Resolving Performance Issues

**A Telecast Originating**

**from the**

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

**September 16, 2003**

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

It may contain errors and omissions in transcription.

**Announcer:** Welcome to the NTC supervisory series. These courses are
designed to familiarize new supervisors with their role and to serve as
a review for experienced supervisors. Today\'s module\... Resolving
Performance Issues. And now your instructors.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Good morning, BLM. My name is Melissa Dukes and I\'m the
human resources officer for the state of Colorado.\
\
**V. Galterio:** And my name is Vince Galterio. I\'m the human resources
officer for New Mexico, Texas, Oklahoma and Kansas.\
\
**M. Dukes:** We would like to welcome you to today\'s broadcast. I know
watching the pre-conference or the pre-sign-up that some of you are
having problems. In a little bit we are going to be \-- sharing with you
the fax number. Vince has a fax machine by his feet. If you can\'t use
the push-to-talk technology, we\'ll share with you that fax number so
you can fax your questions in because most important of all we do want
to hear from you. Today\'s session is one of a number of sessions that
the National Training Center has designed with the human resources
community here in BLM, and it was the first one broadcast, Resolving
Performance Issues, but we\'ve also broadcast training courses on
conduct and introduction to E.O. The next broadcast coming is up a
brand-new one in October called position classification and position
management. I know we all look forward to seeing those broadcasts as
well. Want to remind everybody if you do have access to push-to-talk
that when you use your microphone to keep your mouth a couple of feet
away from the microphone so you don\'t echo too badly. When you want to
talk to us, push the button down, state your name, location and make
sure you lift your hand off the button. If you don\'t, you\'re not going
to be able to hear us talk back to you. We do want to dialogue. This is
a virtual classroom. It\'s like we\'re in the room with you, we just
happened to be separated by hundreds of miles and thousands of miles of
cable.

One thing I want to go over before we get started on today\'s broadcast
are the goals and expectations you shared with us as students. We got a
long list this time. So you all have lots of expectations. I did
summarize the ones that related to performance. Some of you, though you
might not have known it, were asking conduct questions and early in the
broadcast we\'re going to help you determine if you\'re dealing with
conduct or performance problems. Let me go to the Elmo here and we\'ll
go over what you sent us as expectations. Provide real world ideas for
resolving performance problems. Can you, the supervisor, streamline the
process of dealing with performance issues? Review the steps to resolve
performance problems. Question how do you handle performance problems
caused by personal problems. And we actually end one a second page,
write better critical results, what documentation is needed in order to
deal with a performance problem? The difference between performance and
conduct? The impact of dealing with a union? And what can you discuss
with your supervisor when you\'re dealing with a subordinate\'s
performance problems? So lots of expectations today. I hope we address
them all and like to turn it over to Vince to get the content started.

**V. Galterio:** Let\'s begin by going over the goals and objectives we
have for this session. The first one is to build a baseline EPPRR for
your employees for the next 12 months that is results driven. The second
one is to differentiate between conduct and performance issues, and
while we\'re not going to go into conduct issues big time in this
session because there\'s a separate satellite broadcast on that, we will
be able to get into some of the differences between the two issues. And
the third one is to resolve performance problems as soon as possible.
OPM has developed some leadership competencies they feel are important
for all Federal managers and if you look on page 1 of your
participant\'s guide we\'ve identified a few of them that are especially
important to dealing with performance issues. Let me hit one or two of
them. First one is strategic thinking. Obviously we want you to be
thinking a year out when you create your performance expectations for
your employees. Accountability is very important because you need to
hold your employees accountable and they\'re going to heeled you
accountable for the actions you take. Certainly oral and written
communications are important in communicating your expectations to your
employees. And interpersonal skills are always important when you\'re
trying to get the best out of your employees that you can.

A complete list of OPM\'s 27 competencies can be found on Appendix A of
your workbook. So, why is it important for supervisors to deal with
performance problems in the workplace? There are a number of reasons.
The first is to get the best possible work out of your employees. Then
you need to achieve your work objectives and the objectives of the
Bureau and your State Offices. It\'s important to maintain office morale
by demonstrating that all employees are held accountable. It\'s
important to solve minor problems before they become major ones. You
don\'t want to be dealing with the same issues five years from now that
you are today and thinking to yourself, I wish I had dealt with them
earlier. The longer you wait to deal with a performance problem, the
more serious it\'s going to become. On page 2 of your lesson plan, there
is a brainstorming session, and let\'s get into that right now and give
you about 15 seconds for you to list some reasons why you think that
it\'s important for supervisors to correct performance problems at the
earliest possible time. So take about 15 seconds, brainstorm that with
your group, and then we\'ll come back and try out the push-to-talk
technology and get some of your responses.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. We\'re back. Hopefully you\'ve brainstorm add
little bit in your group and you\'ve got some information to share with
us. This is the first time we\'ve tried out this push-to-talk technology
today, and I know there were several offices who were having trouble in
the beginning getting logged in, but please share with us some of your
ideas. Anyone out there that can get on and try this out and give us
some ideas on why it\'s important to correct employee performance
problems at the earliest possible time?\
\
**Caller:** This is Beverly in Colorado.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Hello, Beverly.\
\
**Caller:** One of the things is morale of other employees in the office
if you don\'t do something about it.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That\'s very good. Thank you. All your employees are
watching you, and if you don\'t take action, they\'re going to see what
you\'re doing with that employee and it\'s going to affect their morale.
Very good. Thank you. Anyone else out there? If you can\'t use your
push-to-talk technology, we do have a fax, and you can dial
602-906-5713. We want to make sure everybody gets the opportunity to
participate. Let\'s go on.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Before we go on, Vince. , we do have a book to share with
Bev. Not only was she the first person to contact us, she was the only
person to contact us. It\'s called \"how to become a great boss.\" I
know Bev, she probably already knows the information in this book, but
just in case there\'s something new, we\'re going to send it to you as
soon as the class is over, Bev, congratulations.\
\
**Caller:** Thank you, Melissa.\
\
**V. Galterio:** And we\'ve got other books to give out also, so we want
to encourage you to take advantage of the push-to-talk technology.
Let\'s get into you as a supervisor and your roles and responsibilities.
It\'s important that you give your employees that are having problems
the opportunity to improve, and there are several ways that you can do
this. First and foremost, you can provide them training. You can provide
them classroom training or informal training. You can provide them
counselling. You can provide intensive coaching, and, of course, you can
give them verbal feedback on their work products. One word of caution,
though, is that it\'s important to treat all your employees fairly and
evenly, and if you\'re giving intensive coaching to an employee that
you\'re having problems with, you don\'t want there to be ramifications
with employees that are performing well and them thinking that they\'re
not getting the same treatment as the employees that are \-- that may be
having less than fully acceptable performance. If you take some of these
steps to improve performance, more than likely the employee\'s
performance will improve. Your job is to facilitate the success of those
employees. Melissa?\
\
**M. Dukes:** What we would like to do now is go over the performance
process itself, and that\'s on page 3 of your Participant Guide. There
are some key steps to the performance management process that you as a
supervisor are obligated to either ensure happen or obligated to ensure
that the content occurs. The first and foremost of these, obviously s to
review the performance plan with your employee within 60 days of the
beginning of the rating period. For most of our employees, not all, but
most of our employees the rating cycle is October 1 to September 30th.
So by the end of November, every employee on your staff should have a
performance plan with clearly defined expectations. That\'s the key to
any performance-based action or performance management process is for
you to tell your employees what you expect them to do. You need to do it
in a way that clearly communicates with them your expectations.

The next step is you\'re required to do at least two progress reviews,
some people call them monitoring sessions, during the rating year, which
once again is the 1 October through September 30. You have to have at
least two progress reviews before you can take any adverse action on an
employee or rate them as results not achieved. So this is a critical
step in the process, but once again, it\'s mostly a critical step is
ensuring your employees are performing to your expectations. You need to
discuss any problems or deficiencies with your employees at the time the
problem occurs. If an employee gives you an unacceptable product in
January, don\'t talk to them during the progress review in March. Talk
to them in January. There are two reasons. For whatever reason they may
have made an improper choice, didn\'t know the format that you wanted
the document. If you catch them at the beginning, they\'ll know what you
want next time and they\'ll be able to, if it\'s a disagreement on a
technical issue, they can explain to you more clearly what they were
thinking at the time. As you get further and further away from the
event, it\'s harder to remember why did you make the choice that you
made? So you need to in all fairness to them and in fairness to you,
discuss problems as they occur. One thing supervisors sometimes don\'t
realize is the impact of within grade increases. Those are increases we
get based on length of service.

In reality we get them based on length of service and acceptable
performance. You typically should get a certificate or notification
through FPPS that the employee is eligible for a within grade increase
within 60 to 90 days. If the employee is having performance problems and
you are not sure that they are truly at the acceptable level, don\'t
sign the certificate. Contact your HR Specialist immediately. There are
processes that you can go through to not approve the within grade
increase and, more importantly, get the performance back on track. If
you either sign the certificate or choose to not respond to the
certificate and the employee receives their within grade increase, any
performance up to the date of that increase is considered acceptable
even if you do not agree with that. It is a regulatory requirement. So
please pay attention to those within grade increase certificates when
you receive them. Obviously part of the process is the end of the year
and we\'re coming up to that in October. You need to give your employees
a final performance rating. Every year a few of our employees don\'t get
a rating. Once again, while this is a step in the process, it is also
about good performance management. You need to have not only ongoing
dialogues with your employees but you need to tell them at the end, how
did they do, give them positive strokes if they are deserving of those
and coaching and encouragement and corrective action if there is a
problem that occurred with their performance during the year that they
need to be aware of. So you do need to have a final rating at the end of
the rating process.

