction to supervision class so people wouldn\'t fly
down to Phoenix, spend 40 hours sitting in the classroom getting
lectured at and then nine months later need to deal with a technical
issue. We decided that there are better ways to do the introduction to
supervision program, and the National Training Center pulled together a
bunch of people to in fact put the program together. What we did is we
started with performance. For some reason performance seems to strike a
bell with a lot of managers. It\'s an issue that they seem to be dealing
with. So what we\'ve done is taken the first segment of the introduction
to supervision and we decided to do it as a satellite broadcast. It\'s
not the first one, in fact, there are three more scheduled to be
presented, or at least designed this year, coming up next is conduct,
which I think is everybody\'s second most favorite thing as a supervisor
to have to deal with. After that, we\'re getting ready to start on an
EEO presentation, and hope knee if there is time, they will work on
either employee development or classification this year. But the first
one is resolving performance issues, and what I would like to do is
gather your expectations. Remember, every class you sit in, after the
icebreaker, which you had with Cheryl and the calling in, you write down
your expectations, what do you want to learn from this class, what would
you like to get out of this class? So what I would like to do is just
ask a few of \-- if you don\'t chime in, I will call everybody out by
location. What I would like to do is kind of gather your expectations.
What do you want to learn out of this session? So, Ruben in Kingman, I
heard you check in, Ruben. So what are your expectations for this
class?\
\
Caller: I guess what I\'m looking at, under the performance issues, is
any help, I guess, in how specific can we be on identifying the
performance expectations that we\'re expecting of the individual to \--
I guess to have the proper documentation in place should any problems
arise, and if they do arise, are you going to also be covering what the
follow-up or the next step would be onto that?\
\
M. Dukes: Raw been, thank you. Let\'s see, Colorado, anybody out there
in Colorado have any expectations? Particularly you guys in meeker.\
\
Caller: Since you have put us on the spot, Melissa, I think what we\'re
looking for, one of the things I\'m looking at, is perhaps identifying
the difference between conduct versus performance and also understanding
that it\'s also getting the best. So performance could mean also
tweaking. It doesn\'t necessarily mean that you have necessarily poor
performance, but how do you go from performing average to being a high
performer? I don\'t know if we\'re going to get there or not today, but
that\'s also something that I\'d like to discuss a little bit if
possible.\
\
M. Dukes: Thanks, Kent. You\'re right. That is really the goal of every
supervisor. Eastern States, anybody out there specifically have any
expectations they\'re looking forward to getting out of the session?
That could be Jackson, that could be the State Office, that could be
Milwaukee. Anybody \--\
\
Caller: This is Angela Barnes in the Jackson Field Office.\
\
M. Dukes: Angela, what are you expecting to get out of this class?\
\
Caller: Since I\'m a fairly new supervisors, all I can. I want to get
everything I can. And then my main issue is conduct versus performance.\
\
M. Dukes: An issue for both Kent and Angela. Thank you. Let\'s see,
Idaho, anybody in Idaho have any specific expectations they would like
to get out of this class?\
\
Caller: This is John.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, John.\
\
Caller: I\'d like to know how you adequately \-- adequately evaluate
performance when we are essentially on a pass/no-pass system.\
\
M. Dukes: Good question. So adequately evaluate performance in a
pass/fail environment. That\'s John. Montana?\
\
Caller: This is Joyce Norris. I guess I would have to go with the
conduct versus performance.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Thank you. National centers, anybody on from there that
have any expectations they\'d like us to add to the list? Well, hope we
kind of cover what it is you\'re silently waiting for in there. I
understand the reluctance to do the push to talk. I understand that
part. NIFC, anything specifically you would like to get out of this
class? Ok. New Mexico?\
\
Caller: This is Larry. Anything I get out of this class is going to be
helpful. This is my first supervisory experience.\
\
M. Dukes: Don\'t you love being a new supervisor and having to deal with
performance problems. It\'s always exciting. Larry, your push-to-talk is
echoing, so what they would like you to do is to call the number that
you\'re seeing on your screen. And \-- because they need to help you get
that echoing resolved so we can have some interaction with you. Since
you are a new supervisor, I think it\'s critical for you to be able to
ask questions.\
\
Caller: How about now, is it still echoing?\
\
M. Dukes: Yes, it is. You need to disconnect from the bridge, call the
number and they will help you out, but have your folks do that so you
can pay attention to what\'s going on in the class.\
\
Caller: Ok. Thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: That was Larry. And Washington Office, anybody come on from
Washington and do you have any expectations that we need to add to the
list? Well, we\'ve got, I think, a pretty good list. We\'re going to
actually address most of these issues today. I also know obviously for
those of you interested in performance versus conduct you are going to
want to watch the next satellite broadcast scheduled for February that
will be talking about addressing conduct issues and we\'ll go over the
specific dates on that training at the end of our session, because our
session is about performance and we need to get started. Sherian?\
\
S. Long: Our goals that we have are by the end of these next two hours
that we\'re anticipating that you are going to be ready, willing and
able to build that Baseline EPPR that will be results driven and it will
define your expectations for your employees over the next 12 months.
Second, you are going to be able to differentiate between conduct and
performance issues. And finally, that you\'re going to be willing to
resolve those performance problems as soon as possible. In order to do
those, I can guarantee you are going to need to call upon some of those
leadership competencies that OPM has defined for us. If you look on page
1 of your participant fees, you will see some of those that we think are
probably ones you are going to use the most and I want to point out a
few to you. There\'s \-- I\'m sure no surprise to you, you will be us
using your human resource management one but think about that strategic
thinking because you will be determining what your goals and objectives
are for your employees a whole year out. Also you\'ve got
accountability. Well, of course, that\'s accountability for your
employee but it\'s your accountability, too, because as a supervisor,
you have certain responsibilities and they\'re going to be watching to
see whether or not you follow through with those.

Communication is always a critical one, and that\'s both written and
orally. You need to be clear and concise with your employees about what
your expectations are. And finally, those interpersonal skills, because
when you\'re dealing with employees, you can get a whole myriad or range
of reactions from them and you need to be able to how to respond to that
appropriately with each situation. If you look in Appendix A there in
your workbook, you are going to find the complete list of the 27
competencies, and there\'s a definition for you also to help you
remember exactly what does that comprise. Now, you know, part of being
able to be ready, willing and able to have an understanding \-- you need
to have an understanding why is it important that you address these
problems in the workplace with your employees? Well, we\'re going to ask
you for some of your ideas, but let me give you a couple just to start
with. One, you really want the very best from your employees. Also,
think about it, you\'ve got some work objectives to achieve in your
office, and if your office is like the majority of ours, our staffs are
somewhat lean, so we have to depend upon everyone there to do their
part. But there\'s other reasons also. So I\'d like to hear from all of
you about that. If you look on page 2 in your lesson plan, there is a
little brainstorming exercise. So, assuming you\'re sitting there with
some other folks, talk about it, and jot down some of your ideas of
those reasons again as to why do you think it\'s important that we
correct employee issues. We\'ll give you about 15 minutes and come back
to you and you\'ll \-- I\'m sorry, 15 seconds \-- we\'re going to use
your push-to-talk technology and we will see what kind of ideas you came
up with.\
\
S. Long: We\'re back again and let\'s see, does anybody in, let\'s say,
Colorado, do you have any ideas as to why you think it\'s important?
Anywhere in Colorado?\
\
Caller: This is Kent from meeker trying to get Vern over there to use
this new technology, but some of the things \-- it\'s important to nip
it in the bud, so to speak, because we all have time frames we have to
meet, and in addition to that, also team morale, so everybody should be
expected to perform at the same level to complete the it is ak and
participate in that task.\
\
S. Long: Those are two really good answers. Morale is a big issue. In an
office, everybody knows what everybody else is doing. It\'s not like we
have 300 of us in any kind of Field Office or State Office. We know who
is performing and who is not. And when people are having to carry the
load for others, they get discouraged with and that think, why should I
bother? You\'re right, the Longer you let something go on, then the more
likely it\'s going to become a serious problem. So nipping it in the bud
is a good idea. Anyone else? Maybe in Idaho, do you have any other
thoughts besides those?\
\
Caller: Yes, this is Eric at Idaho falls. We were thinking that poor
performance actually interferes also with other employees\' performance.
It\'s aLong the lines of a morale issue.\
\
You\'re right, but that\'s a real good point. So often our work is
intertwined and you need someone else to accomplish theirs so you can
get yours done. So I think that was a good point to bring up also.
Anyone else? Anywhere?\
\
Caller: This is Scott.\
\
I think it\'s also important for the supervisor to address the problems
because it\'s also a reflection on his management and how he\'s going to
respond to actual problems amongst his employees and how he is going to
deal with them.\
\
S. Long: That\'s good. You brought up one I thought about, too. You as a
supervisor is being watched by others. Everyone knows it\'s a supervisor
responsibility to deal with these things. I\'m real glad you brought
that particular issue up. Was there anything else?\
\
Caller: This is Larry over in New Mexico. You\'re echoing a lot. So
we\'re going to put that number back up on the screen and make sure.\
\
Caller: She\'s working on it.\
\
S. Long: Good. They want you to disconnect from the bridge and call back
when that one is fixed. Let me just cover one other thing that occurred
to me. We said that employees know what really is going on in the
office, they\'re in touch with those that aren\'t doing it and I think
that when someone is not performing up to par and is being allowed to
get away with it. Their peers begin to lose respect for them. So we are
kind of doing a disservice to that employee because we don\'t want them
to be put into that type of situation. I\'m not certain, I don\'t recall
now, who was the first one, do you remember, Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: We called on Colorado but the first person to volunteer an
answer was Ruben in Arizona.\
\
S. Long: Ruben, this is your lucky day. We have a book for you for being
the first one to truly volunteer and this will be the \"book of
leadership wisdom\". We will be sending this out to you after the
broadcast. So the rest of you think about that, when we are looking for
volunteers, maybe you\'ll get something also.\
\
Caller: Thank you very much.\
\
S. Long: Just to remind you again, you as the supervisor, you have that
primary responsibility for ensuring that your employees have a
reasonable and fair opportunity to be able to improve. There\'s several
ways that you can do this to assist them. In fact this, kind of answers
one of the things that came up earlier about how can you make people be
even better than what they are, and you can use some of the same
techniques, and that would be classroom training or informal training.
It may be through counselling sessions with them. It may be intensive
coaching. Or possibly it\'s going to be verbal feedback on the products
that they\'re turning into you. You know, the good news, really, is that
most employees are going to improve by the time you go to some of these
extra efforts. But I want you to keep in mind, too, that as a
supervisor, it is not your role to do the work anymore. It is your role
to facilitate your employees so they can be really successful. Melissa?\
\
M. Dukes: The first thing that Sherian had talked about as a goal of
this course is to build the Baseline EPPR, and we\'re on page 3 of your
workbook, and I want to talk to you a little bit about what the Baseline
EPPR needs to be about. There\'s some basic components you need to pay
attention to here that are regulatory and HR, as we all know, has lots
of regulations to it and if you\'re going to end up dealing with a
performance problem, the regulations have to be followed. The first one
is you need to give your employee a performance plan within 60 days of
the beginning of the performance period. Now, for most of our employees,
the performance evaluation period is October 1st through September 30th.