Employee standards must be in place at least 90 days before they receive
a performance rating. There\'s always that question towards the end of
the rating year as new supervisors and employees come in, July, August,
a separate issue that you need to talk to your HR Specialist about, but
if you\'re a new supervisor and you come onboard in December, January,
February you had new employees come in through the rating year, you need
to give them standards so that you can evaluate their performance. But
the standards must be in place for at least 90 days. One last thing
we\'re going to talk about this morning in detail a little later, but
it\'s the use of the probation period. Most new first-year Federal
employees are what\'s called a probation period. They need to \-- it\'s
kind of a continuation of what we would consider the examination
process. You\'ve reviewed their applications, looks like on paper they
can do the work, interview indicates they probably can do the work
successfully, reference checks say they can probably be a successful
employee. But the proof is in the pudding, as they say, and you need to
observe that performance. Are they capable do having the job you hired
them to do? That\'s what the probation period is about, is to determine
did the examination process work, but more importantly, is this a good
fit? Is the employee a good fit for the job and a good fit for the
Federal government? Vince, I\'m sure you probably have a lot of
experience being an HR manager counselling managers on probation.
Anything you would like to share?\
\
**V. Galterio:** I would like to underscore the importance of the
probationary period. All too often we\'re very nice to our employees and
we don\'t like to remove them and let them slide through that
probationary period, and chances are good if they were having a struggle
during that period, then they\'re going to have a struggle when they go
on in their career. And in my opinion it\'s only fair to the supervisor,
to the taxpayer and to the employees themselves to identify if they\'re
going to have a hard time in their Federal career and cut them loose if
that\'s the best thing for them.\
\
**M. Dukes:** I know a lot of you in your expectations wanted to make
sure we covered the steps of the performance management process. Any of
you out there listening have any questions or concerns? You can talk to
us via push-to-talk. Are we doing ok? Did the steps make sense from a
regulatory standpoint and a management standpoint? Or any questions you
want us to answer? So far so good, Vince.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. Well, then, let\'s get into the EPPRR process
itself. In Appendix B on page 17 of your participant\'s guide you can
see a copy of the EPPRR itself. There are two parts to the form, the
critical results, which are called the elements under some other
performance management systems, and then there are the performance
indicators, which are also referred to as standards. The critical
results are what you want your employee to accomplish in the next 12
months. You can find \-- you can write these critical results from
looking at the employee\'s PD, from looking at your organizational goals
or your state\'s goals or the Bureau\'s goals. All those can be taken
into account when you write your critical results. You can also look at
your workload measures that you have in our automated systems. One of
the main things to remember about critical results is that they must be
achievable, observable, and measurable. And don\'t substitute activities
for outcomes. An activity might be to hold two community meetings where
an outcome, a better explanation would be to involve the community in
the planning process. So you\'re focusing on what you want, not how to
get there. There are also some Sam pulses on page \-- samples on page 3
and 4 of your participant\'s guide. Let me go through the one on page 3.
At the bottom of page 3 you can see it. It says the employee conducts
inventories and completes written reports on the five areas assigned
within the established time frames of one per month. That is measurable,
it\'s achievable, and it\'s certainly observable.

The second part of the performance indicators, and those are the
standards that you want your employees to follow to achieve those
critical results. The EPPRR form lists a great amount of generic
standards, but be judicious in using that. Don\'t go down and circle all
for every one of them. A good example f you don\'t read through and just
go down and circle the all, there is one on effective supervision. If
your employee is not a supervisor, obviously that\'s not an important
one to circle. So make sure you review those and only hold the employee
accountable for the ones that are pertinent to the results that you\'re
looking for. You can use these indicators to help you explain your
expectations to your employees. Once you do that, you can provide them
counselling, if there\'s a problem, you can write a memoranda or e-mails
or notes to explain to them the situations that you think they need to
improve in. You can point out standard operating procedures in your
office they may not be following. And you can provide on-the-job
training to help them improve. Our system is a pass/fail system which is
more difficult than the old three or five-level systems we used to use.
The pass/fail system certainly requires that there\'s an increased
amount of communication between you and your employees so that they
understand what it\'s going to take in order to pass. Don\'t forget that
you can annotate marginal performance on the EPPRR form. There is a
place on there for comments and you should use that to make notes of any
areas that you\'ve discussed that the employee needs to improve their
performance in. Remember, too, EPPRRs can be revised during the year. If
you identify a result that\'s changed or a performance indicator that\'s
changed and you and your employees talk about it, go through and make
those revisions, as long as they are not within 90 days of the end of
the rating period, as Melissa discussed earlier. On page 4 of your
participant\'s guide, there\'s another exercise. We would like you to
take about two minutes and look through some critical results that are
list there had. There are four of them list there had. We would like you
to talk in your groups in your offices and identify whether you think
that those critical results are written correctly or incorrectly, maybe
what can be improved in them. Take about two minutes to do that, and
then we\'ll get back with you.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. We\'re back. What we would like to do now is have
you folks out there respond to us with what you\'ve thought of those
examples of critical results. So who would like to take the first one,
the first one about the land exchange program? Is there someone out
there who would like to try out their push-to-talk and get with us and
tell us what they thought of that first critical result?\
\
**M. Dukes:** I think there\'s somebody in Yuma checked in. Anybody in
Yuma want to take this one? I don\'t think so.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I don\'t know if I heard you try to use your
push-to-talk or not. Someone kind of came on and came off there. I know
that there\'s some problems out there with the push-to-talk. So give it
a try again if you were there, Yuma.\
\
**Caller:** This is Dee Baxter from Montana.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Hi, Dee.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Dee\'s good.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Thank you. What did you think of that first one about
the land exchange program?\
\
**Caller:** Well, I think the way it\'s written, it\'s really not very
measurable and it\'s hard to observe some of the \-- like assuring
progress, assisting in resolving case, affect a positive case. This is
really hard to measure, I think.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Very good. I identified that, too, about the progress
part of it. The supervisor could certainly be a bit more specific on
what they thought progress was and how much progress they were looking
for. Very good point. Anyone else out there on this one? Let\'s try the
second one. The second one had to do with communications. Is there
someone out there who would like to participate and has a good idea on
this one? How about someone from Taos. I know Taos checked in earlier
and was able to get on.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Amarillo is on, too. You have lots of clients out there,
Vince.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Amarillo. How about someone from Amarillo? I know my
friends in Amarillo.\
\
**M. Dukes:** They\'re just shy today.\
\
**V. Galterio:** You know, I know a lot of you if we were in a classroom
setting would just blurt out your answers and feel real comfortable in
doing that and push-to-talk is really no different. In fact, you even
have a little more anonymity if that\'s what you\'re looking for, but
please participate and give us your ideas. That\'s what will make this
coursework. Anyone from the fire center want to help us out here and
give us a response to this communication issue?\
\
**M. Dukes:** Anybody want to fax \--\
\
**Caller:** This is Paul from the fire center.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Hello, Paul. How are you?\
\
**Caller:** Very good. Kind of the same for the second one as the first
one, not very measurable or objective and I\'d say that\'s my main issue
on that one.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. Very good. I agree with you. Talks about actively
participating in organizing and conducting public meetings. Doesn\'t
talk at all about how they\'re going to participate. What if they
participate in a way that causes strife? It\'s important to be as clear
as possible on your expectations. This one certainly could have been
expanded more and made more clear. How about the third one, the role of
the union steward? Would someone like to give us their ideas on that
one?\
\
**Caller:** This is Bret in Colorado.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Bret, good morning. Good morning. Just in regards to
number 3, what would you define as timely? That would be my problem with
that? What is timely? How quickly would they need to resolve those
grievances.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That\'s a very good question, Bret. In fact, this one
is somewhat of a trick one. You should never put in a union steward\'s
EPPRRs anything at all to do with their union activity. What is \-- what
is timely is important to the union, not so much to management. So never
address union issues in the EPPRR. That\'s between the employee and the
union they\'re serving. So thanks, Bret. You actually caught that one.
Timely isn\'t important to management. It\'s important to the union. How
about the 4th one, develops a comprehensive credit card control
program?\
\
**M. Dukes:** This is a timely issue as well, Vince.\
\
**V. Galterio:** It is. It is a big issue in BLM. I want to remind you
all out there that everything that we\'re using here comes from real
life experiences. These are issues that personnel offices have dealt
with, and they\'re all from our real lives. So what about this
comprehensive quality control program? Anyone out there?\
\
**Caller:** This is Peggy in Albuquerque.\
\
**V. Galterio**: Hi, Peggy.\
\
**Caller:** Good morning. How is everyone doing?\
\
**V. Galterio:** Very good. Thank you for tuning in. What do you think
of this one?\
\
**Caller:** On number 4, I think it\'s a good one.\
\
**V. Galterio:** And I agree with you. It\'s a very good one. It\'s
observable and it\'s measurable. You might want to be sure that the
employee understands what you mean by comprehensive, but this one is
well written.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Did you notice, I think the sample we had on page 3 was
really a lengthy multiple sentence so I think people get nervous going,
uh-oh my standards have to have seven sentences and here is one sentence
and it\'s a good one.\
\
**V. Galterio:** They don\'t have to be long and wordy. In fact, you
want them to be clear and concise.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I think we might have a fax down here. We do. A fax
from BLM New Mexico from Bob in New Mexico State Office. How important
is it or is it a good idea to work in \-- an IPP into the EPPRR?\
\
**M. Dukes:** I think maybe an IDP?

**V. Galterio:** I think he might mean an IDP. Looks like IPP, but that
may be an IDP, an individual development plan. Individual development
plans are certainly very important, and they define the training or the
development that you\'re going to give an employee to help them reach
those critical results. They\'re two separate documents. They don\'t
necessarily need to tie into each other unless you\'re having a
performance problem, and certainly if you\'re having a performance
problem it\'s important to identify \-- to make sure you create a good
IDP, a good individual development plan, so that you\'ve got that
documentation that when it comes time to write the employee on their EPP
\-- rate the employee on their EPPRR you can go back and say we
identified this training that you needed to go to and assuming you put
them through that training and you kept your part of the commitment,
which we\'ll talk about a little bit more later, then you have two
documents to tie together. They are two separate documents, important to
tie them together if there is a performance problem. Certainly. Thank
you Bob.