That is not universally true but it is generally true. So by November
30th you should have given them a performance balloon what you expect
them to do. The remaining 10 months of the performance period. You need
to at least two progress reviews each year. The requirement is stated, I
know, supervisors and Sherian and I are supervisors, and know about this
problem, it is hard to make time to meet with your employees twice a
year. But you\'re not that busy to touch base with your employees and
make sure they are doing the work you need to have them doing at the
level you need to have it at. So make sure you have at least two
progress periods a year. If it ends up you do have an employee with an
employee problem and you have to go to the PIP, this, too, monitoring
performance, monitoring sessions, whatever you want to calm it are
absolutely mandatory before you can go to the PIP process. This came up
as a question that we got in \-- ahead of the class from one of the
people, is when do you talk to an employee? You talk to the employee at
the time the problem occurs. If they\'re giving you a product that is
deficient, if they\'re missing a deadline f they seem to be struggling
starting a project, you need to be talking to them throughout the
process, but particularly when you see a problem, you need to tell them
at the time. For those of us who are Long-term supervisors, we all get
that frustration, I inherited a performance problem from somebody else.
You owe it to your employees, you owe it to the employee\'s co-workers,
you owe it to yourself, to your organization, to deal with employee
problems at the time they occur and we\'re going to go over some
processes how you do that because it doesn\'t have to be that hammering,
nailing them, yelling at them the first time, but you do have to talk to
them when the problem occurs. You only approve within grade increases if
the employee\'s performance is acceptable. If it\'s not acceptable, you
need to be working with your HR office and disapprove, or deny or delay
the increase until the performance is at an acceptable level. At the
time you sign that or forget to sign the within grade authorization and
the employee gets it by lack of action on your part, their performance
is acceptable to that date. So anything they did prior to that that
wasn\'t acceptable cannot be used in any kind of performance based
action. You need to make sure you evaluate the performance at the end of
the rating year. That\'s true for all of your employees. Another problem
I know managers have, but it\'s something they absolutely need to be
paying attention to, and the standard has to be in place at least 90
days before you can finally evaluate the performance. And the last thing
and this is one I know a lot of people struggle with, and something as
HR officers Sherian and I get a little frustrated with, is utilizing the
probation period. That\'s the first year \-- typically the first year
your employee, you\'re on probation. If you\'re not a good employee in
your first year, you\'re generally not a good employ \-- at least a good
performer in the job we hired you into. So we need you to utilize your
probation period very effectively, really look at that probation period
as what it\'s designed for, the last stage of the evaluation process. I
think Sherian has an interesting case about that, too, that she told me
she wanted to share with you before we went onto the next section.\
\
We did. We had an occurrence when the supervisor came to us in HR and
talked about this employee. They were in their probationary period, and
they had problems actually both on the conduct side as well as on the
performance. Our advice to them was, cut it off now. We said, this is a
strong indicator of the kind of employee this is going to be. But one
thing we know is BLM people are just so nice they really hate to take
that kind of step, and they thought of the excuses, well, you know,
they\'re a single parent and they\'re still in the young side, which in
our case means under 40, but if they \-- you know, maybe we shouldn\'t.
So they let the probationary period go by and it wasn\'t that Long after
the person had been converted to a conditional they were back again in
the office and they had all kinds of problems and the upshot was
eventually they had to put this employee onto a PIP and it went through
the formal process. The employee was removed and we had to go all
through litigation with the MSPB. Believe me, those supervisors really
learned their lesson that it was not a good idea to have not used that
probationary period the way it was designed and it cost them a great
deal of their time not to mention the money to go through this whole
process. So make use of that while you have the opportunity.\
\
M. Dukes: Before we go any further, does anybody have any questions?
This is just a step by step process, but is there anything we talked
about that you have a question on before we move onto writing critical
results, which I think is really the first key to moving this. But want
to move onto question before we get ahead of ourselves. Any questions
out there?\
\
Caller: This is Scott in Missoula. It appears I have an echo, so I have
to figure out something else.\
\
M. Dukes: Scott, we\'re going to ask you to hang up and dial the phone
number that\'s going to be coming across. What I would like you to do is
write your question down and when you get back on to ask us the question
a little later on in the session when you get your technical problems
worked out. If you don\'t, you can always call us with your question if
they are unable to resolve the push-to-talk but keep ahold of that
question so you can ask it when you\'re back to the link. Or you can fax
in your question to 602-906-5713. You can tell they\'re telling in my
ear the fax number if that you would like to do that now, you can always
fax in the question and you can get it to us. Can I have that number
again, Kim, please? 602-906-5713. So for those of you having a little
technical problems, hope you wrote that down and we\'ll be sure to catch
your question for Missoula when we come back on.\
\
S. Long: This is probably the whole foundation. Of what you need when
you\'re going to be dealing with performance. You can turn to Appendix
B, page 17 in your workbook and what you will find there is the EPPR
form itself. One thing I want to point out to you is to look at the date
of the forms you are using. You need to make sure that you\'re using
something that is dated no earlier than December of \'96. I know we
still get some of the old forms in that had a \'95 date. We cannot use
those. That had already been determined through a court decision there
was some illegalities in there. Make sure it says at least December of
\'96. Do you ever think about what the whole purpose of our EPPR form
is? It\'s really nothing more than a communication tool. It\'s your way
of being able to assist the employee to know what your expectations are.
It\'s divided in two parts as you are well aware. The first part is the
critical results. And this is under other systems. They\'re simply
called elements. On the next page, we have the performance indicators,
and that\'s where your true standards are, albeit you will notice they
are generic in nature. Let\'s take a look first at your critical results
and think about it. Here is what you want them to accomplish during
these next 12 months, and those accomplishments might be what they\'re
going to do as an individual. It could be for the organization\'s
accomplishments. Or it possibly might even be what a team is going to
create during that time or produce. When you\'re trying to develop
those, you need to be thinking in terms of what does the employee\'s \'
PD say? What are the organizational goals you need to meet? You might
also need to think about what are the workload measures your office may
well need to meet for that particular year? Whatever you have in here
it\'s going to have to be achievable, it needs to be observable, and
results oriented. Probably the one thing that we all have a tendency to
do is we write activities, and activities are those things like, they
write reports or they oversee projects, or it could be, they conduct
meetings. But is that all you really want them to do? Really, think
about it, what you are looking for is the outcome of those things. Now
this isn\'t to say that you can\'t have activities and outcomes written
together at the same time. In fact, we\'ve given you some samples you
can look at. So if you turn to page 3 and 4, you will see a couple
samples there, and here we\'ve given both activities with the result
together. In the first one, it says, the employee conducts inventories
and completes written reports on the five areas assigned within the
established time frame of 1 per month. So we have given you something
that is both measurable and observable. When you are writing yours, it
doesn\'t have to be perfect. But it\'s going to have to be clear that
the employee understands, \"oh, this is what I must produce or have the
result of at the end of this rating cycle,\" or within the time frames
that you may be listing there. The other sample that is in there,
you\'ll see, is a much Longer, and we\'re going to be using that late or
during a role play, and it covers all of those types of things that
we\'ve talked about that needs to be in there as far as the achievable,
observable and results oriented. But how does this stuff kind of fit
together. Because we\'ve said here is the results, but we have to have
the indicators of knowing whether you\'re meeting it and that is what
you found on the second page and says, so how successful were you in
doing that? Take a look at those generic standards. They probably appear
somewhat absolute as though you cannot have any room for error, but we
know \-- unless it\'s a case of life or death, you can\'t have
absolutes. So it\'s why it\'s important that you explain to the employee
what you\'re really looking for. So recognizing there is some room for
leeway there, and kind of what you\'re communicating to them is the
yardstick of your expectations. One other thing I have seen a lot is
that people when they get to that second page, they just automatically
go right down here and circle \"all\" for everything without really
thinking about what is the relationship of this standard to the critical
results that I have indicated on the first page. And I see a lot of
times there is absolutely no relationship. It was just a lot simpler to
simply go through and mark that as all. But remember, those truly are
the standards, and that\'s what you\'re telling your employee that
they\'re going to have to meet. Now, there are ways that you can flesh
out these standards for employees later on. You don\'t have to worry
about everything right up front. Probably the majority of your employees
you\'re not going to have to go any further because they\'re good
performers already, but in those cases writ seems you\'re beginning to
have a problem, you might use such things as counselling, just bring
them in and talk to them. Or it may be memoranda where you have written
up to explain a little bit further. It could be through some standard
operating procedures for your office that say this is what is expected
and how this is to be done. Or it could be some O.J.T. to go back and
review with the employee exactly how this is supposed to be
accomplished. It is possible that during the rating period you\'re going
to need to go back and revise the standard. Maybe it was too stringent
or as time goes by you realize this really is way too loose and I need
to clarify that for employee. This pass/fail system is easy for us as
supervisors in that there is not near the amount of documentation and
things to write as you have when you have the three level or the old
five level PIPPERs. Sometimes we\'re going to use words like \"usually\"
or \"timely\" or \"rarely.\" There is one thing for certain, I have my
understanding of what those words mean, and you have yours, and the
employee has theirs, so what counts is your thoughts so you need to
articulate to the employee exactly what you mean when you say this is
what my expectations are. If you look on page 4 of your participant
fees, we have an exercise there for you, and we have indicated four
critical results. I want you to take a few minutes, read through them,
and think about, \"are these things written right or are there some
problems with it?\" You can discuss it with the people that might there
\-- might be there present with you, and we\'ll give you a couple
minutes and we will come back and go through these and see if those want
help clarify for you how to write these critical results.\
\
S. Long: Let\'s go back and take a look at those critical results on
this exercise. The first one will be the land exchange program. Do I
have someone that would like to give us their opinion? How about someone
at the national center? Anyone out there? Are you all concerned as to
whether you\'re going to have the right answer? Eastern States, would
you like to take a crack at it?\
\
M. Dukes: Or anybody else.\
\
Caller: This is Dan from center.\
\
Caller: Perhaps there could be some measurable benchmark that the phase
3 of portal creek land exchange within the next 12 months would achieve,
and that might be one to be \-- one to be met input there.\
\
S. Long: That\'s an idea. Do you see activities in this particular one?
When it says you\'re overseeing continued implementation, does that
appear to be an activity? Let me help you and tell you, primarily
that\'s what you\'re looking it because it says you\'re going to be
assuring progress. So how much progress? If I get a small change
accomplished in 12 months, is that going to satisfy me as a supervisor,
or were you looking for a whole lot of changes? Now, some of that, as
you said, you could come back and flesh that out in discussion, but by
just simply reading it, it\'s going to leave the employee not really
quite certain about, so what is it that I have to do? What\'s my
standard? Let\'s look on to the second one with communication. Do I have
another brave soul willing to respond?\
\
Caller: This is Dan from the center in Denver.\
\
S. Long: Hi, Dan.\
\
M. Dukes: All right, Dan!\
\
Caller: I\'d say number 2 is not a good one because it discusses more
the process instead of the results, and with words like serves, develops
and maintains \-- serves and develops and maintains and actively
participates, I think that\'s more of a process rather than a result.\
\
S. Long: Right. You think about this one, and there\'s a couple of
different ways that you might interpret it. For example, it says that
you actively participate in organizing and conducting public meetings.