The faxes are rolling in now, and Bob indicated that they\'re having
trouble with their push-to-talk technology, so I\'m assuming that others
are, too. So please feel free to fax these questions in. We\'ve had a
Field Manager had measures success by telling everyone simply he judges
success by the lack of any customer phone calls he would get. The same
would be true if he got good comments. This is from Steve wells in Santa
Fe. They also \-- he\'s probably in the same room with Bob, commenting
again they don\'t have the push-to-talk. He judges success by the lack
of phone calls. That\'s kind of a backwards standard and you want to
keep away from writing your standards as backwards standards. That\'s
one of the don\'ts we identify because it\'s hard for employees to
exactly what you\'re looking at and it\'s certainly harder to get good
performance by talking in negative terms. It\'s always best to keep your
critical results, your performance indicators, in positive terms. So if
I was that manager, I would \-- or if I was advising that manager, I
would maybe suggest that he determine employee success by the good
comments that he gets from other customers, not from the lack of bad
comments.

There are a few other do\'s and don\'ts we want to address and you can
find them in Appendix C on page 20 of your participant\'s guide. A
couple of the ones that I would like to point out are, it\'s important
that you determine how you\'re going to monitor the performance of the
employee. You can \-- if it\'s \-- if you\'re really lucky you can do it
by accessing automated systems that give you data on the work that the
employee is actually producing. You can also talk to the employee\'s
customers, and you can certainly observe their behavior yourself. It\'s
also important that you \-- that you set your expectations based on the
position, not the person. Often times when you\'re having problems with
the person you focus on their traits, and it\'s important that you
always bring it back to the position and the job that they\'re doing,
not on the person themselves. You don\'t want to include KSAs in your
critical results. KSAs are designed to select employees for jobs, not to
monitor their performance once they\'re in them. Remember not to write
absolute standards. You can never hold anyone accountable for 100% of
the results 100% of the time.

Finally, you don\'t want to wait until the end of the EPPRR period in
order to be talking to your employees. You need to talk to them as you
progress through the year. I just heard another fax come in. We\'re
going to get lots of participation, but from the machine. What if an
element or standard can\'t be met due to schedules, time constraints,
workload, et cetera, can a supervisor use NA? If an element or standard
cannot be met, it\'s important that you talk to the employee through the
periodic reviews that you do. We\'ll talk a little later about the
requirement to do two reviews, but that doesn\'t mean that you can\'t do
more. If you\'ve got a problem that develops because of a training that
a person has to go to or they get tapped for some other project or
detail, you can agree with them to not hold them accountable for that
particular standard or that particular critical result, but it\'s
important that you communicate it rather than just write NA, I would
make a little note in there, employee did not have the opportunity to do
this because they went on a detail or whatever the reason is. Thank you
very much, John in the New Mexico State Office. Melissa, I think we\'re
back to you.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Thanks, Vince. One of the goals and expectations a lot of
you indicated was performance versus conduct, and in fact we got
questions regarding attendance and behavior that as we looked at them
were, probably while they affected performance, were conduct issues. So
the next section we want to go over is to differentiate between conduct
and performance. This is critical for sometimes an unexpected reason.
You deal with conduct differently than you deal with performance. They
are different in terms of the way you handle the employee, the way you
improve the performance. If you can\'t get a positive result, in fact
the way you deal with more sternly handling the employee is different
between conduct and performance. So we need you to understand those
differences. Essentially a conduct problem occurs when an employee
chooses not to do something. \"I won\'t do this.\" Sounds like a
2-year-old sometimes. They have behavior problems. They lack motivation.
They arrive late. They don\'t come to work at all. For whatever reason,
they choose not to follow the rules or choose not to perform the way you
expect them to perform. This could include violating rules and
regulations that are incorporated in the performance standard, or
specifically \-- I\'ve seen this happen, why you have an EPPRR element
and the employee personally elects not to perform that EPPRR element.
That\'s a conduct issue. While it\'s related to performance, it\'s still
a conduct issue because they made an affirmative choice to behave a
certain way or not behave in a certain way.

Performance is different. It\'s not willful intent, really. They don\'t
\-- the employee may not have the skill. They may not have the
knowledge. They may not have the ability to do the task you\'re looking
at. So it\'s kind of, \"I would if I could, I would do this thing if I
had the knowledge, skill, ability, whatever, but I don\'t have it,
therefore, I\'m not performing it.\" But there motive isn\'t that
willful intent to refuse. The reason you have to understand the
difference is because if the person is lacking a regulatory knowledge
base, you could send them to training. If they don\'t know how to
process certain documents, you could do coaching. There are lots of
different things you can do to resolve a performance problem that
aren\'t the kind of negative thing you do when you deal with a conduct
problem where you sit there and you deal with the rules and you will
follow them f you choose not to follow them, I will deal with you.
Conduct is just different than performance but sometimes it\'s kind of
hard to define. So we have three scenarios. Go to case one and in your
small groups at your different field sites, I want you to talk about it,
and when we come back, either using the fax machine, because I know the
guys in Santa Fe are real good at the fax machine, or those of you with
push-to-talk, we\'ll come back in about a minute and go over case number
1, which has to do with a driving case, and I\'m sure a lot of you,
particularly in the field, know this case. So we\'ll see you in a
minute.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Ok. BLM out there, push to talk or fax! What would case
number 1 be? Is Dave\'s driving a conduct issue or a performance issue?
Who has an answer first?\
\
**Caller:** This is Beverly in Colorado.\
\
This is Taos \--\
\
**M. Dukes:** Hang on, hang on. I have two people. Who was from Taos.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Jeanette from Taos.\
\
**M. Dukes:** And Beverly from Colorado. Ok. Jeanette first.\
\
**Caller:** John Bailee and I feel it\'s a conduct issue due to the \--
him having training, and this has happened in the past, and it hasn\'t
been corrected.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Thank you, Jeanette. Bev, did you agree with that?\
\
**Caller:** Yes.\
\
**M. Dukes:** That was succinct. Thank you. I, too, agree this is a
conduct issue. Carelessness may at some level be lacking that willful
intent, I refuse to come in on time, but it\'s still lack of paying
attention and the person chose not to pay attention and for Jeanette we
have authentic leadership, rediscovering the secrets to creating lasting
values. Congratulations, Jeanette, for being the first one in to
participate in this exercise. So I don\'t think we have any other
questions on this one. This one is really pretty straightforward, I
think. Case number 2 is Bob, and Bob is a property management
specialist. As Vince said, these are all real-life situations. So what
in this real-life situation do you think this is, a performance on
conduct problem? We\'ll come back in a minute and hear your answers.
Thank you.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Ok. Before we go to case number 2, Santa Fe, is your
push-to-talk working yet? Silence \--\
\
**Caller:** This is a test. Do you hear us?\
\
**M. Dukes:** Yes, we hear you! That means you\'re back up and running.
Congratulations, Santa Fe. Glad to hear you\'re back online. Case number
2, Bob, the property specialist, is this performance or conduct? And,
no, there\'s no book involved in this one. Sorry. I could call on Santa
Fe since we know their push-to-talk is working. And they sent all those
faxes in, so we know they\'re talking about these things. Anybody in
Santa Fe want to take this one on?\
\
**Caller:** We think this is a performance issue.\
\
**M. Dukes:** That sounded like Bob. That was Bob. Thank you, Bob in
Santa Fe. We agree, it is a performance issue. It sounds like the
employee\'s is doing everything right but obviously something fell
through the cracks, we don\'t know if he doesn\'t know what he was
doing, didn\'t understand but it appears he was at least trying. Very
good answer. We agree that it is a performance issue. Question number 3,
and interestingly enough one of the expectations outlined a similar
problem that they want to resolve and hope to get some coaching on in
this case, so this is kind of good. Case number 3 is Terry the contact
rep. Let\'s take a minute and talk about it in your groups, and when we
come back, let\'s hear from somebody maybe we haven\'t heard from
before, either a town or someone participating in one of those offices,
and decide if this is a performance problem or conduct problem. So
we\'ll see you in a minute.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Ok. Welcome back. What is case number 3, performance or
conduct? Anybody out there with an answer?\
\
**Caller:** This is Beverly in Colorado.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Hi, Beverly. What do you think?\
\
**Caller:** I believe it is a performance issue but it could be handled
under conduct or performance procedures.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Actually Beverly hit the nail on the head. It\'s hard to
tell in this case if the employee maybe grew up in a town where succinct
answers is not considered rude, it\'s not considered abrupt, it\'s how
you professionally deal with people, yes, no, thank you, the book\'s on
the shelf. For some of our towns, we hire contact reps to be more
chatty. So the question is really what\'s the employee\'s motive here?
Do they have what they perceive to be as a communication problem? Or is
it just a personal style issue based on either how they deal with people
or how they grew up? So it could be a conduct or a performance issue,
and Bev is right. Sometimes performance issues that are choice-based
obviously can be handled as a conduct problem. But you don\'t know yet.
This one actually requires a lot more investigation. But more
importantly, I think it might require the advice of your HR Specialist,
don\'t you, Vince?\
\
**V. Galterio:** Absolutely. Melissa, it\'s important to work with your
HR Specialist throughout this process. You should involve them early and
you should involve them often. Work with them. Keep them up to date on
what\'s going on and get their advice as to how you should deal with it.
It may seem like they\'re making you jump through a lot of hoops but
they\'re really trying to make sure the case is going to be strong if in
fact the performance doesn\'t improve and we have to take some formal
action, and especially if it results in litigation down the road, if
there is a removal or some sort of formal action. There are a few things
you need to be sensitive to when you\'re dealing with poor performance
and the first one is don\'t talk to other employees in your office about
the employee that is not performing up to par. I know it\'s always good
to have a confidant, someone can you talk to, but by doing so you are
giving them license to talk to other employees too and that only
contributes to office gossip.