What if you went to those public meetings and you were not supporting
the BLM position in this and you brought in a whole bunch of protesters
and caused the meeting to become disruptive? You definitely actively
participated, but you didn\'t give any type of standard, so, therefore,
that employee could pretty much say, I did what you said I had to do.
Also when it says that they\'re developing and maintaining cooperative
relationships with these outside agencies, so what if you get them all
to get together and have a potluck? Is that really what you\'re looking
for? So make sure that you expand on this and make it clear as to what
your expectations are.\
\
Caller: This is Angela Barnes in Jackson.\
\
S. Long: Yes, Angela. What\'s your thought?\
\
Caller: Who is to say what a time frame is not clear from one person to
expect what management wants? So it\'s not clear and what\'s the time
frame?\
\
S. Long: You as management define the time frame.\
\
Caller: But it\'s not clear and it\'s not understood.\
\
S. Long: I see what you mean, in number 3, the time frame was not clear
and understood.\
\
Caller: Yes, that\'s correct.\
\
S. Long: Ok. So before I respond to that, does anybody else have any
other idea? This is particularly important for those of you who have
bargaining unit employees or more importantly who have stewards that
work in their office. When I was talking to you about those critical
results, remember one of the things I said is you need to consider what
is in the person\'s PD, and if you\'re not familiar with this, never do
we put in any PD the responsibility of being a union steward. That is
something that employee takes on and that is between them and the union
itself. Consequently, you will never, ever put anything into any of the
EPPRs that has to do with union duties. Those kinds of things, for your
information as far as time frames are concerned, that is something
that\'s negotiated, and you as a supervisor have nothing to do with that
because it\'s management in their contracts with the union come up to
those agreements. So if you\'re tempted to put something in your EPPR,
don\'t. That will be a big mistake. Finally, take a quick look at the
last one. Anybody have a thought on this? Anybody from NIFC? We haven\'t
heard from them. Have I scared you off now? There\'s no trick on this
one.\
\
Caller: This is Mike from Idaho and I would say it\'s probably a good
one.\
\
S. Long: Why does it strike you as pretty good?\
\
Caller: Because it\'s measurable and observable.\
\
S. Long: Right. I would agree with you completely on that. This one you
may want to later on, probably in conversation, flesh out what you\'re
talking about as to what do you mean when you\'re saying comprehensive,
but it\'s a good basic critical result that I think an employee would be
able to follow on that. I want you to turn to page 20 of your guy,
Appendix C. You\'ll see a list of dos and don\'ts on your EPPRs.
Determine how to monitor performance. Sometimes we\'re not certain. We
haven\'t given thought to it. You need to think, when I am assigning
this, how am I going to know that \-- how I\'m going to see whether or
not they\'ve accomplished this? Also, make sure you\'re setting your
expectations based upon the position, not based upon the employee.
Don\'t use KSAs. You\'re only going to be using those during the
recruitment process. It has nothing to do with your performance review.
Don\'t use backward standards. And if you\'re not familiar with what
that is, let me give you a quick example. Let\'s say you said, fails to
turn in their work 50% of the time. Well, as it\'s written, that means
if I don\'t turn it in 75% of the time, I have exceeded what the
standard is and I know that\'s not what we intend. So always write it in
the positive vein in that they would turn in their work 50% of the time
and if they fail to do that, then they are failing the element itself.
And finally, don\'t wait until they\'re at the end of the cycle to talk
to them. Make sure that you address these issues as they\'ve come up,
including when their performance reaches that kind of marginal level.
There are any questions? \-- are there any questions that?\
\
M. Dukes: One thing Sherian and I talked about, we did this broadcast in
September and so we had the opportunity to write our standards for this
year. We both spent a lot more time writing standards after teaching
this class, even though we kind of know what we are doing. My employees
have a lot more detailed standards. I think their whole page is now a
whole page as opposed to two sentences each. They\'ve got specific
deadlines. They\'ve got monitoring sessions in there. So we both learned
a lot, I think, from writing this, that the quality of the written
standard, how I express my expectations, is the thing that starts to
address actually increasing and improving performance beyond the
average. Which I think was one of Kent\'s questions. How do you get
employees up to that next level. Part of that is saying, this is \--
this is clearly what I expect and then giving them the chance to really
run with it and go beyond what you expect. So you get your goals
achieved, but they also know really what it is you are looking for. So I
think that was one of the lessons we learned from teaching this class.\
\
S. Long: It\'s removed that ambiguity that was out there, yeah, this is
sort of what I want. Oh, no, they know exactly what we\'re looking for
now.\
\
M. Dukes: So the next section we\'re going into is differentiating
between performance and conduct, which as we know from expectations is a
big issue for a lot of people and it\'s obviously a big issue for us as
well, and the reason it\'s a big issue for HR professionals is you
handle these problems very differently. There is a different process by
which you deal with them, and there is a different speed at which you
deal with them as well. So some of that advice we give you when you
particularly have a performance conduct case, we are going to go talk
about going into conduct as compared to performance. How do you tell the
difference? Sometimes it\'s obvious but a lot of times it\'s not and
conduct really is, \"I choose not to do this, I won\'t do this, I don\'t
want to do this.\" Sherian and I were talking about this to somebody and
we were kind of explaining this as \-- think of it dealing with your
teenagers, you know, just that absolute refusal to do something. It
could be behavior. It could be lack of motivation. Could be a lot of
reasons why, but they just choose not to do the task you\'ve assigned.
That makes the conduct problem. Broken rules, regulations, not meaning
your \-- meeting your standard out of an election makes it essentially a
conduct problem. We had an employee and I won\'t tell you why, but I
have worked in multiple personnel offices in my career, I\'m in my fifth
one, so you can\'t presume this is a Colorado case, please don\'t,
because it isn\'t, but the employee chose not to follow a safety rule.
While technically safety regulations are performance issues, that was
truly a conduct, they chose not to follow it. So you can\'t have what
appears to be a conduct problem, but if it\'s willful or intentional,
you are truly into the conduct arena. Performance is a can\'t do, they
don\'t have the skills, the ability, the understanding of the
regulations or whatever. It is specifically you are talking about in
terms of the performance item but they can\'t perform it to the level
you need them to do. That\'s when you are starting to get into the
performance issue. It\'s \"I would if I could, so I can\'t, so I
won\'t\" kind of thing. Employees sometimes will get belligerent when
they can\'t do something, when they\'re not skilled in it so you\'re
starting to think it\'s a conduct issue, but you do as you talk to them
and investigate as what appears to be a conduct issue that it\'s not
that they \-- they could but they choose not to, it\'s that they really
don\'t have the skills to do it, so they\'re becoming defensive by
becoming belligerent. So there is \-- it\'s not just that obvious thing.
One thing we need to make sure you as supervisors understand, though,
when you\'re dealing with performance and conduct problems, that
employees frequently will cite personal issues, having problems at home,
I\'m having financial problems. That\'s not your business to help them
solve. You can, of course, obviously refer them to the employee
assistance program, but we are not licensed, nor are we responsible, for
resolving with them or for them their personal nonwork problems, and any
of you who have ever dealt with a performance or conduct problem, I\'m
sure you\'ve heard the excuses about how their life is miserable,
children are miserable, spouse is miserable, debt collectors are
calling. I hear it a lot, that\'s the reason why I can\'t do this or
I\'m unable to do this, but that\'s not your problem to solve. Your
problem is to get their performance or their conduct back on track. What
we would like to do now is have you turn to page 6 and 7 of your
participant fees, and what we\'re going to have you do is have you take
the three case studies and we\'re just going to go through them quickly
one at a time. So you can have a chance to go over. It take about, less
an minute, let\'s say 45 seconds reading them and talking with your
group in your office and talk about the first case study and we\'ll get
back together and is it a conduct or performance problem. So about 45
seconds.\
\
M. Dukes: Dave is listening to his radio, crashes his vehicle, do we
have a conduct or performance problem? Anybody?\
\
Caller: I went with conduct, because this is a repeated incident, and
we\'re back again with the accident.\
\
M. Dukes: Right on, Ruben. He has been trained. No more training. People
either drive well or they don\'t and he knows how to drive well, he just
chose to be easily distracted. There are governing vehicle issues, by
the way, so if you have ever had have a vehicle issue, call your HR
Specialist. They have in some cases severely penalties. Number 2, Bob,
the property specialist, why don\'t we take 30 seconds this time to read
the case study, talk among your group, is this a performance or conduct
problem.\
\
M. Dukes: Do we have a conduct or performance problem?\
\
Caller: This is Kent from Meeker. Based on the information, it\'s kind
of difficult to tell on this one, but we\'re kind of leaning towards
performance because Bob\'s \-- you know, he\'s actually making an
attempt at doing the work and perhaps there\'s just a lack of
understanding what the process is itself. But again, it\'s hard to
tell.\
\
M. Dukes: Barring anything that says he willfully lied, I think you
would have to deal with this as a performance issue. If in
investigations you found he was falsifying his reports, then you would
have a conduct problem. But based on the information we gave you,
definitely I would say a performance problem. Case study number 3 is the
most interesting one, I think, and Sherian and I were pulling out real
cases and we contacted several fellow HR offices and this is a real
case. Again let\'s take 30 seconds. If you are with a group of people,
talk among your group.\
\
M. Dukes: Terry, the contact rep, conduct or performance?\
\
Caller: This is the national center, Bob, and we\'re in agreement here
that it is a conduct problem, even though it is in the EPPRREPPR still
feel it\'s a conduct, that she won\'t do it.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. Good answer, but does anybody come up with performance?
When they sat with their group? I have to tell you the answer is it
could be either one and it goes back to motive. If you come from back
east, you could be perceived by certain westerners, where things are \--
southerners particularly, where things move at a different pace to be
cold and abrupt when what you are doing what is perceived back east as
being professional. So as you talk to Terry about her behavior, you have
to kind of make sure she understands your expectations, maybe model what
you\'re expecting, and then make sure that you\'re communicating the
same language, because this could truly be both a conduct or performance
case. It depends on why Terry is not doing the friendly behavior you\'re
expecting of your contact rep. Like I said, it could be a choice, it
could be what is assumed in Terry\'s mind an accepted professional
behavior. Having lived down south, I always thought my staff members
were a little on the chatty side, which, of course, I\'ve \-- it didn\'t
bother me too much being chatty myself, but it is an expectation, they
did do that rapport building before they asked a question. It kind of
made me nuts, but it is the way it is where we were working in New
Orleans, so you have to kind of judge and maybe recognize you\'re
dealing with regional differences, gender differences, age differences.
That are not a choice issue. So Bob and his group are right. Could be
conduct but also could be performance. So I think that about covers it.
Are there any other questions on conduct versus performance door this
give you at least a good idea where to start looking at the difference
between the two? I know three people said this was a big issue for
them.\
\
Caller: This is Mike from Idaho again. I would like to know if we have a
conduct issue or performance issue, what are the difference disciplinary
steps you take for each issue?\
\
M. Dukes: If you have a conduct issue, there are disciplinary steps you
take, and that is a class in and of itself, in fact, that class will be
presented February 13th as a satellite broadcast. So we\'re not going to
go into those steps today. If it\'s a performance issue, it\'s a \-- the
things I talked about initially, getting your standards written, giving
them in a timely manner, doing some monitoring, do sing \-- doing some
counselling and working with the employee to get their performance back
on track. And I think as we go through this, as we\'ve talked about
first thing you write good elements, now I think we\'re going to talk
about if you\'re not \-- you have good he willments and your stuff is
not in place, what do you do next? I think the rest of the session is
really going to address your question. So, Sherian, why don\'t we go on
with the next step?\
\
S. Long: You all remember that old song that came from the musical by
Rogers and hammer Stein that says \"i\'ll never walk alone\"? That is
the truth, you can take that to heart. Because you are going to be work
Wing with your HR Specialist who deals with who you employee relations
issues every step of the way. I know sometimes it\'s going to seem like
they\'re wanting you to jump through that a lot of hoops but there is a
method into what they are asking to do. It has to do with the fact if
this has to go into a formal process, and ultimately maybe even into
litigation, they want to ensure that you and the agency prevail during
that. Probably one thing you ought to remember is, talk to your HR
Specialist early and often throughout the entire thing. There\'s a few
key things you need to be sensitive to. One thing is, don\'t talk to
other employees about this problem employee\'s performance issues. You
need to keep that private. Also, remember, you as a supervisor, youch a
legal responsibility to be dealing with the performance issues. You
cannot delegate it off to a team lead or a crew lead or even the
technical lead, and it is only you who can sign that EPPR, our final
goal is that you\'re going to be able to resolve these performance
problems as soon as possible, but the very first step in doing that is
documentation and you will hear that from us over and over. It\'s
document, document, document. You already know as a supervisor it\'s
important that you maintain records on your employees and you probably
already have some sort of file on every one of them. Typically we have
those positive things that are in there. It will be the standard form
50s, you probably have a copy of the PD, the EPPR awards they\'ve gotten
and maybe even notes you have gotten from others about some positive
feedback from that employee but you also need to have those negative
things if there are someplaced in this file as well. That may be where
you\'ll see those letters of counselling. The performance issues, when
they start cropping up, probably the first thing you\'re going to do is
not sit down and write a letter to the employee. You\'re going to talk
to them, because that\'s the way we do things, is hoping that through
this first discussion that this will kind of start turning the employee
around. But you still need to document that and focus on what was this
all about? I know that usually you don\'t even get to the HR office
until you\'re sort of at the end of your rope. You\'ve tried and tried,
and you\'ll tell us that, I\'ve just been dealing with this so Long and
we\'ll say, oh, have you talked to the employee? And the answer is
virtually, oh, yeah I\'ve talked to them. Do you have any documentation
on that? And invariably the answer is, no, no, but I did it. I did it.
We sure don\'t doubt that, but you really have to have some
documentation. So what do you do? You write your note up and you need to
stick to the facts. That is, when you spoke and what was the issue at
hand that you were talking about? Don\'t put your opinions in there such
as, \"i don\'t think he\'s ever going to do it, I don\'t think he really
cares.\" Forget that. Stick strictly to the facts of what the meeting
was. Write the actions. If the employee said this is what they\'re going
to do or focus on the expectations, you need to do this, and if there\'s
some things you\'re saying you\'re going to do, write those down also.
These memos need to be contemporaneous. That needs you need to write it
pretty soon. If you wait a couple weeks, you are not going to remember
what all parts of that discussion were about. But it doesn\'t have to be
Long and involved. You could have written this on just a little notepad
and dropped it in there. But if you want to take a look at page 24 of
your fees, you\'ll see in there samples of some of those types of memos.
But one other suggestion I would have for you after you\'ve had one of
these meetings, why don\'t you send the employee an e-mail which would
say to them, ok, I just want to go back and reiterate our conversation.
We talked about you\'re not performing on such and such and you have
said you will do this because it\'s clear this is what I need from you.
That way later on there\'s not going to be any question about what you
meant, and it removes all of that ambiguity. Also, think about it, we
don\'t write down anything that really isn\'t important. So when the
employee gets something in writing from you, they\'re going to realize,
this is a big deal and they must mean what they\'re saying this time. If
you don\'t have anything, it\'s easier to shrug it off like, \"ok, fine,
I\'ll do it.\" You might think about what you\'re writing, though, in
terms of you might hear those terms a \"memory jogger,\" but don\'t get
trapped in writing whatever you want because the employee won\'t see it.
That isn\'t the case. If this is ever shown, the employee will have the
right to see it. So as we\'ve said before, focus on the facts and the
actions, not on your opinions that are there. Ma LIS?\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. We have gone so far as to write really quality critical
results. We have determined we have a performance problem. We\'re
getting into our first two counselling sessions, our dealing with the
problem. The session is, what do we do? What informal methods do we use
to deal with this problem? How do we communicate to the employee that
things aren\'t working well? Now, this is the informal stage. We\'re not
at a performance improvement plan which does have some specific
requirements, but one of those requirements is you\'ve at least
counselled the employee twice. So in those counselling sessions what are
you going to talk about and what are you going to do to get the
performance back on track? Well, let\'s go to page 9 of your workbook
and there\'s some things that we have written in there that you could
use to do that. One of them is to clarify the intent of the standard.
You hear this sometimes from employees, and as we are \-- are first
writing standards, we all know, they\'re really hard, you clarify, you
may give them some really much more detailed explanation that you
normally don\'t have to give to your normal fully successful employee
because you verbally talked about it and everything\'s cool. But you
might need to clarify your standard. You might decide you need to
increase the time that you meet with them, that you\'re not doing it
every four months, but, in fact, once a month you\'re meeting with the
employee, or specific events if they\'re in the middle of a project.
Well, you hit this stage of the project and let\'s get back together. So
you\'re doing a lot more counselling or feedback. You might provide
training. I think on page 24 one of the samples they came up with, the
employee says they couldn\'t meet the time frames because they\'re not
good at time management. So it\'s not always technical training. It
could be behavioral training. Time management is one we frequently hear.
So training is another thing that you could do to improve somebody\'s
performance. You could also refer them to EAP. I don\'t mean to slough
up a employees who say they\'re having personal problems, family
problems, financial problems, because it\'s not our responsibility to
solve those problems with them or for them, but we should and do have
available to us the employee assistance program. So counselling or
recommending to consider the employee assistance program to work through
the problems that are adversely affecting their ability to perform their
job is your responsibility. We want to get them back on track. We don\'t
want to punish them. We don\'t want to hammer them or make their lives
any more miserable than it obviously already is. But there are a lot of
other things you can do, and I was wondering, is there anybody out there
who has some ideas or maybe some experiences doing this informal
sessions or helping employees improve their performance? Some ideas that
maybe you had that were successful? So if you have any ideas \-- Sherian
and I obviously have a couple more, but we would like to hear from you
first.\
\
Caller: This is Eric in Idaho falls. There is a way without even going
into the performance issue to perhaps help the team by bringing the team
together and discussing as a group in a brainstorming session how time
prove processes and defining roles, this allows everybody to get on the
same page without going directly to an employee and, therefore, singling
them out.\
\
M. Dukes: I think that\'s a particularly good idea if you\'re concerned
that maybe process improvement or your processes contributing to a
performance problem. If there are better ways to do things, definitely.
If, on the other hand, your performance probable is singled out to one
individual, you do have to be sensitive about how you bring in other
employees. Because it\'s typically not other employees\' business and
let me tell you, you talk to somebody about performance problem they\'re
going to tell you everybody else\'s in the office. So you have to walk
that fine line. But a process improvement could in fact solve your
problem, I think that\'s a good idea. I\'m writing these down on the
Elmo so we can keep track of them and you can write them in your book.
Another sample was something I did, and this is once again that walking
the fine line in terms of who is responsible, is I had a processing
unit, and I\'m really good at a lot of HR things but not really good at
the processing part. So I had somebody actually mentor an individual in
the technical pieces of the job where I wasn\'t as expert as in fact she
was. It was very sensitive. She was the team lead, so it wasn\'t totally
inappropriate to pull her in and I had to handle it carefully but our
goal at that stage was to improve performance. So mentoring is also
another option. Let me put that down here. Any other ideas from anybody?
Sherian, do you ever anything else?\
\
S. Long: I had a come thoughts. One is coaching, which is a little
different than mentoring, and the other one is sometimes there are some
self-instructive videos you can use.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. I think that will give you at least an idea on where to
start. There are lots of ways and the situation depends on why the
person isn\'t performing at the level you need to do. So you do need to
make sure you are using the appropriate method to solve the problem,
skill, knowledge ability, outside things confusing them or conflicting
them. But there are a lot of ways, I think, to really help resolve that
issue. Any other questions or concerns from those of you out in the real
world? Or the virtual classroom, as we like to refer to it in satellite
broadcasts. Questions? Concerns? Ideas you have on this issue? If not, I
think it\'s probably because we need a 10-minute break. So we\'re going
to get back together in 10 minutes, give you a chance to run, get a
drink of water, us get another drink of water, so we\'ll see you in
10..\
\
S. Long: Welcome back again. We need to get right back into our subject
and I want you to think about, oh, you\'re sitting in your office and
you have that kind of lead-weighted feeling in your stomach, your hands
are getting a little clammy and your heart is starting to increase.
Sounds to me like those symptoms a supervisor has right before they know
they\'re going to have to have one of these discussions and I know this
is real world. For one thing, I\'ve been through it myself, but it was
just a few weeks ago I had a subordinate supervisor talking to me, and
that\'s the way she was feeling at the time, too, because she knew she
was going to have to do that. So we all experience and it recognize it,
but in order to be able to give this negative feedback, you really need
to prepare for it and that will make it go so much easier. One technique
I would recommend is you write yourself an outline because when we get
under stressful situations we have a tendency to forget some of those
really important points. So if you write your outline out ahead of time
it\'s going to help you a whole lot. You might follow aLong on page 9 of
your guide and I\'m going to go through some of these things for you.