The second one is, as a supervisor, you have a legal responsibility to
help them improve their performance. This is something that you can\'t
delegate to a team lead or a crew leader or a project leader. It\'s your
responsibility, you\'re the one who has to sign the EPPRR. Now, one of
the main things that your HR Specialist is going to tell you is to
document, document, document. Document early and document often, and
document everything. Documentation is important to keep on an employee
and you keep both positive and negative documents. Everyone probably has
a file on each of their employees that they put things in such as
EPPRRs, SF 50s to document details, awards, memos to the file that you
write or maybe some information that a customer gives you. All those
kinds of things go into a file and it\'s important to have both the good
and the bad in there. Certainly once you start documenting you\'re going
to be writing letters of counselling to the employee, and it\'s real
important that they get in there. It\'s important that you document
certain things on those letters of counselling. First and foremost is
the facts. You need to show the facts that are taking place as you help
the employee resolve their performance problems. You need to document
the meetings that you hold and what the results of these meetings are,
what kind of agreements you come to with the employee. And you need to
do this without opinions. Just stick to the facts. You need to make sure
that everything that you agree to that you\'re going to do and that the
employee is going to do is in that documentation. And you need to make
sure you write it in a timely manner. Sit down and do that documenting
right after you meet with the employee, maybe even take some notes while
you\'re meeting with them, but it\'s important that you do it while
everything you\'ve agreed upon is still fresh in your mind. You need to
make sure that you give a copy of all your documentations to the
employee also. An easy way to do this is through e-mails.

You can jot down the discussions you had in an e-mail is send it to your
employee and that\'s something you have something to put in the file
that shows they got a copy of what you talked about. A word of caution
here is that everything that you document, everything that you put in a
file, the employee has a right to review and if you get to the point
where you take formal action, we will certainly give them everything,
and in fact it\'s discoverable if in fact there is litigation. The other
thing about documenting and writing down your discussions is it makes it
a big deal. If you don\'t take the time to write it down an employee
will go out of your office thinking, whew, got through that. Must not be
too big a deal if they didn\'t give it to me in writing. Remember, the
employee has a right to review everything that you do. Does anybody have
any questions on documenting on anything else we\'ve talked about to
this point?\
\
**M. Dukes:** You know, Vince, a couple of the expectations we had, one
had to do with documentation, which we\'ve just covered. The other one
had to do with streamlining the process, and I think the idea of e-mail,
while it\'s still a record keeping, is a good way to kind of streamline
the process. You reemphasize with the employee what you agreed to, but
you also have that documentation for your written record. So while we
can\'t change the process you still have to go through all the steps,
you don\'t have to make documentation the world\'s most burdensome
process.\
\
**V. Galterio:** In fact, there\'s a couple examples of e-mail in the
participants guide. I think they\'re on page 24. Folks can look at them
late or to give them examples of how they can do it.\
\
**Caller:** Vince, this is Jan, what would you do if an employee wants
to send you a rebuttal?\
\
**V. Galterio:** I would accept it, I would put it in the file. I would
not get into a back and forth e-mail battle with an employee. Certainly
people want to respond to the information that you\'ve given them and
they have the right to do that and I think it\'s very good that they do
that, but some people always like to have the last word. So I would
accept their rebuttal but not get into an explanation then in response
to their rebuttal. So take it, put it in the file and hold onto it,
because it will be important documentation to share with your human
resources people later on if in fact you do get into some sort of formal
process. Thank you, Jan.\
\
**Caller:** Thanks, Vince.\
\
**Caller:** This is Rob \--\
\
**M. Dukes:** We had two people, Brent in Colorado \--\
\
**V. Galterio:** And someone in billings.\
\
**M. Dukes:** So Brent first.\
\
**Caller:** Just a quick question. Beginning supervisor. Wondered if
there\'s anything you need to be careful of documenting, specific things
you might want to watch, not necessarily put down on paper.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I think the most important thing is that you keep the
facts and leave your opinions out of it. Don\'t write anything that you
think is a personal observation of the employee. It\'s important that
you stick to the facts. The other thing to remember is don\'t put
anything in documentation that you don\'t want to come out in court.
Because it certainly will do that. So while you need to be complete and
factual and make sure you have the employee\'s side of it in there, too,
you need to be careful what you put in because it all will come out
during the \-- during the road.\
\
**Caller:** This is Robyn in billings. I had a question about
employee\'s right to review their file. Are you talking about the
personnel file or a supervisor\'s personal files?\
\
**V. Galterio:** The employee has a right \-- well, first, the personnel
file, I assume you\'re talking about the official personnel file and
certainly an employee has a right to look at their OPF any time they
want. I don\'t think there\'s any human resources office that will let
them take it out of their office, but an employee can look in there at
any time and some of the times they want to do that is if some formal
action was taken and a letter was mooted \-- a letter of reprimand.
Those always have time frames for how long they can stay in the folder.
So employees oftentimes want to come in and make sure something like
that comes out of their folder. As far as a supervisor\'s personal
documentation, an employee has a right to see what\'s in there about
them. It certainly will come out if formal action is taken. I would not
give an employee access to my personal file on them until some formal
action was taken. Anything that I put in that file that I documented, I
would give them a copy of, but I would not give them my file and say,
here, you have access to it, you can look through everything I have here
until the time comes when you have to do that if you get into
litigation, or if you take formal action, then we have to put in our
file that we give the employee a copy of a copy of everything we\'re
using to support that action. There could be something in the file
you\'ve written not to support the action and then they wouldn\'t have a
right to get that at that time.\
\
**M. Dukes:** I think maybe this is the \-- the standard confusion
thing, what are memory joggers, versus the file and one of the things
that Vince is talking about is that what you put in your file, and it\'s
information that the employee could see, is stuff you would share with
your HR Specialist, copies of e-mails, copies of your contemporaneous
notes that you took while you are meeting with the employee. That\'s
different than what would be considered a memory jogger, because memory
joggers are available to no one, and typically memory joggers, because
you don\'t take them with you when you\'re meeting with people, you
don\'t share them with anybody, those would be typically not subject to
being viewed in litigation, but the stuff we\'re talking about is the
stuff that does substantiate why you\'re taking the action. So it\'s a
little different, and so if you\'re keeping a file on your employees as
most \-- not all, but most supervisors do, copies of PDs, things like
that, make sure anything you put in that file if the employee ends up
getting access through discovery or some other litigation method, that
there\'s stuff in there you\'re ok with them seeing. So you do kind of
have to edit yourself a little bit, but if you do keep like memory
joggers on your personal calendar or something, that\'s personal and I
think maybe that\'s \-- Robyn, is that where you were heading?\
\
**Caller:** I think that\'s right.\
\
**M. Dukes**: Ok.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I think we\'ve covered about the whole gamut for him
there.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Yes. Ok. Goal number 3 was to solve the performance
problem as soon as possible. Essentially we have the three big goals in
this class, build the Baseline EPPRR, differentiate between conduct and
performance, and the third goal was to help you solve any performance
problem as soon as you possibly can. That\'s critical to ensuring that
you have an effective and productive workforce. And the question is,
have you done your part? Have you set up your standards in a timely man
center and have you done your monitoring sessions? Have you counselled
the employee as problems occurred? So that\'s your part of this process.
But the next step is, what do you do informally before you actually have
to rate an employee as results not achieved? Are there things you can do
informally that will help the employee successfully perform their job or
get their performance up to par earlier? It\'s interesting, when you
read a lot of studies about Federal performance management how few
employees we actually terminate for poor performance, and, you know, the
folk wisdom is because we just don\'t deal with our problem employees or
problem performers because the system is too hard. The reality is that
we do deal with them and we deal with them informally, which actually
solves the problem and causes us to not to have to take formal action.
So don\'t assume that folk wisdom is that Federal managers don\'t deal
with problem performers is true. It\'s actually not true. We just deal
with it most effectively at the informal stage. So let\'s go to page 9
of your workbook and kind of talk about some of these informal methods.
As we talked about, you definitely need to talk to the employee as soon
as you become aware of the problem with their performance, you know,
following through, writing poor written documents.

In the case of the property specialist, obviously a problem between his
records of auditing and the actual inventory. So as you become aware of
the stuff you do need to be talking to your employee, and there are
some, I think, informal ways you can handle this. Clarify the intent of
the standard and we actually do have a clarification memo on page 25 of
your workbook that really explains what you\'re talking about, what your
expectations are. While it\'s a somewhat formal memo when you read page
25, it still is an informal clarification of the standard. Interesting
for those of you who are not aware, this is an actual case, we did
modify it to protect the innocent. The supervisor with this letter and
some other, I think, hard actions on the supervisor\'s part was able to
get the employee\'s performance back up to acceptable, but the
clarification memo, I think, really was a part of that resolving the
performance problem. This is what I meant when I said. Another way is to
increase the frequency of your feedback and counselling sessions. It
could be that you need to meet with the person monthly or every other
week to get their performance back on track. So you could increase that
frequency. You could do it by project. You know, let\'s go over your
plans for the project before you pursue it to make sure you\'re dotting
your I's and crossing your T's.

You could provide training. Sometimes it\'s a knowledge issue or a skill
issue that can be resolved through either formal or informal training.
Training is not the resolution for everything but sometimes in a
performance situation it is the exact answer you need to pursue. So
it\'s another informal way to get performance back on track. Sometimes
and I know this came up as an expectations, it\'s a personal problem.
Personal problems are not your business. We\'re obviously not licensed
professionals to deal with personal problems, but personal problems can
get in the way of someone\'s performance, and the best thing and most
appropriate thing for you to do is to refer the employee to EAP. But,
you know n reality there are lots of other things you can coup. I know
some of you are experienced supervisors and have done some things. So I
would like you now to share your ideas, via fax for those of you who
still can\'t do push-to-talk, but I know Santa Fe can, or via
push-to-talk, some other ideas about how to informally get an
employee\'s performance back on track. Any ideas out there?\
\
**Caller:** Melissa, this is Jan in Santa Fe. One thing I\'ve used
successfully is to at times look at cross-training with other employees
through details for someone that perhaps is a more seasoned individual
that has either the comprehensive natural or traits or characteristics
you want the marginal performer to emulate and having it come from a
peer or co-worker rather than the manager or supervisors is sometimes
much more well received.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Great idea, Jan. I\'m sure you found that very effective
in addressing people who are just borderline where we need to \-- or we
want to keep it informal. Anybody else have any other ideas or
experience or \-- we all were non-supervisor employees at one time in
our career, ideas that maybe we thought of or saw work effectively?
Anybody? We could pick on people who called in before, but that\'s
really unfair. Ok. If we don\'t have any other ideas, a couple things,
and one you\'re going to notice in the e-mails on that case in appendix
D was to change the work schedule. The employee, and I think we\'re
going to see it a little more later on, indicated that they\'re having a
time management problem, and the employee ended up going back on a
standard schedule. So going back and maxi flex for some people is a hard
thing to manage. So putting them back on a regular schedule might solve
the problem. Targeted in addition to mentors and coaches, like Jan
mentioned, a targeted assignment development to Dave rent kind of job or
office where they maybe do that task more intensively is also a way to
get somebody\'s performance back on track.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Very good.\
\
**M. Dukes:** So, with that, there are some things I need to cover as
you\'re dealing with this informal, stuff, though, that I think are kind
of important. One is, as you\'re discussing this performance issue with
the employee, they may or you may start talking about what are they
better skilled at. Sometimes employees, and don\'t laugh, I mean, this
is true, people actually are frequently very aware of their skills,
raise issues, you know, I\'m just not cut out for this job. I think I\'m
better suited for X. Well, if you have happen to have a vacancy in X and
they are, in fact, qualified for that kind of work and whatever is
causing a performance problem now that doesn\'t exist in that job, you
can always consider reassigning the employee. Or if the employee and you
are at die \-- are dialoguing it, they possibly could consider a change
to lower grade. At this stage, it\'s not your choice. The employee would
have to be the one to initiate the change to lower grade, but possibly
taking a voluntary change to lower grade will get their performance back
on track and more importantly have them continue to be a productive
member of the government.

One thing you have to be very careful of in these informal discussions
is retirement. If the employee is eligible to retire, do not raise that
as an issue. That is against the law. It\'s considered to be age
discrimination. Or if based on raising that issue the employee elects to
retire, they could say \-- treat it as a constructive removal because
you initiated that idea. So you need to be a little careful on
retirement. If the employee raises the question, obviously they can
discuss it with you, but your focus is getting the performance back on
track, which obviously we all know, since we put the employee in the job
or the employee is successful in other parts of their job, that we
believe the employee can get their performance back on track, but if
they want to consider retirement, that\'s their choice. It\'s not your
choice. So I definitely kind of handle that one with kid gloves or maybe
even leave it alone. So a couple things you need to watch out for as you
have these dialogues with employees. As we get further along, there are
going to be some other things we want to talk about, but I think right
now, if there are no questions from the field\... Questions? I think
it\'s a good time to take a break. For all of us, a chance for us to get
a little SWIG of water and rest our throats and a chance for you to take
a break as well. We\'ll see you back here in 10 minutes. See you real
soon and talk to you later.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Welcome back. We\'re going to get into a tougher part
right now. For most supervisors, the process part is not the hard part
into this whole thing. The hard part is sitting down with your employees
and having those discussions on negative feedback. The important thing
to remember when you\'re going to sit down with an employee and you\'re
going to provide some negative feedback is to prepare for the session.
You might want to make yourself an outline and jot down the important
points that you want to make sure that you cover with the employee. That
way you can stick to and it make sure that you folks are having a
productive session and you each understand what you\'re looking for. You
also might want to consider the timing of the meeting. Is 3:00 on a
Friday afternoon the best time to meet with an employee so they can go
home and stew about it over the weekend or is it better to meet first
thing Monday morning when it\'s going to just kind of affect them for
the whole week? Or is maybe the middle of the week the best time to
meet? Think about the employee you are going to talk to and make sure
the timing is right for it. There are some things on page 9 of your
participant\'s workbook that are kind of an outline to key up in your
mind things to talk about when you get into a session like this.

The first one is to stick to the facts. You want to make sure that you
let the employee know what it is that you expect and what it is that
you\'ve actually seen in their performance. You want to keep focused on
the specific improvements you want to see. Don\'t get defensive when
you\'re talking with them. The employee, a good chance s going to get
defensive enough. You need to avoid falling into that same kind of
behavior. Don\'t get distracted by excuses. Again, you need to stay
focused and keep bringing the discussion back into the realm of the
problems that are at hand. Make sure the employee clearly knows what you
expect of them. If you can\'t articulate it to yourself, chances are the
employee is not going to understand what you\'re expecting of them. Make
sure that the employee leaves believing that you feel like they can
improve their performance and that you\'re going to do everything you
can to help them achieve that. And make sure you let them know that
there are consequences to their actions. If their performance doesn\'t
improve, something is going to change. To better illustrate how to give
negative feedback we\'re going to do a role play now. Page 21 of your
participant\'s guidebook has an EPPRR prepared in it and it was prepared
for this role play. Page 24 shows some e-mails that went back and forth
between the supervisor and the employee and there is a clarification
memo on page 25. You don\'t have time to go through those now but they
are there for you as a reference afterwards, if you remember the role
play you can go back and look at those kinds of things and they will
help you out when you have to prepare for this discussion. Let\'s get
into the role play. What we have is a supervisor and an employee, and
they\'re going to have a meeting. The supervisor has observed some poor
performance from the employee, and this is going to be a discussion
between them about that performance and what they need to do to try to
get it back on track. So can we get into the role play now?\
\
Hi, Pat. Come on in. I really appreciate you coming in after our meeting
this morning and we took \-- we took a little time at that time to talk
about the case load that you have and see if we can\'t work something
out that is amenable to all of us. I do appreciate you coming back in.\
\
You know what? I\'m sorry \-- I\'m sorry, Chris, I am so angry. I had a
little bit of time to think about this, and this whole thing we talked
about this morning, I got to tell you, I am \-- I am so angry. I am so
angry I hardly know what to do with it because I\'m getting blamed for
all of the stuff that\'s not happening around here when those two idiots
sit out there \--\
\
Pat, let\'s settle down a little bit. This isn\'t going to get us
anywhere. You know and that I know that. We need to stay focused on what
the problem is that we\'re having and we need to leave the other folks
out of the issue.\
\
You know, I would love to leave them out of the issue but we\'re
supposed to be a team. That\'s how it was led up to begin with. We\'re
supposed to be a team so we could all do this work together and now
suddenly I\'m supposed to carry the whole darn thing. I am so sick of it
and all they do is sit out there and go, whew, I think it\'s time for a
smoke, smoking and coffee and whatever else they\'re doing. I\'m just so
angry.\
\
Pat, settle down. Settle down. Let\'s back off just a little bit. This
morning we talked about the amount of work that we have to do, that we
do need to be a team, but we \-- this isn\'t going to buy us anything to
find fault with others. I\'m going to have to deal with other issues
myself. But \--\
\
Damn straight.\
\
But between us, we need to try to work some things out. I want to
mention to you that I came across some training offered by DOI
University\...\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. We\'re back. That was real good on their part.
Someone want to give us some comments on what they saw in that role play
session? What kind of behaviors did you observe?\
\
**Caller:** Vince, this is Jan. I saw the supervisor allowing the
employee to vent and get some feelings and frustrations out, but then
also trying to tactfully draw it to a close and focus just on the issue
between the two of them, not let her continue to bring other issues into
play.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That\'s real good, Jan. He kept bringing her back and
trying to keep her on track with what the real issue was. Thank you. How
about someone else?\
\
**M. Dukes:** Bill Kelly, are you out there from Idaho? Haven\'t heard
from Idaho yet. Probably a reason for that.\
\
**V. Galterio**: Anyone else out there?\
\
**M. Dukes:** One thing, while they\'re thinking about it, Vince, that I
noticed and thought was particularly effective, she was saying those two
idiots out there and he\'s saying, that\'s my problem. He wasn\'t going
to get into a debate on their performance, their problems, their
conduct. Very effective without being, you know \-- I can\'t think of
the word right now \-- rude or \-- I really can\'t think of the word,
but that was one thing I noticed that he did very well.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That\'s right. He listened to her and that\'s real
important, is that when your employee is talking that you sit there and
listen to her, practice active listening skills.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Yes, because she wasn\'t ready to talk. The other thing I
thought was an interesting strategy on the supervisor\'s part was to
have a meeting in advance with her, you know, say, this is our problem
and I want to get back together this afternoon after you have a chance
to think about it. It\'s something a lot of supervisors don\'t
necessarily do, but he probably knew she was going to get volatile on
him and that she needed to think about it before she would ever actively
participate in a problem-solving discussion. So while it was a different
approach I think it was probably on his part very effective given her
uncontrolled passion.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. What we\'d like you to do now is to participate
directly by having someone out there take the role of the supervisor,
and judging from the lack of comments there, it might be difficult to
get someone to participate, but we won\'t leave you on there too long.
We won\'t leave you out there hanging. Just a minute or so, working with
the employee to practice some of these skills that we\'ve talked about
to get used to listening to the employee and trying to come to an
agreement on a couple of things on what you\'re going to do in the
future. So we promise we won\'t leave you hanging out there too long,
but who would like to participate with us here by taking the role of the
supervisor? Come on, now, I know we have some hams out there and we
promise not to leave you dangling.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Trust us, we\'re friends of yours.\
\
**V. Galterio:** How about Robyn in Montana, you\'ve participated and
you\'re an experienced supervisor, would you like to help us out here by
giving this a go for other employees to observe?\
\
**Caller**: Well, I was really hoping for a book, but I guess I\'ll help
out.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Robyn, by participating we promise to get you a book.
Let\'s get into this second role play, the employee will be the same
employee with the same issues, and Robyn will visit with her as a
supervisor and we\'ll see how they do.\
\
Robyn, you know, I\'m glad we had a couple minutes to talk about this
because I have been thinking about what we were talking about this
morning, and I got to tell you I am just \-- I\'m really upset. You know
I have a lot of stuff going on. I mean, not just here but I have a lot
of stuff going on at home, too, and you probably know Jethro left, left
me with the kids and the dogs. Idiot. I am trying to deal with all this
stuff and the 10 case load thing a week and then we have these team
players out here \--\
\
I can appreciate what\'s going on in your home life and we really need
to focus on the job here and I think if we work together and deal with
the performance and the tasks that you have to do that things will start
coming back together for you.\
\
Well, I\'d really like to see that because, you know what, those two
people you have out there are really idiots. They real are. They are \--
they\'re like \-- they\'re rubber crutches. They are rubber crutches.
They have absolutely no use on the planet. You know \-- they don\'t \--\
\
You know, their actions or inactions don\'t really play into what you
and I have to talk about and we need to focus on what you can do to
improve the situation and how I can help you do that.\
\
All right.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Ok. Thank you very much, Robyn. You did an excellent
job. What did you folks out there see in Robyn\'s supervisory style in
dealing with the employee? Any observations?\
\
**Caller:** This is Beverly in Colorado.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Hello, Beverly.\
\
**Caller:** I think like in the first scenario he stayed calm, tried to
redirect her back to what the problem was rather than dwelling on her
personal problems.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Very good. Exactly. He brought her back. He
acknowledged her feelings, listened to her and then he brought the
subject back to what it is that they were there to talk about.\
\
**Caller:** This is Dee Baxter from Montana.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Hello, Dee.\
\
**Caller:** I just wanted to let you know while Robyn was discussing
this with the employee he would not look at her in the face.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Well, thank you, Dee. We\'d like to try this one more
time, and this time we\'d like a female supervisor to talk with the
female employee. Do we have a female out there who would like to give
this a go by participating with us here and playing the role of the
supervisor \--\
\
**Caller:** Brenda just ran out of the room.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Oh, Tim. Glenda would be perfect for this.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Even though it would be nice to have a female do it, Tim
volunteered her, so she\'s not there, I think Tim would be the perfect
person to do this, don\'t you?\
\
**V. Galterio:** Tim also would be very good at this. Tim, would you
like to give it a try?\
\
**Caller:** nice try, I\'m not registered in the course, just auditing
the class.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That doesn\'t matter. If you\'re here, we want your
participation.\
\
**M. Dukes:** I don\'t think Tim is willing to do this.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I don\'t think Tim wants to do this.\
\
**M. Dukes:** I think Tim just ran out of the classroom.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Jan, would you like to take a go at this?\
\
**Caller:** I\'ll be happy to help you out, Vince.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Thank you. We\'re going to get into the role play again
and again we won\'t leave it on there too long, but now Jan is meeting
with the employee and we\'ll give her a go at this and come back and
talk again.\
\
So, anyway, that\'s \-- that\'s kind of what\'s been going on, and I
just feel kind \-- I feel \-- I just feel really overwhelmed right now.
I mean \-- look at my hands. They\'re shaking. I mean, this has just
been really too much for me. The 10 case load and then I\'m supposed to
be doing all this stuff \-- it\'s just \-- it\'s just too much. I can\'t
do it all. And I have been doing so much around here for so long. I\'m
trying to plan the employee picnic, I\'m trying to do the AOSE. I am
supposed to be doing all this stuff. It\'s too much. Then I\'m supposed
to be doing 10 case loads a week and the weekly reports and I have two
other people out here, these team members that are just jerks and don\'t
do everything and every time I walk by them they\'re out there smoking
in the front of the building again. I\'m supposed to be doing all this
stuff. I am just sick of it!