Think about your timing of when you talk to the employee. Everybody has
their own personality and how they process the information. For some
folks, they need time to think about it. So you could talk to them on a
\-- say a Friday afternoon and they\'re not going to respond. They need
the weekend to kind of mull it over. But other people, you talk to them
on a Friday afternoon, and they are going to just cut loose, and they
are going to be so stressed out and miserable through the entire weekend
because of that discussion. So plan your time when you\'re going to have
the talk carefully. Also, what you are going to do is remain calm, you
want to be professional and stay focused on what the meeting is all
about. You\'re going to have that dialogue focused essentially to say,
ok, this is what you\'ve given me and these are the specific
improvements I\'m looking for now. Don\'t get defensive. Because chances
are the employee is going to kind of go on an attack of you. And don\'t
get distracted by excuses. Melissa talked about some of them and it\'s
very typical. Some employees will have all kinds of excuses other than
accepting the responsibility or accountability for themself. But the
bottom line, really, is make sure that employee knows clearly what your
expectations are for them. Also, make sure the employee recognizes and
knows that you really believe that they can improve. It\'s just going to
require a little bit of extra effort on their part. But it also is just
equally important that you make it clear that there are consequences if
they don\'t improve. Now, just like with anything else, picture is worth
a thousand words. So we want to illustrate this for you how to do \--
given some negative feedback and we will do that by a role play. We\'re
going to have you turn to appendix D in your work guide and for this
role play there will be the EPPR on 21 and on page 24 you will see some
e-mails that have previously gone between the employee and the
supervisor, and on page 25, there was a clarification memo that the
supervisor had given to the employee. What I would like you to do is on
page 10 there is\'s a place where you can jot down your ideas about what
you\'re observing during this role play and afterwards, we\'ll come back
and discuss that. But first let me set the stage for you. We are going
to be going to the office of the supervisor whose name is Ann. She\'s
already notified her employee Julie that they\'re going to have to have
a discussion concerning some poor performance problems and Julie is
getting ready to come into that office now. So let\'s join them and see
what happens.\
\
Hi there, Julie. Good to see you again.\
\
No \-- gees \-- I \-- only time I ever hear from you is when you want to
nit- pick, nit-pick, nit-pick. All you do \-- you have this letter and
\--\
\
Julie \-- Julie \-- Julie I got \-- time out, Julie. I got to stop you
right there and bring you back on of why you and I have this meeting
scheduled today - -\
\
Because you haven\'t yelled at me recently. Also all you do \-- like
this whole letter, you mark \-- like \--\
\
Julie \--\
\
If you just average the cases, I\'m doing just fine.\
\
Let\'s back up once again \--\
\
Look at all the weeks I do more than what I was required. Dew point out
that? No, you just point out the negative, negative, negative,
negative.\
\
Time out. I think that\'s enough negative for this little interaction.
Let\'s talk about the performance and why we have this opportunity and
you know what \-- you just pointed out a great thing for us. Look what
you already identified about yourself, that there are times when you
exceed the performance that\'s required \--\
\
And look at all the teamwork. Teamwork is in my EPPR, too, look at all
the things I do for teamwork, newspaper guy I have been helping him out,
I help with the recognition dinner, I help you in so many ways, and oh,
no, only thing you want to point out is you didn\'t duty report. It\'s
like you\'re around like to care? I mean, you are \-- you\'re never
around. Why don\'t you call me. I\'ll tell you what I\'m doing.\
\
Do you feel like you\'ve gotten a few of those things off your chest and
maybe now we can take a step back \-- let me remind you, we\'ve had an
ongoing issue on certain elements of your performance and one is your
ability to get the minimum required number of cases completed.\
\
I would just like to have a riddle recognition of some of the things
\--\
\
I\'m sure you would. We all would. But let\'s \--\
\
Would. That means I\'m not going to get.\
\
Let\'s take a look at the bigger picture. The performance that we\'re
addressing today is the 10 cases and you have just identified some maybe
possible issues of why you\'re not meeting the critical result. That you
have gotten some teamwork issues you have taken on and maybe some extra
activities that are keeping you from work that is required of you.\
\
That would give you an excuse, you know, ok, I get the reports done and
then you will ding me on the teamwork because I\'m not doing that. I
mean, like, how do I win on this?\
\
Well, I think, one way for us to start on winning is for us to both get
together and look at this opportunity and take a step back and look at
the performance that is not being achieved and some possible reasons for
that, and some solutions to it. You pointed out the color coding. Yes,
you did attend time management and let\'s talk about whether or not that
really worked for you \--\
\
Well, it did. You know indict, like you \-- it did, everything is color
coded, you can find things when you walk in my office, they\'re right
there, you asked me for a report for that meeting the other day, I knew
instantly where it was. Did I get a thaw out of this? No, I didn\'t get
any thank you.\
\
One of the common things that happens when I come to your cubicle is I
don\'t necessarily find you there.\
\
So you have been tracking me.\
\
What I am noticing and hearing from other other folks is that it\'s
sometimes hard to find you at your cubeie \--\
\
that was probably Sam. He doesn\'t like me anyway. He probable he has
been telling you all kinds of stories.\
\
We\'re talk to \'talk about you and not about Sam and some things you
and I can work on on your performance. What do you say?\
\
Ok. Let\'s try it f we can do that.\
\
I would appreciate it.\
\
That\'s the only way I can get you off my back. We\'ll try something.\
\
S. Long: You all had an opportunity to view that, so push your button
there and tell me what kind of behaviors did you observe there and what
\-- did you think the supervisor did well and where do you think might
be some areas they need to work on? Well, is there anybody there \--\
\
Caller: This is Ann in Boise.\
\
S. Long: Yes, Ann.\
\
Caller: I think the employee was very, very defensive and the supervisor
did pretty good in trying to defuse that.\
\
S. Long: Right. And this is not an unusual situation for anyone. You
know are they suddenly feel they\'re attacked, so they go on the
offensive and did you see the supervisor continually trying to bring the
discussion back into focus, what the problem was here? Anybody else
observe that same thing? This is Jody. I think the supervisor did a
great job at keeping her calm during the entire session and let the
employee get maybe things off her chest and then directed it back to the
point of the meeting.\
\
S. Long: I think she used a very good technique there because sometimes
the employee is just filled with things and she just \-- the supervisor
just kind of stopped and said, ok, but as soon as they were done, she
said, all right, let\'s bring it back to focus again, and she did remain
calm and professional throughout the exchange that took place. Was there
anything else that someone noticed?\
\
Caller: This is Ruben in Arizona. I think it was good, again, that the
supervisor allowed the employee to kind of vent, but maybe in the \--
I\'m sure that\'s what she was working towards, but maybe once the
discussion or the dialogue is a little more subtle, not only point out
where this individual has been deficient, but also point out where \--
some of the accomplishments have been and just show there is some
appreciation of good things cease doing. I just think there was a lot of
focus on the employee and all the bad that she\'s done, and maybe the
reality needs to be brought back down that there is some good she is
doing if there is.\
\
S. Long: I think that\'s a good point you made, Ruben, because sometimes
when we\'re pointing out those deficiencies, an employee begins to
think, well, what about all the rest of those things? So I think that is
a good technique for you to acknowledge that. Something else I was
noticing in this particular one is that the supervisor was employee
listening skills. She was hearing some of those very points that this
employee was bringing up, and that is one of those competencies that we
talked about earlier. It is so important that we listen actively to the
employees in these particular discussions.\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian, I noticed, we had kind of talked about the difference
between conduct and performance. There was that almost movement into a
conduct issue, but not really focussing, the person is not at their
desk, they might be wasting time, but she really didn\'t delve into the
conduct issues because the reality is the conduct is secondary. That
socializing, whatever it is, that causes the employee to be away from
their desk may or may not be a critical conduct issue, but it seemed to
me that Ann had decided that it was \-- the performance was the critical
issue, if that we\'re going to talk a little bit \-- she treated it as
time management issue and not as you have a conduct problem as well as a
performance problem. So I thought, you know, as she started going into
that, I thought, oh, my gosh, she is going to go down conduct but she
treated it as the time management issue, and that\'s kind of what we
talked about, the difference between team performance and conduct. You
have those defensive behaviors, you have certain behaviors that aren\'t
on their own the most horrible thing, but they do kind of get you, do I
have a performance problem or a conduct problem. One other thing before
we go on for those of you who aren\'t able to access your push-to-talk
because we all know from early on that a couple of you had that problem,
our fax number and we discovered the fax machine is right by Sherian\'s
feet, is 602-906-5713. So for any of you who can\'t do push-to-talk.
Please fax in your comments. This is the one chance I think people
really have an opportunity to talk about the one single hardest piece in
the whole performance management process, is that talk to the employee,
getting their buy- in, getting them to listen to you.\
\
S. Long: Right. There\'s one other thing I might point out. When you are
having these discussions, you need to be prepared with specific examples
of what has not been appropriate or has not been at the level that
you\'re expecting. If you\'re talking generalities, you are going to
lose the employee. Also, don\'t forget, you\'re there as a facilitator,
as a supervisor, you are facilitating them, so you need to think about
what you might offer to help them instead of leaving the burden totally
on them to come up with what it is that they are going to need. Well, we
said that pictures are worth a thousand words. There\'s nothing like
actually doing it yourself. So what we are going to look for is for one
every you to volunteer to be a supervisor in this \-- another role play
scenario and you will be the part of Ann, as the supervisor and Julie
will still be your employee and if you volunteer, we have another book
to give away to you. So who is going to be the first one to try this?\
\
M. Dukes: Come on, I know some of these people out there. The good news
is you aren\'t going to have to face them.\
\
Caller: I\'ll be bold, this is Eric in Idaho falls. I\'m scared to
death.\
\
S. Long: Remember, you are still going to use the same EPPR that was
used before. You still know those clarification memos and the e-mails we
sent out previously, all of that is in place. So you\'re now sitting in
your office, and your employee, Julie, is going to come into you. She
knows we\'re going to have another one of these negative performance
feedback sessions, and we\'ll let you go for a couple minutes and see
how this goes and the rest of you, jot down some ideas that you this \--
things you saw that were really positive or anything that might be a
recommendation that Eric should consider when he\'s actually having to
do one of these. Ok. So here we go.\
\
Hello, Julie, glad to have you.\
\
I have this terrible headache, you know. Can we do this like tomorrow? I
think it\'s a \-- I need new equipment. It hurts and \--\
\
Julie, I do appreciate you have a headache and obviously this isn\'t a
good time for you. I will say we will probably have to reschedule based
on your appearance. You don\'t seem to be feeling too well.\
\
Oh, no.\
\
With a we\'re going to talk about is review tomorrow at 8:00, will will
do that for you?\
\
8 clock? Little bit later. My dog is sick.\
\
Julie 8:00, that gives you an hour to come in from your work and settle
in. 8:00 is the only time I have available. We\'ll limit this session to
half an hour tomorrow morning and discuss the ongoing issue regarding
your reports and time management that we really need to address.\
\
Can we talk about my monitor, too? Maybe I can get new equipment?\
\
That will be part of it. Julie, if you have any concerns, I suggest you
write them down overnight and then have them red knee written form so
that we can quickly cut to the chase and address what needs to be talked
to about, but as I say f you\'ll recognize we\'re going to be talking
about the reports that are due and have been late and your need to
better manage your time and let\'s do this tomorrow morning at 8:00,
then. I will expect you in my office. Thank you.\
\
S. Long: All right, Eric. Can someone tell me what they observed in this
role play? Anybody in Montana have a response of what they observed?\
\
Caller: This is Jody in HAVER, again, Montana and I think Julie seems
well- versed in her headache and maybe uses similar excuses in other
situations.\
\
S. Long: I think that is a good point, and this is not unlike the real
world sometimes in that the supervisor has scheduled, she knew about it
in advance, the employee, and how convenient that she\'s decided, oh,
this just isn\'t a good time and she kind of took it away from Eric a
little bit saying, you\'re not operating within my schedule, so we\'re
going to shift this so it will be my time that I want to do it. So
sometimes you know the employee, you\'ll have to gauge that. Maybe this
is a real legitimate headache and this is not the kind of response that
you\'re \-- you typically get from this employee, but if you\'ve seen
this kind of behavior before, watch out they\'re not stealing your power
from you because you\'ve called the meeting and you need to be in
control of it. What else \-- did somebody else notice?\
\
Caller: Hello, this is John in Colorado. The attempt to bring personal
issues into the debate \--\
\
S. Long: I need you toback up from your Mike. I couldn\'t quite
understand.\
\
Caller: There was an attempt to bring some personal issues in like the
dog in that the supervisor can\'t possibly deal with. So you have to
avoid distractions like that.\
\
S. Long: That\'s right. Did you notice whether or not Eric did that?\
\
Caller: He pretty much wasn\'t going to get into the dog issue.\
\
S. Long: Again, that\'s very typical. There\'s all these other outside
issues, and we all have that because we have a personal life, but you
always bring it back again and focus in on what the problem is.\
\
M. Dukes: So was that Jim in white river?\
\
Caller: That\'s affirmative.\
\
M. Dukes: Thank you, Jim. We wanted to make sure we knew who it was but
I was pretty sure it was you.\
\
S. Long: Eric, we really appreciate your trying the \-- out that role of
a supervisor having to give that negative feedback, so for your efforts
we have a great book for you, it\'s called \"generations at work,\" and
it\'s managing the clash between the veterans, boomers, exers nexters in
your workplace. Le be a good book. We\'ll be sending that out to you. We
have the chance to do one more role play, so we\'re looking for one more
volunteer. Who would like to try it?\
\
M. Dukes: I know there\'s some ham bones throughout.\
\
S. Long: I know. We have some experienced people out there.\
\
Caller: This is Kent in white river. I\'m already stressed out from your
first two examples, though. Be gentle.\
\
S. Long: You have that lead weight feeling in your stomach and your
palms are now sweaty, oh, my goodness, what am I going to do?\
\
Caller: I think that\'s reality, that\'s a challenge we all face, trying
to keep ourselves emotionally detached from the challenge at hand.\
\
S. Long: Good point. I think it\'s that emotional detachment that\'s not
easy. We love to call people in and give them good news but, oh, golly
how we hate to do this but it is our role and responsibility. I think
we\'re all set up again and we\'re going to have you now take over as
the supervisor and Julie will be coming in. So go for it.\
\
Julie, you look different than last time I saw you. Welcome to my
office. Is that a new hairdo. Let.\
\
Let me tell you so many things there are to catch you up, the hair, the
other things at work, the things I have taken on, the employee
appreciation lunch I did. I have been so busy lately I cannot wait to
fill you in on everything.\
\
That\'s great. We got about a half hour this morning and really what I
needed to talk to you about were your casework load, and some of the
steps you\'ve taken to improve that process, and I think we\'ve seen
some good improvement but we still need to make some additional steps to
get you to your full performance where I would like to see you be.\
\
I\'ve already done so much, the color coding of those things after the
time management class and take a look at those reports that you spent
all that time putting together, some weeks I am exceeding what you think
I can get done. Some weeks I can just turn it on, and you get 12
reports. When is enough enough?\
\
That\'s kind of what I\'m curious there, because it appears to be times
when you can exceed my expectations and then there\'s other weeks where
your production seems to not meet the expectations, and I\'m wondering
if \-- I think overall what I need is for you to meet that 10 case per
week on a weekly basis and there are any things you could identify that
perhaps would explain why you aren\'t meeting those? Because we\'ve
documented this in the past and we are \-- you know, we\'ve taken a lot
of steps time prove your performance, and I think we have seen some
improvement, but overall we\'re not getting there and I\'m just
wondering do you have any additional ideas? Because what I need to be
clear to you on is that my expectations are 10 per week and if you
exceed that, then that\'s great, and we can recognize that, but if you
fall below that, then we fall short of production and I have a problem
with that. So what are some additional things that you can do to ensure
that we aren\'t doing now to ensure we can get the 10 cases a week?\
\
Boy you make it sound so cut and dry because when you started out
talking about production, I can tell you I\'m very productive all the
time. There are many things I\'m doing, it just doesn\'t happen to be
your 10 cases. If that\'s your priority, then I guess that\'s your
priority. But my development as an employee suffers if you are not going
to let me take on stuff outside this casework stuff. Whatever.\
\
And that\'s clear \-- that\'s important to understand that those 10
cases are important, and once you\'re achieving those, then we can take
those.\
\
S. Long: Kent, it was a great job, really appreciate that. In fact, I
wasn\'t certain you wanted to stop. You were really into counselling her
as to what she could do. Does anybody have any comments upon this
particular role play? I do have one comment that came in from Scott in
Montana and that was that he believes the supervisors should limit the
time to 30 minutes and actually that\'s really a good idea, because I
know from experience that some employees will come in and they will just
go on and on and on, and it was not productive at all. So it\'s a good
idea to let them know up front, this is the time frame that you\'ve
established for this particular meeting. Now, that\'s not to say that if
you are really making some progress and that you\'re finding it
beneficial to go beyond that, but it really does help to draw some
parameters around it. What other things did anyone notice?\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian, one thing I noticed that I thought was particularly
effective on Kent\'s part was that he tried to engage the employee into
what can we do to get back to this minimum of 10? He didn\'t defend his
standard. His standard is his standard and he\'s made it very clear. But
it was, our problem that we\'re going to resolve, because I know we can
succeed. I thought it was very effective way of engaging the employee
without blaming the employee.\
\
S. Long: I noticed the same thing. The moment he said we, it became a
recognition that they wanted \-- they were in this together, and that he
really wasn\'t in the role of trying to put her down all the time. Also,
the other thing that I personally like, just like she said, he made it
very clear, cut and dried, I have a requirement of 10 a week. If you
exceed it, that\'s great but you are going to make those 10 a week. How
about the rest of you, did anyone see any other point that we haven\'t
already talked about For Kent, the book that we have for you is one by
Peter Drucker on the profession of management and this will be coming
out to you also and for our players, we want to thank Ann Hutchinson and
Julie decker they work at NTC and I thought they did a great job.\
\
They\'re getting applause from the camera crew. And they did do a great
job. The next thing in your workbook is we wanted to talk about that
came up in the first role play, which is reasonable accommodation where
the employee, \"I have such a headache, my monitor is wrong,\" which in
fact if the monitor does generate a headache, which could generate
performance issues, you actually do have an obligation to address that
issue. You\'re going to find as you deal with performance issues that
employees may, in fact, raise a reasonable accommodation issue, which is
essentially a disability. I have this emotional, medically certified
emotional problem, physical problem. I\'m dyslexic. I\'m whatever. Trust
me, they actually do say that an awful lot. And the reason we didn\'t
want to go that far in the role play is if an employee as you\'re giving
them feedback says, \"i have X medical, physical problem that causes me
to not to be able to perform the job,\" you have to stop and deal with
the issue. But you don\'t take the employee\'s word for it. You do
actually need to get medical \-- expert medical advice on how to deal
with this issue. Now, what happens, an employee raises that issue, you
respond, \"i wasn\'t aware of that,\" because if you were aware of that,
one would hope you would have already addressed accommodation issues,
and you say, \"fine, I\'ll get back to you,\" because what you need to
do is work with your HR Specialist. What you are going to do at this
stage if they raise the reasonable accommodation issue because of a
medical condition is we\'re going to go back to the employee and say,
\"you need to provide us this kind of information from your doctor.
We\'re going to tell the doctor exactly the work you, do the conditions
you do it under, and ask them for their assessment in terms of what can
we do to make you successful. The goal in all of this is always to get
the employee back up to the acceptable or past level and I think
somebody raised that question as an expectation. How do you adequately
evaluate somebody in a pass/fail situation? You state in your critical
results what you want. Your goal in this whole process is to get them
there. So what you are going to be working with with the doctor is to
find out what do I have to do? Do I need a new monitor? I have seen
employees on maxie flex, I have seen employee in flexie place, I have
seen furniture reconfiguration, I have seen assignments given in a
different way, particularly for employees that are dyslexic. So whatever
the particular issue is, you have to work with the doctor to get the
answer. Now, there are two things that could happen. The doctor could
lay out expectations that we cannot, in fact, accommodate without
saying, ok, in this case the employee only has to perform five cases a
week, no. If our minimum is 10, our minimum is 10. And the accommodation
is always to facilitate them to achieving the 10 minimum cases per week.
If it is to reduce the requirement, that is not reasonable, it is
unreasonable, we still have to get our business done. The employee could
also come back with insufficient medical information and at that point
in time, either case, you just have to start moving the case aLong. If
we cannot accommodate them f we don\'t have the medical information,
then you just go back to the performance case and continue to work it.
But this is a very sensitive issue, there are a lot of regulatory
issues, there\'s a lot of legal potholes you could fall into. We have a
lot of potholes in Colorado, so that\'s kind of why I thought that,
could that bury you alive if you don\'t follow the employee\'s rights in
this case. Just end it. Work with your HR Specialist and they will help
you get through the reasonable accommodation issues that you have to
address. Sensitive but one that I think Sherian and I have both seen,
that in fact is frequently legitimate and we can accommodate and that is
exactly our goal, how do we get the employee\'s performance back up. So
don\'t be frightened of it, just be sure you work your HR Specialist to
deal with getting the information legally and designing the appropriate
accommodation.\
\
S. Long: We would be remiss if we didn\'t talk with you about the impact
of bargaining agreements on the performance process itself. For those
every you with unions, it\'s really important that you know that no
substance of many EPPR is negotiable. You are the one who is going to be
assigning the task or duties that are to be accomplished. You establish
what the standards are. You don\'t negotiate that. But you do have to be
aware of what\'s in the contract, and it is not unusual for there to be
some sort of contract language that\'s going to say something relative
\-- usually it\'s the process more than anything. An example, the might
give you one where it says that you have to talk to the employee three
or even four times during the year, which would be like quarterly
you\'ve having a discussion, and although our regulation only says two,
if there\'s something in a contract like that, you must abide by that
contract. I know sometimes we have employees that are on the identical
PD, but that does not mean that you can be compelled to have the
employees on the identical standard, because maybe you have given
different job assignments to them that are still within the realm of the
particular PD. I think one issue that comes up more than anything is
that supervisor wants to talk to the employee, and the employee says,
I\'m not going to come in there unless I have my union steward present.