Well, I can certainly understand your frustration and I sense in your
voice you\'ve really \-- you\'re at a juncture where you want to look at
some changes that need to be made but I want to focus today on what we
can do as a team to help you feel better about your work and maybe look
at diminishing some of the frustrations and perhaps interruptions that
you\'re having, so let\'s see if we can focus on that.\
\
Team being the key word here. You know what? There is no team. There is
me. It\'s just me. It\'s all about me having to do everything. I am so
put upon. I mean, I have to do everything, and every time I have to come
in in the morning \-- are, and then I get attitude from them. They act
like \-- they\'re snotty. They\'re snotty. I have to put up with that.
I\'m sick of it. I want to be acknowledged for the things that I do and
I want to be getting the better training and I want to be able to do
some of the things that I want to be able to do to do a better job. I
care about what I do, gees, this is stupid. This is just stupid.\
\
I\'m glad to hear that you care about what you want to do, because I
think that\'s very important to have a folk us and commitment to the
job. I also sense that you\'ve got some real frustration with your
co-workers and I want to assure you I will address that. Today I want to
talk about how you and I can get you focused on a better sense of
satisfaction. I\'m pleased to hear you talk about the need for perhaps
some additional training and to look at what ways that you can look at
it a positive way to turn your attitude and your performance back on
track. So let\'s talk a little bit more about the kind of training you
would like at this point.\
\
All right.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Thank you, Jan very much. Jan is a master at active
listening. She is extremely good at and that that\'s certainly the thing
that jumped out at me when I watched this role play. How about anything
else out there? Any other comments \--\
\
**Caller:** Do I get my book?\
\
**V. Galterio:** Yes, in fact, Jan and Robyn, we have books for both of
you.\
\
**M. Dukes:** For Robyn, be the boss your employees deserve. Sorry, Jan,
because I know you probably know everything that\'s in this book already
and could have written it yourself, the complete idiot\'s guide to
performance appraisals.\
\
**V. Galterio:** That\'s dangerous, ma LIS because Jan\'s my supervisor.
Thank you very much. Anybody else have any comments on these role plays
and how our participating supervisors did?\
\
**Caller:** Vince, I want to say, this is Jan, I think it was really
worth while to show somebody that shows some anger and frustration
because a lot of times supervisors aren\'t prepared for that and I think
knowing that that may be coming and you\'re going to get hit with it
right in the face gives you a chance to prepare for that. By the way,
I\'ve always wanted that book, Melissa. I\'ll look forward to that.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Especially, Jan. The tears were good. Because we get
that. That\'s oftentime very difficult for supervisors to deal with. So
be prepared for that. Be prepared for employees that get defensive. And
be prepared to just listen to them and then bring them back on track.
Melissa, back to you.\
\
**M. Dukes:** One thing I would have \-- I\'d like to remind the class
is that the employee was talking a lot about their personal problems.
Obviously at the beginning of the counselling session you\'re not going
to talk about EAP because you need to get them to focus. But I would
have assumed both Robyn and Jan and Wayne who was the supervisors in the
original role play would have at the end of that discussion said, you
know at the beginning you talked to me about your personal problems, and
just let them know EAP is there for them at no expense to the employee.
So I think you are going to hear a lot and for those of you I know like
Jan who have dealt with employee performance problems before, at some
point in time that dialogue, you\'re frequently going to hear about
their personal life issues, and that is frequently a cause of their
problems. Like I said before, we can\'t get wrapped up in it, but you do
have to get them to EAP just in case, or at least let them know about
it.\
\
**Caller:** The other thing by like to say is EAP is also there for
supervisors and I have used it for my own advice and counsel in terms of
addressing abusive relationships, people that I think have had some
severe difficulties. So it\'s not just for employees, but we as
supervisors should use it as well.\
\
**M. Dukes:** That\'s true. If you end up in the worst case scenario of
actually terminating an employee, that\'s a personally stressful event
and EAP is also for you, not only to help you to figure out ways to
coach your employees but firing employees isn\'t easy. It\'s hard. As
Vince said, the hardest part of this process is not the \-- hardest part
of the process is not the documentation, not writing the standards,
it\'s sitting down and talking to the employee face to face. It\'s the
one you really have to wrench yourself up for. But, you know, there\'s a
couple other things that could happen in your discussion with your
employee, and one of the them and I know there\'s at least one
supervisor out there who had this happen, where the employee says, I\'m
disabled and I need you to accommodate me, and my disability is the
reason that I can\'t meet my performance expectations. At that stage you
need to take a big step back. There are laws and regulations governing
reasonable accommodation for individuals with disabilities, and you need
to be working with your human resources office, typically once again
your employee relations specialist, to move down this path. What you
should do is to get appropriate medical information that tells you what
the disability is, but importantly, what based on this disability the
accommodations the employee needs in order to get their performance back
on track. Now, obviously the employee cannot provide that information to
you as a layperson, but you are not entitled to go to their doctor
directly without the employee\'s consent. So what you\'re going to do is
work with your HR specialist and send a letter to the employee and
saying you have raised this claim of disability, you ever said you need
accommodations for your disability, and that is what\'s causing your
poor performance, and that you need specific information from their
doctor. It is up then to the employee to get that information for you
from the doctor, and it has to be information and accommodations that
you can make.

Employees frequently will come back and the medical information isn\'t
sufficient, so you have to go back one more time saying this isn\'t
enough, I need more. It could be that you cannot accommodate them the
way the doctor has requested. If you can\'t, you can\'t. Reasonable
accommodations is still about getting the work done. It\'s still about
the employee performing the primary function of the job, why the job
exists, and sometimes you cannot meet their accommodation
recommendations of the doctor. In that case, you just have to move on.
If you can meet the accommodations, as identified by the doctor, then
you would work with the employee and your HR Specialist, and possibly at
that stage your EEO specialist, depending upon what the accommodation is
to put those accommodations in place and hopefully the performance will
improve. If it fails to improve, you have done everything from this
issue that you are required to do in order to improve the employee\'s
performance and meet your legal requirements under any litigation issue.
But you could hear that. If the employee doesn\'t get you the medical
information and refuses to get you the information, you move on as if
they are not disabled. It may seem harsh to the employee, but this is
still first and foremost a business that we have to run and we do have
work that we have to produce. So \-- but if it is legitimate, you get
the information and can accommodate them, you would be amazed, that
frequently gets the performance back on track. For reasons you are
personally not aware of and didn\'t need to be aware of until the
performance was adversely affected. Any questions on this one? This is
kind of a complicated issue and we\'ve gone over it pretty quickly. \--
complicated issue and we\'ve gone over it pretty quickly.\
\
**V. Galterio:** The next thing we want to talk about for those every
you with unions out there is the impact of bargaining agreements on the
performance process. The thing you need to remember is no part of the
EPPRR process is negotiable with the union. The critical results are not
negotiable, the performance indicators are not negotiable. You establish
them. It\'s between you and the employee with no involvement from the
unions. However, you need to make sure that you\'re familiar with the
bargaining agreements that are out there, because different bargaining
agreements with different unions call for different things when it comes
to performance. For instance, the agreement in Amarillo doesn\'t address
performance \-- the performance process at all. There are other
agreements out there that might call for reviews three or four times a
year rather than the two that the BLM policy requires. So different
agreements address this issue differently. So it\'s important that you
don\'t leave the interpretation of a bargaining agreement up to your
labor relations specialist, but every supervisor take the time to sit
down and really go through the bargaining agreement and make sure they
understand what\'s in it. The other thing that the union cannot do is
compel a supervisor to use the same critical results or performance
indicators for employees in similar positions. Even if they have similar
PDs. The work assignments are always a little bit different and there\'s
no right to compel the use of the same EPPRRs for employees that are
similarly situated. The union also has no right to be present when you
meet with the employee to do their EPPRR or to talk about performance
problems.

Sometimes employees will ask for union representative. That\'s something
you should not allow because the union will come in and try to represent
the employee and you\'ll have a difficult time talking directly with the
employee. The union steward will want to insert themselves into the
process and they don\'t have a right to do that. Once you get to formal
action, that right may change, and the employee has a right to be
represented, but in a performance discussion, an informal discussion or
a performance review, or your final EPPRR, the union does not have the
right to be present. One other thing I want to mention before we leave
this subject is there is more and more offices out there where BLM
supervisors are supervising forest employees or vice versa, but Forest
Service employees have a different EPPRR process than the BLM employees
do. For instance, we \-- our critical results are not generic but our
performance indicators are. It\'s the opposite in the Forest Service.
They have five generic performance elements they call them that are
identified as either having to be used for a particular employee or
being optional. But you only have those five to choose from. Their
bargaining agreements are also different. You may have employees in the
same office that are covered under different bargaining agreements. So
you need to make sure you\'re also familiar with the Forest Service
standards for the performance process and their bargaining agreements if
you supervise Forest Service employees.\
\
**M. Dukes:** The tougher thing about performance is sometimes you go
through all the processes, you go through the process, get a mentor a
coach, and it doesn\'t work. Most the times it will,, most times it will
get the employee on track. Sometimes it won\'t. No matter what your best
efforts led you, to unfortunately they\'re leading you to the point
where the employee has failed at least one if not more critical elements
and you have to rate them as results not achieved, which means
essentially they have failed their performance. Couple things you need
to be aware of,, you do have to have at least your two monitoring
sessions before you do your results not achieved and you do have to make
an affirmative decision on their performance. You do not have to wait
until September. This should be done in a timely manner. Partly because
it\'s the best chance to get the employee back on track. The second
reason, it\'s the best chance for you to do the process properly and
keep the work of your unit moving ahead. But if you do have to rate them
as results not achieved, there are some things you now have to do. For
those of you following along on your Participant Guide we are now on
page 11.

Like I said, determination can be made at any time. We want to be
particularly sensitive once again as we mentioned earlier on your
probationary employees. If you decide that regardless of your efforts
that they are either not a good fit for the job or not a good fit for
the organization we need to let them go. I know that sounds harsh, and
in the middle of giving out a letter like that it feels harsh, but it is
in their best interests as well as our best interests to let them go.
It\'s very hard for someone to be borderline, to not really succeed in
their job, and it\'s easier just to have that employment relationship
end so they can walk away and move on to the next stages of their life.
So it\'s \-- as hard as it is, it\'s only fair to both you and the
employee and do that, and that is particularly true for probationers,
but it\'s true for everybody else as well. When you have rated somebody
as results not achieved, their performance is unacceptable, you put them
on a performance improvement plan. There are six elements to that
performance improvement plan, and this is where all that documentation
and all that work and all those informal counselings, as well as formal
counselings, all come into play. And the first critical piece that your
performance improvement plan is to identify the critical results and
performance indicators which the employee\'s performance is
unacceptable, and specific examples of those deficiencies and that\'s
where those notes come into effect.

The second one is to identify the specific period of time that the
employee is being given to demonstrate acceptable performance. The
standard or norm, if you will o this is 90 days. There is no regulatory
norm. But it does have to be a reasonable period of time to perform the
job. Occasionally you can go lower. That is because the specific job, a
lesser amount of time is appropriate, but typically it will be 90 days.
Sometimes equally occasionally it could be longer, it could be 120 days.
So it depends on the element and depends on the job, but the norm is
going to be 90 days. However, the letter must state the specific time
frames we\'re talking about. It also must clearly state the improvements
that are he can of the employee. \-- expected of the employee. What
kinds of performance do you want them to do. This information, while
once again the clarification memo isn\'t a requirement, through the DOI
process, you have already thought a lot of that stuff through in your
clarification memo, so you could use that as the guide to what specific
behaviors or improvements you are expecting.

The fourth one is what you as a supervisor are going to do, provide
training, special meetings, whatever it will take to assist the employee
to improve. This is not just on the employee. You as a supervisor are
going to take an active part in helping this employee improve their
performance. However, you need to be very careful when you\'re writing
this part. You have to \-- if you list something, provide training, you
need to make sure that the employee can get that training in a
reasonable period of time and have time after the training class to
improve their performance. If you\'re going to meet with them monthly,
you will meet with them monthly. Regardless of travel, other business
obligations, family illness. It doesn\'t matter. If you\'re going to
commit to something, you will follow through on that commitment.

The fifth thing, you have to state and this is the hard part because it
feels like a threat, it\'s just an actual statement of fact, that if the
employee\'s performance does not improve to an acceptable level, a
proposal may be issued to separate the employee from their position. The
reality is if they don\'t improve, they will be separated from their
position. We don\'t know what will happen, but we do know they will no
longer be assigned to their position of record. The last thing, and
while I expect it to be in all of the letters that come out of Colorado,
it\'s not a regulatory requirement, but you\'ve heard me say this so
many times, the letter should state the availability to the employee \--
of the employee assistance program. There could be personal issues going
on, but more importantly this action in and of itself is extraordinarily
stressful and sometimes the employee does need assistance to just keep
themselves focused and work the process and not be so worried about the
outcome. We want them to recognize the outcome is serious and to take
this seriously but we don\'t want them to be immobilized by what could
happen. As we said before, the length of time is generally 90 days.

Once again, all of these processes are designed to get the employee back
on track. Hopefully once again you\'ve gotten their attention, you\'ve
gotten them focused and they will get back on track. Sometimes they
don\'t. Through all your best efforts the employee cannot successfully
perform this job no matter how hard they try. You have an obligation at
this stage for the efficiency of the Federal service to remove them from
that position. Doesn\'t mean you have to remove them from Federal
service. We talked a little bit earlier in the informal methods that
reassignments and change to lower grades are options. They are now
options that you as a manager can initiate, including a change to lower
grade. Let\'s say you have a GS-11 employee who just is not capable of
performing that job but is a very \-- could be and was a very successful
9 in a different series or occupation where 9 was the full performance
level. You do have the option of deciding to reassign them back into
that job. If they\'re very successful 11 in a different occupation, you
have the opportunity to reassign them back. Assuming, of course, you
have a vacancy and money to assign them work \-- full time work to do
that job. That actually doesn\'t happen that often.

The options are out there and they do exist for you, but more often than
not, the employee in fact is given \-- the decision is to remove them
and the action taken is a proposal to remove. It\'s a formal letter that
your HR Specialist will help you work on. There are very specific things
that have to be included in the proposal to remove. When you meet with
the employee, you are no longer addressing their performance. You are
now addressing be a an adverse action so during that meeting they are
entitled and may choose to bring with them a representative. That could
be an attorney. That could be a co-worker. It could be a relative. It
could be a union steward. They are entitled to bring a representative
along with them to the meeting. Because \-- just remember, we\'re now
not talking about performance. Performance is what caused the meeting.
We are now in a removal or change to lower grade process. The employee
has 30 days in which to make our \-- our employee has time to respond
\-- I think it\'s stipulated 30 days, blanked out a minute \-- to
respond to the deciding official. You will give them a reasonable amount
of time to prepare that response. Work with your HR Specialist on what
is a reasonable amount of time. The deciding official is typically just
a higher management official than you are. That management official
could have been an active participant in the performance process in
terms of coaching you. They obviously when you rate somebody\'s results
not achieved, the second line supervisor is required to sign. So they
are aware of the circumstances of the case, but this is now a separate
action, so the employee will respond to the appropriate deciding
official, and then the deciding official has to make a decision, are
they going to support the action you proposed? Do they have a different
less harsh action to implement? Unlike conduct suspensions, reprimands
are not appropriate in performance. It\'s the employee has done their
best. It\'s just their best is not successful. So your options are
reassignment, change to lower grade or removal and it\'s up to the
deciding official to determine what the most appropriate action is for
the efficiency of the service.

Any questions so far about this process? There\'s a couple things that
happens in this dialogue that is different than once again the
performance discussion. You can talk about retirement now, particularly
if you\'re proposing a removal. The employee may elect to retire. You
can tell them that obviously they can choose to retire at any time. You
want to be sensitive about that. The other thing you want to do is an
employee who is getting removed or has a proposal to remove for
performance becomes eligible for a discontinued service or early
retirement. It\'s one of those little known things most employees don\'t
know, and not surprising most employees don\'t know it, but if
performance is the issue, you can take an early retirement if you are
eligible for that. Primary reason is this is not a causal issue. It\'s
not your fault. Or the employee\'s fault they couldn\'t perform the job
successfully. They were just essentially in over their heads, and they
tried their best but their best unfortunately wasn\'t good enough. So
discontinued service retirement is an option for an employee who
receives a proposal to remove. If the employee is either eye changed to
lower grade or removed from Federal service, there is a high probability
that you will litigate this action and Vince is going to talk to you
about the litigation process.\
\
**V. Galterio:** When we get to the litigation process, it\'s going to
go before the merit \-- the merit systems protection board, or MSPB.
Now, this is one area where performance and conduct are handled
similarly. Conduct issues also fall before the MSPB, and it\'s presided
over by an administrative judge who will listen to the facts in both
sides and make a determination on the case. You need to know that the
agency has a burden of proof before MSPB in these performance based
actions. We have to prove that the action that you took to remove the
employee was for the efficiency of the service and was the best choice.
As the supervisor, you will be the key witness in this case, and now is
the time to remember that everything that you ever wrote in putting your
documentation \-- and put in your documentation file and everything you
ever talked about with the employee and perhaps even some things that
you\'ve talked about with other employees about the removed employee\'s
behavior is going to come out. So you need to make sure that you stick
to the facts whenever you\'re documenting or discussing, because in the
MSPB form will be required through discovery to provide all that
information to the employee who was removed. Now, we don\'t always
prevail before MSPB and there are some reasons why and we\'re going to
discuss a few of the pitfalls out there, and I think we have a slide to
display them, but the first one is that the standards that you wrote are
not fair. Were they absolute? Did you require the person to be 100%
right 100% of the time? Remember that you can\'t do that.