You need to keep this in mind. This has nothing to do whatsoever with
the general conditions of employment or anything that is bargainable.
Therefore, the union has no right to be present and many times it can be
a hindrance to you if they are. Because when a union steward is present,
they\'re really the representative of the employee, and performance is
an issue that\'s between you and that employee. So our recommendation to
you very strongly is, limit these meetings to only you and your
employee. Do you have any questions about this for any of those who have
bargaining units out there? If not, we\'ll twin Melissa.\
\
The whole goal of what we\'ve done so far is to keep this employee and
get the employee\'s performance back on track. You\'ve done all those
things we talked about to get the employee back on track. Most the time
it actually works. I want you to understand the reason why we have so
few performance cases in the government is not because we do a lousy job
dealing with problem performers, it\'s in fact we do an extraordinarily
good job, and most informal methods will in fact resolve those
performance issues and get the employee back \'track. But sometimes you
have to go to that next step and that is where we truly have un
acceptable performance and we have to take formal action. At this stage
and it\'s only at this stage, they have been on the standard at least 90
days, you\'ve had your two counselling reviews, you\'ve done all your
other things, they\'re not a probationary, if they\'re a probationary, I
am sure we would have talked to you about removing them and you would
have done so, but they are a non-probationary employee. What you now do
and you can do this any time throughout the year, they are rated as
fail, results not achieved, on the critical result or critical results,
if it\'s more than one, that they have in fact failed in and you are now
taking official performance action. I want to remind you that is not
done at the end of the year. If it happens in March, it happens in
March. Because we have to get the employees\' attention. We have to do
what we can to actually resolve the issue. So what you do is you rate
them unacceptable and you have to give them a performance improvement
plan or PIP or other written documentation that explains to them exactly
what\'s going to happen if their performance doesn\'t improve. Like you
to turn to page 11 of your participant guide we are going to go through
the things, essentially what is contained in that performance
improvement plan and the firsts one is the critical result performance
indicators in which performance is unacceptable and specific examples of
the deficiency. This is where you are going to go back to that
documentation that you have that you can now cite exactly what they did
wrong, and in our case file, what we would go back in that memo that
expanded the performance standard and really the clarification memo has
all these weeks that the reports weren\'t done. So we have a lot of
documentation that documents exactly whether the specific examples of
where the critical result was not achieved. The next thing, identify
specific period of time the employee is being given the opportunity to
demonstrate acceptable performance. Typically that would be 90 days.
Occasionally it can go lower. Kit go higher. It would never go less than
60, and that would be unusual, but it could happen. The norm is 90.
It\'s 90 in a whole series of different HR regulations where we
typically look at a 90-day performance period. Can also be Longer if
they\'re failing a result that they perform once a quarter or once every
four or five months. But typically, you know, you\'re going to focus on
the 90 days. The next one would state the improvements that are
expected, specifically, what you want to see. In the case of the role
play, it would be a minimum, it\'s not an average of 10 cases per week,
it is a minimum of 10 cases per week. And that would be clearly stated
in that performance improvement plan. Any special training you as a
supervisor or any other thing that you as a supervisor are going to to
to assist the employee to improve. Once again, coaching, mentoring, but
specific training and this is going to be a lot more intense, and
you\'re going to absolutely have to follow through to anything you say
in this. So as you\'re writing your PIP, you\'re going to make sure
whatever you offer them or say you\'re going to do that you\'re
committed to doing. Because if you don\'t follow through, then you\'ve
essentially lost your case. The next to last thing that is really
critical is stated that the employee\'s performance does not improve to
the acceptable level, they may be fired. The proposal may be to separate
them from their position, excuse me. That could be a number of things,
including and most typically removal, but it could be other things as
well. But they have to be formally warned that they could be removed
from their position if they don\'t improve, and the last one actually is
not a regulatory requirement as much as what we perceive to be a good
business requirement, which is they do have access to the employee
assistance program. As an employee is going through this process, there
is going to be some significant stress generated in their life,
regardless of what is going on in their personal life. They may need to
avail themselves of an employee assistance program. So, if they don\'t
happen, you\'ve got a lot of work ahead of you. If they do, and this is,
you know \-- once you get to the PIP, we\'re kind of at that stage where
success is much less likely, but it is possible and you need to be
confident in your employee and yourself that success is still possible,
and that\'s when you start picking what things you\'re going to do to
ensure that success. And if you\'re successful, you know, more power to
you. Because that is really the thing you wanted to achieve and in the
case file that you\'ve had is actually a real case and so far we are
back to successful on that. So we\'re kind of pleased at that but we did
actually pull a real case when we put the book together. So the employee
is now averaging 10 cases a week. But they don\'t always, and the reason
you went formal is because there\'s \-- there is a real chance the
employee will not be successful. You\'ve done everything informally.
Formally you\'re just taking it the next step. So you have to make a
decision.\
\
Caller: Melissa? Would you repeat the item number 1, what we fill in
there, what that item referred to?\
\
M. Dukes: Identify the critical results and performance indicators in
which the employee\'s performance is unacceptable. Did you get that?\
\
Caller: Thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: After your 90 days as passed, you have to decide what is you
are going to do if the employee was not successful. You have three
options. You could reassign them to a different position. You could
change them to a lower grade. Or you could terminate them. Or remove
them from Federal service. The reality is most employees are removed at
this stage. You have no obligation to assign them to a different
position. You have no obligation to create a position. I mean, you, A.,
would only be looking at vacant positions and there is no obligation to
assign them to that vacant position. If you chose to do so, which you
can do, you have to assign them to a position that, A., they\'re
qualified for, and, B., that you honestly belief they would be
successful at. The reason most employees are terminated is those vacant
positions don\'t exist. We don\'t have that many vacancies. We don\'t
have flexible funding to generate vacancies because we like them. This
is the determination you make, for the efficiency of the Federal
service, typically the employees are removed. They have to receive
written determination and you do give them written notification if they
do in fact succeed, whatever your decision is, if to say remove,
reassign, you give them liter, it\'s 30 days\' advance notice, at that
stage you give them the letter because we are now into potentially
adverse actions. They are entitled to be represented, once again now
that we\'ve made a decision about their PIP. If they\'re a member of a
bargaining unit, they could be represented by a union member. There is a
lot of regulatory language in these letters and you are HR office, as
Sherian said, your HR special cyst going to be your best friend during
this entire process and now that you are at this stage they are going to
be with you once again helping you write the proposal letter.\
\
S. Long: Melissa, we have a question that came from Scott out of
Missoula. It says, how do you go through the evaluations, implement a
PIP if the period of work is only six months, given the minimum 90-day
evaluation and the 90-day PIP k be be compressed?\
\
M. Dukes: You dew point this faster than six months. You could actually
give somebody a plan, 30 days have a counselling session, 30 days have
another counselling session, at the end of 90 days determine that they
have failed, rate them as results not achieved and then give them
performance plan in 90 days. So actually the fastest \-- I don\'t think
you would do it technically in six months, it would be six months and a
week, but you could do this as fast as six months.\
\
S. Long: Melissa, I would guess, since we\'re talking about six months,
this is probably like a fire \-- seasonal type of person that you only
have employed for those six months, and one of the reasons that you can
reduce the time frame from 90 days to, say, minimum of 60 days is it has
to do with whether or not during that time they have enough repetitive
opportunities to have improved. During a fire season, if it\'s, I guess
a good season for the fire people to be out there working, they\'re
going to have a lot of opportunity. So that\'s probably one of those
times when you would go through this. Keep in mind, though, if you\'re
dealing with a temporary, you probably aren\'t going to go through all
these steps anyway. These are more often than not done for permanent
employees.\
\
M. Dukes: Sherian brings up a good point. Obviously and it comes back to
the use of the probation period and obviously conversion of temporaries,
secure seasonals, the and reason you do this stuff, when you have a
person that\'s been a temporary but past the probation period, you have
quite a bit of successful work history behind them which is why in
reality the informal process typically works, you have a lot of
successful work history, it\'s just this time, this event, this job, and
that could be if they fail their PIP, where you would look at possibly
reassigning them or lower grade, that there are other jobs, particularly
one that\'s vacant, they have been successful at and maybe they were
just placed in a job that wasn\'t consistent with their skill level. I
don\'t ever want managers to think that we\'re out to hammer people at
this stage. We just wanted to be effective for the government. That is
our job. But if you have another opportunity, and frequently you will
with a lot of these employees, have a lot of work history behind them,
that maybe they just really need to have a different job and possibly a
lower graded job.\
\
S. Long: That\'s true. One thing, that if you were doing this on a
seasonal, if you\'re using identical standards year after year, it\'s a
little bit hard for that employee to be able to say, they didn\'t
understand because they hadn\'t seen these before, because the reality
is they have. So I think there\'s a number of considerations that we
could take into play, and it would be something that you are HR person
will work with you on.\
\
M. Dukes: As you\'re working on your PIP and proposal letter, and it is
a proposal as a first line supervisor you do not have the authority for
a non- probationer to terminate them. There are going to be issues that
come up regarding possibly resignation or retirement. Prior to any
formal action, you cannot raise those issues to the employee. The
employee has to raise them. So if you\'re counselling an employee in the
informal stage and they raise a question about retirement, you can then
respond, but at no time at the informal stage do you raise the issue of
retirement. Once we\'re at the proposal, if you give someone a proposal
to remove for performance, it enables them to retire under early
retirement rules or dis\-- discontinue service roles. At that stage you
can talk to them about that, if they are eligible for early retirement,
and you are looking at removing them from service, your HR Specialist
will discuss that with you. We wouldn\'t put it in the letter but, yes,
you can make the employee aware of it at that stage. Employees can elect
to resign at that stage. The resignation, once they\'re given a formal
letter, though, will document they resigned after being told they were
going to be terminated. At the informal stage f they just say they want
to quit, they can. You don\'t encourage or discourage it because at that
stage you\'re supposed to be telling them you think they can succeed,
but if they choose to resign, it is not documented because we have not
told them we\'re firing them. So an employee can resign. Actually at the
informal stage if an employee brings up resignation you might actually
want to counsel them to maybe take the rest the day off and think about
it. We don\'t want any constructive removal actions, but more
importantly, we do invest a lot in our employees and we would like to
turn it around and get them successful. So if they bring up resignation,
you kind of maybe want them to step back and take a deep breath and
realize this can turn around and we believe in them. But once you give
them a formal letter, obviously they can choose to resign. But it is
what you do as a proposal letter. It\'s not a decision letter. That is
up to a higher official and typically on a removal case would be the
State Director or the Associate State Director, though I think it
varies. Would probably be \-- true also with the center directors and
directors in Washington, though that might be slightly different
depending on delegations of authority. They will make a decision. They,
in fact, could override you and change somebody to a lower grade but
typically in this case they\'re going to sustain your action. The
employee does have the chance to respond to them, explain why if they
believe that there was a violation of procedure that they weren\'t given
a true chance to improve, that you as a supervisor didn\'t follow
through on your commitments. All those things are going to come out in
the response to the deciding official. If the deciding official decides
to change them to a lower grade or remove them, the employee is then \--
that action is then affected and the employee can either file an appeal
with the merit systems protection board, file a complaint with EEO, if
they are part of a bargaining unit, they may be allowed to file a
grievance, that vary bargaining unit to bargaining unit, so there is a
potential for litigation. Every piece of documentation, every meeting
you\'ve had, everything the HR office has gone through with you to this
stage is so that if they do litigate that you will sustain and you will
be reaffirmed by the board or EEOC for making the proper management
decision. So this is the hard part. Now we\'re down to the really bad
stuff.\
\
S. Long: I wanted to kind of remove the mystique that goes with the
MSPB. This is very same form we use for discipline. It is held in
administrative hearing forum, and you\'ll have the administrative judge,
both sides are usually represented, in our case we\'re generally
represented by the Solicitor\'s office, and the HR person is right there
with them. The key witness in this entire case is going to be you as a
supervisor because you were the one that was most actively involved in
the case. We use different standards as far as evidence and that sort of
thing is concerned, which I\'m not going to go into for you, but
basically both sides give their testimony and present evidence and at
the conclusion of it it will be usually within 30 days or so the judge
is going to come back and give us a written decision and as ma LIS said,
this is going to either affirm we met our burp, because the \-- burden
of proof because the agency has to approve the facts or tell us know and
the employee would come back to work. The thing you need to be aware of
is why do we ever fail at these at all? Because we know we put in a lot
of work before we hit this litigation stage. Let me tell you a few of
the reasons why that failure might occur. One is because those standards
weren\'t fair to begin with, and that usually meant that you had them
set up at absolutes, say that there is no way that they can make a
mistake even one time. Or it could be that the standards themselves were
not understandable. Somebody else looked at it and they didn\'t
understand what it was you were expecting. Maybe you as a manager failed
to follow through on those commitments you made during the PIP. Say you
said you were willing to meet with the employee once a week to kind of
go over the progress opinion I would certainly encourage you not to do
that because we know supervisor have to be out of the office a lot and
how would you ever be able to meet that commitment? Also that thing
called abuse during the PIP. This is not that time when you\'ve brought
out that rubber hose and used on it them. We are talking here usually
it\'s a verbal abuse. Sometimes when you get so frustrated, you might be
tempted to say, don\'t you ever listen to what I\'ve said? Or, can\'t
you read? Or maybe it was, don\'t you do anything right? That\'s verbal
abuse. And you must not engage in anything like that. Also a mistake
we\'ve seen, you have the employee on the PIP but then you detail them
to something else and if that\'s the case you\'ve lost the PIP
completely. Also, even though early on you can flesh out and change the
standard if necessary, once the PIP is in place, you cannot change it.