The second one is that the standards are not understandable. If you
can\'t understand them and the employee can\'t understand them and the
judge can\'t understand them, then the judge is not going to side with
the agency on their decision. Third one is that management sometimes
fails to follow through with commitments they make during the PIP.
Remember that if you make a commitment such as to provide some training
or to meet with the employee every two weeks and you don\'t live up to
that commitment, we\'ll not prevail immediately before MSPB. Another one
is abuse during the PIP. This is not the time to bring up other issues
that may have happened with the employee, and by abuse, I mean abuse of
the employee during the PIP. Stick to the facts of performance and leave
other issues out of the question. Another one is if you detail either
yourself or the employee to another position during the PIP. You\'re not
going to give them the full opportunity to improve their performance. So
it\'s important once you put an employee on the PIP that you stay there
to work with them and that they stay there to have every opportunity to
improve their performance. A final one is changing the standards during
the PIP. This is not the time to make changes. While you can do that
during the year, once you put an employee on a formal performance
improvement plan, you need to stick with the standards that you\'ve got
established. That pretty much covers what we wanted to touch on today.
Are there any questions from the field about anything at all that we\'ve
talked about?\
\
**Caller:** Vince, this is Jan. I just had one question. When you get to
the point of issuing, say a noticed of proposed whatever action, if the
employee at that point brings up that \"I have an alleged disability, I
have a handicap,\" how does the supervisor address it at that point?\
\
**V. Galterio:** The supervisor is going to have to deal with that
issue. Lots of times you don\'t get that because it\'s sort of a last
resort for the employee, but it\'s certainly something you\'re going to
have to address. If you don\'t, it\'s going to come back to haunt you
later. Remember that the proposal is the time for the employee to give
their input into the decision you are making and this may be one of the
factors they\'re providing to justify what it is they did. You\'re going
to have to take that into consideration and you\'re going to have to
consider that before the final decision is made. That\'s the reason for
the proposal period, is so that those other factors can come out and the
decision maker is required to consider those. Melissa, you have anything
else on that one?\
\
**M. Dukes:** I think a lot of people would be a little surprised, if
they bring it up at litigation when we\'re at MSPB, that\'s the one time
it doesn\'t matter. We did not know at the time the employee was
disabled. We were not asked to accommodate this disability. That\'s
about the only time we don\'t have to deal with it, is if they bring it
up after we\'re all done. Pretty much every time \-- pretty much every
time after that. Any other questions out there?\
\
**Caller:** This is Bret in Colorado.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Hi, Bret.\
\
**Caller:** Just a question in regards to the role play. Does that
individual, if you were to initiate an action with them, does that
individual have any recourse if you haven\'t taken action against the
two knuckleheads she was referring to?\
\
**M. Dukes:** Yes and no. Just because she perceives them to be
knucklehead time wasters doesn\'t actually make that true. But as you go
through this process and this is one of the things the HR Specialist is
going to talk to you about, and something Vince talked about very early
o you have to treat people fairly and fairly includes if you have
conduct issues or performance issues on your other employees, you have
to be dealing with those as well. It\'s kind of a distraction, and
people use it as a distraction, but if they could prove that you singled
them out and other people were not held to the same standard and were
not dealt with is about the time that you\'re going to get in trouble.
But it\'s not in this case past business, how you handled the other two
knuckleheads. You just need to know as a manager that all of your
employees are expected to perform their jobs effectively and have proper
conduct. That\'s the thing you need to focus on. Vince?\
\
**V. Galterio:** And for those reasons you just gave, the judge will
take testimony on that issue. They will take that into consideration.
Any other questions?\
\
**M. Dukes**: That was a good question, Bret. Thank you.\
\
**Caller:** This is Stu in Santa Fe.\
\
\> I\'ve had a couple people respond regarding EAP. They were worried
even though the agency pays for it, the bills come back through, certain
managers may see the expense was paid and to whom and worried they might
get labeled.\
\
**V. Galterio:** I had an interesting thing happen here one time when I
was with another agency, and that is that the \-- a district office was
working on their budget, and they had all of the \-- their expenses
listed out on the white board, and one of the expenses that they had
listed out on there was dealing with attorney\'s fees for an EEO
complaint. Now, everybody in the office knew exactly who that was and
the employee came to me just livid that the supervisor would put that
out there. The EAP process is confidential and we get reports on it, and
we don\'t share those with supervisors, and we certainly do not do
anything at all to advocate to a supervisor or to indicate in any way
that what employees talked to the EAP about will become publicized in
any way, shape or form. Does that happen sometimes? Yes, it does. Is it
a concern of employees? Yes, it is. But we try to keep that information
as confidential as possible and it\'s certainly never shared with
anyone. We get statistics as to who \-- as to how many people use the
program but not who uses the program. We get general statistics on what
the program is being used for, but not specifics on who talked to them
and what their actual issue was. So we try to keep that as confidential
as possible. Anything else?\
\
**M. Dukes:** Ok. Just to do a little wrap-up here, we can go over to
your expectations and see if we were able to address most of them, if
thought all of them. \-- if not all of them. The first one, write better
critical results I think you saw in Appendix C. Dos and don\'ts, you
have a lot of samples on good and bad elements, including one that was a
sentence long. Like we said, they didn\'t have to be long, just clear.
What documentation is needed? I know a lot of you wondered about
documentation requirements. Vince covered in that great detail. But
don\'t panic about this one. This is \-- this is where I think
technology has made our life a lot easier. E-mails particularly
documenting this is what we talked about in our meeting, this is what
you agreed to do, this is what I agreed to do. It\'s dated. It\'s
contemporaneous, just exactly what you need. But obviously if you have
questions about documentation, talk to your HR Specialist. The
difference between performance and conduct. Always a hard one.
Interestingly enough, in the conduct broadcast, they have the same
section. It is one that we cover again and again. HR Specialists can
help you work through that issue because you will want to handle them
differently but it always goes back to can\'t I do? Won\'t I do it? I
can\'t do performance. I won\'t do it, conduct.

Union impact, Vince talked about that, and obviously in our service
first offices we have the Forest Service union in addition to the BLM
unions. They have a role in this process but not until the very end when
the employee has failed, but until then, they\'re a non-player. The
contract may have specific behaviors, though, as Vince mentioned where
you have to maybe due three progress review as year versus two. So make
sure you know it\'s in your contract and what your obligations are, but
just remember that the union is not a participant with you in the
employee in resolving the performance issue. Discussions with your
supervisor, what can I tell my supervisor? When I have an employee whose
performance is going downhill. You have to let them know. Because if you
ever rate them results not achieved as a second line supervisor,
they\'re going to have to sign off as well. So you do want them
involved.

Most of the second line supervisors are more experienced at managing
performers, managing employees, they have good ideas. As Vince said, Jan
is his supervisor and as she demonstrated in the class she has a lot of
questions but also a lot of experience. So you want to go to your boss.
They might be able to give you ideas you didn\'t think of. There\'s a
point you don\'t want to over discuss every detail, but that is as you
get down to the unacceptable performance and you\'re getting ready to
take action. There are at that stage dialogued you cannot have with your
supervisor. Kit disrupt your case. On the other page of expectations,
like you said, we had a lot. Provide real world ideas for resolving
performance problems. I think you heard from some of your classmates,
some of the things they\'ve done, focus a lot on ideas for informal
resolution of performance issues is where we really see a lot of these
problems solved.

We also got real world ideas in terms of the case where the employee
wasn\'t meeting their case load and wasn\'t getting their weekly reports
done, you know, the e-mail back and forth, the clarification memo. So
that the Participant Guide, I think, has some content in there for you.
Can you the supervisor streamline the process? The process is still the
process. But the process isn\'t as complicated as, I think, people make
it out to be. You have to put your standards in place. You have to
communicate them effectively. You have to know what it is you want out
of your employees, what it is you want them to produce. You don\'t
necessarily have to tell them the steps they have to go through. You
know, for you, it\'s the outcomes. Process becomes secondary. But you
have to be very clear on what it is you\'re expecting from your
employees. Review the steps to resolve performance problems. I think we
went through that. Oh, at least twice, if not three times. And have you
caused or handled performance problems caused by personal problems? I
think we probably went over that quite a few times, too.

One other thing we want to talk to you about is because a lot of you did
raise what, as we looked at them, conduct problems, we would like to
suggest that you look at the graduate school training book. There is a
lot of leadership and management courses here on attendance, on
attitude, on resolving performance problems, on building teams. As Pat
demonstrated, the two knuckleheads who smoke all the time, maybe team
building is an issue. There are all kinds of issues from the grad school
as well as training courses taught here at the National Training Center,
DOI University, as well as other private contractors who come to your
area and conduct training. So for you, as a supervisor, there\'s a lot
of skill building opportunities out there for you if you\'re struggling
with either performance or conduct issues and you want a little more in
depth training. Those training opportunities are out there. The other
thing I wanted to mention for those of you who haven\'t seen a copy of
the department\'s performance management instruction, it\'s on the DOI
website, go to the HRM section and you can get all their personnel
policies on the website. Anything else, Vince, for our group before we
let them go?\
\
**V. Galterio:** No, the one final comment I would make about the
performance process is that the PIP is a really good tool. If you go
into a PIP properly, then you can\'t go wrong. It\'s the time for you
and the employee to sit down and discuss everything, and if you live up
to your part of the PIP and you really think that you\'re sitting there
to try to help the employee improve, they\'re going to, and if they
don\'t, then you have the actions that you can take and they\'re
support. Please don\'t be afraid of the PIP process. Use it. It\'s a
great tool.\
\
**M. Dukes:** Ok. We would like to thank you all for participating today
in this satellite broadcast. We would like to remind you that the next
one in the supervisory series, position and classification, is coming up
in October. Also look for the conduct and EEO sessions. They will be
produced again later this year or early next year. Good-bye, good luck
on these issues and thank you for attending our class today.\
\
**V. Galterio:** Thank you very much for your participation.\
\
**Announcer:** This broadcast has been a production of the BLM National
Training Center.