So if you do, your case is over also. We recognize we\'ve covered an
awful lot of material today and we really tried to include a lot of
those things in that participant guide so you will be able to use that
somewhat as a reference when these kinds of situations come up but
before we close out we want to make sure if you have any other questions
that we\'ll respond to them and if you want to, you can feel free to
still fax us something and we\'ll be here all day today and we\'ll get
back to you with that. Is there anything else someone has a burning need
to bring up?\
\
M. Dukes: How about the guys at NIFC? We haven\'t really heard from
them. Anything specific or unique you guys would like to talk about that
you think we need to address?\
\
Caller: This is Idaho falls. I just have a question about when we \--
when we write the EPPers and we have collateral duties that we only use
those collateral duties amended to the PD in the EPPR, is that correct?\
\
S. Long: As I understand what you\'re saying, if you had a collateral
duty such as an EEO counselor, and in those cases then you\'re not going
to address that in the EPPR itself, but you have to take into
consideration, then, as to how much time that they are having to spend
on those collateral duties like that so that it may be that you\'re
going to have to adjust the requirements of the standards of what
they\'re going to be meeting in that time. Does that answer your
question for you?\
\
Caller: Yeah, except for when you said that we would not use any duties
that are not in the PD in the pepper. I just wondered \-- in the EPPR, I
just wondered where you would address collateral duties if you needed
to.\
\
S. Long: I need to clarify that. If you are an EEO counselor, you are
not going to be rating them or setting a standard of what you are
expectations are as an EEO counselor.\
\
M. Dukes: I think we had need to talk about collateral duties.
Essentially if it\'s something you are going to put in an EPPR, it\'s
something you are willing to remove an employee for if they fail pit
that \-- I think that\'s what Sherian is trying to explain, yes,
collateral duties in the EPPR \-- in the PD, but if it\'s not something
that you\'re willing to remove them for, then don\'t put it in the EPPR.
And our recommendation typically, if someone is not performing their job
well and they have collateral duties, our first recommendation would be
to remove those. If they are not performing the collateral duty well, we
would also recommend to remove those duties as an assignment versus
treating it as a performance problem. Does that make sense?\
\
Caller: Yes, that\'s very clear. Thank you.\
\
M. Dukes: Ok. As far as union stewards go, A., it\'s not in the PD, and
B., it\'s not EPPR, and union will take issue if they don\'t perform
union duties well. Anybody else out there? We have covered an
extraordinary amount of material. Do we have any other questions? If
not, we will start to wrap up. Want to make sure you have a chance to
ask all your questions before we shut down.\
\
Caller: This is Julie in Boise.\
\
M. Dukes: Hi, jewel knee Boise.\
\
Caller: I have a question with regard to not sharing information about
employees with others. In the case of an acting supervisor acting in the
capacity of another supervisor who is initiated a PIP, do the
supervisors share?\
\
M. Dukes: Yes, you would share with the acting supervisor. What you need
to do is you are \-- typically it\'s the permanent supervisor is gone on
another assignment and you have an acting in there. You need to make
sure the acting follows through on all your commitments. I wouldn\'t
share any personal information unless it was relevant to the case. But
they need to follow through on everything you committed. You also need
to think about if you know you\'re going to be going on a detail or a
couple details, going to be away from the office, you need to think
about, is it appropriate to initiate a PIP while you\'re not going to be
there to follow through? So it\'s a hard thing. We know people have
temporary assignments, so there\'s temporary supervisors. If you\'re
talking beyond a week, a month or Longer, you need to bring them up to
speed and have them follow through on the commitments because the
commitment is the agency\'s not your personally at this stage.\
\
S. Long: One other thing I would clarify, or particularly talking about
idle conversation, or sometimes when you\'re a supervisor you get
frustrated and you have somebody that you go to and you kind of vent out
on it, don\'t use a regular \-- well, we\'re regular, but a subordinate
employee, if you really need to, you need to talk to another supervisor
about that kind of thing, but you are not going to be discussing
performance with the peers of this employee.\
\
M. Dukes: I think one of the things we see and it\'s like one of those
fear things, actually I was watching something on TV this morning, and
it was a high school thing, so it sounded very high school, tell tiffany
that bill\'s mad at her, so tiffany tells bill or tells John that Bill
is mad at John. That third party kind of dialogue that you had when you
were in school. That\'s childish behavior and it is inappropriate for
supervisors to communicate with theirees through others and that is a
lot of how this data is communicated to the employee, is through those
individuals, the gossip chain or whatever. It\'s no one else\'s business
and it is inappropriate for you to use that informal third party
communication tool to share this level of information. Your employees
deserve better from you than that. Let\'s go back to your expectations
that we took at the beginning. Ruben had a question on specific \-- on
performance expectations, which I would think would be writing your
critical results. We talked about that, gave you some dos and don\'ts.
It is the single hardest thing to do, just a reminder, as we talked
about this during the informal stage, critical results don\'t have to be
perfect, nor do they have to be a page Long. You write your critical
results based on a normal communication with your employees. If you have
an employee who has a problem, there is always the opportunity to write
a clarification memo where you go into greater detail about your
expectation. So, please, you know, look at \-- don\'t kill yourself on
your critical results, just make them \-- use those dos and don\'ts to
make good solid results, but if you have a performance problem, you can
always go back to the clarification memo, which gives you a lot more
detail and a lot more information so the employee knows what it is
you\'re wanting. So I hope, Ruben, that kind of clarified that. We had
one on conduct versus performance, actually had three people on conduct
versus performance. We did spend a lot of time talking about that.
There\'s some exercises in there and recognition that has to do with
motive, does the employee choose not to do that, or are they incapable
do having the task. And try to not get too distracted by some of that
defensive behavior that is really because they\'re embarrassed about
being unskilled at a certain task or afraid. Typically it\'s a fear
thing. How to get the best from your employees. Kent raised that.
Hardest part and I hope, Kent, we gave you some clues, I know that
actually wasn\'t part of our content, but hope we gave you some ideas on
how to do that, and I think critical results, monitoring sessions, if we
ever do one of these on selection, all ought to be part of that. But, I
hope, Kent, we gave you some ideas. If we didn\'t, maybe we can talk
about it when I get back to Colorado. Hope Larry and Angela learned all
they possibly could. We did write the participant as a desk guide. So
you can keep this with you. If you\'re writing your first critical
results for your employees, pull out the do11 sand don\'ts, I think
they\'re helpful about getting that done. John had a question about
adequately evaluate performance in a pass/fail environment. It is the
hardest thing about this, while we don\'t have to write a lot of
content, we now have to communicate an extraordinary amount with our
employees. And that is how you do it, by communication. Talk, talk,
talk, listen, listen listen. Use those competencies to really get your
message clear and to really hear what your employees are trying to tell
you. But critical results, I think, are the first step in really getting
the performance you want. So I hope we met your expectations today,
Sherian.\
\
S. Long: You probably ought to know in BLM we have been successful in a
number of our removal cases based upon performance. So don\'t feel like
it can never happen. Besides what we have already given you in the
participant guide I wanted to tell you about another resource that\'s
available. If you go out on the OPM website you will find that they have
a book \-- what sit called \-- addressing and re solving poor
performance and it also comes with a CD-ROM. I have been through that
one and there\'s a lot of really good information. So I would recommend
that you take a look at it. You also have received course evaluations.
That\'s important here at NTC so that we can continue to improve the
course and meet what your needs are. Finally, we want to \-- one last
time to remind you about the next upcoming session. That will be
February 13th and it will be on resolving the conduct issues. I know
that\'s something that all of us have, and there\'s always so many
questions concerning that one. It has limited to 100 participants, and
there are already over 50% of the people signed up for that. So if I
were you, I would get out there today, if you haven\'t done so and get
yourself registered. We really appreciate all of the participation that
we had from everyone. Hope it\'s been successful and that you have a
good rest of the day.\
\
M. Dukes: Bye everybody, thanks for tuning in.