Posted September 1, 2010
The 13th thing you need to know before your first day in office
Fernando, there are some aspects of your job where you will find your hands tied by the personnel system. Compared to your role in the private sector, you will have significantly more authority over very large amounts of money, but in personnel management, you will sometimes conclude you are laboring inside a dark, spinning capsule with no way out.
When I worked for IBM as a second level manager, there was a written policy for everything. Any deviations from the manual required a trip to corporate headquarters in Armonk, New York, for approval. However, I had real authority in hiring, promoting, developing, paying, evaluating, and disciplining people.
As a government manager, by contrast, I had real authority to make decisions that IBM’s division presidents could not make, I could initiate hundred-million dollar systems initiatives, but like other government managers, I had no real authority over some personnel issues. Human relations policies developed by successive administrations have systematically stripped real authority from the operating managers.
One example will give you a sense of what I mean. In President Reagan’s administration, a new policy ended mandatory retirement, allowing federal employees can work as long as they want to, to any age, and management must support the policy. Even if they develop health problems and can no longer do their work well, managers cannot make failing employees retire.
Reagan’s rule affected my organization. We had an employee who should have retired 10 years earlier. Anyone with the sad experience of placing an elderly parent into a nursing home knew this employee needed special care with his daily ablutions. A nursing home could provide the care, help, and support he needed.
This man could not walk out of an elevator if it settled an inch below the floor level. He could not lift his foot over the one-inch riser at the door to the men’s room. He had done no work in years. In an interview with our personnel officer, he admitted he did no work anymore, and, he said he did not intend to do any work again.
My staff worried about him because he would fall from time to time. At times, his toupee would sit askew on his head. Sometimes his condominium neighbors called us in the agency to express concern because they had not seen him for a few days.
The man began to suffer some delusions. After President Clinton’s election, he told his colleagues he would become the commissioner of our 2,000-person organization with control over $27 billion in information technology assets. According to one member of my staff, the old employee had said I authorized GSA security to enter his apartment to read his mail.
When his health was failing noticeably, around age 76, I asked his manager when he planned to take action. The manager reported to me that he had given this sick man an outstanding performance rating the previous year, negating the possibility of any short-term action. I asked why he had given such a high rating to an employee publicly and widely admitting to doing no work. The manager said it was out of respect for his age.
The following year, we began address the performance rating issue. The personnel system does not allow a manager to take an employee down from an outstanding rating to unsatisfactory in one-step. The process needs to unfold over several years, with many meetings between the manager and the employee. The human resources officials in your agency need to be involved each step of the way, missteps can lead to lawsuits. The union will be involved regardless of whether the employee is a union member.
We didn't want to fire this elderly employee, with 51 years of service for non-performance, but since he refused to retire and because of the Reagan policy change, we had no other choice. He was in very poor health, and drawing a paycheck while doing not a lick of work.
For sixteen months, a more senior manager, Dale Christensen, worked his way through the complex process to fire the man. Finally, Dale neared the end of the process, when we would issue two required letters to the employee. The first letter is an “early alert” which tells the employee he could be fired. It allows fifteen days for his response. The second letter would fire him.
In the later stages, we had met twice with my boss, the Commissioner , to brief him on the case and to ensure he would do his part when the time came.
His part at the end was to stand aside, let the process work, and not become emotionally involved. The Commissioner assured us he was aware of the situation and would support us when the time came.
When we issued the first letter, the employee went immediately to the Administrator’s office, the top official in the agency. The Chief of Staff intercepted our man in the reception area. With some medical knowledge and elderly parents, she suspected one of his health problems was Parkinson’s disease.
Things seemed to be going along as we hoped, until someone higher up lost his nerve. The Commissioner called Sherri Remez, another of his senior directors, and me to his office and said the Administrator wanted the firing done in a "more humane" way. He asked Sherri to rewrite and soften the firing letter; and said he wanted us to arrange a work- at-home assignment for the elderly employee for a period of three to six months.
I reminded my boss about the complexity of firing an employee and that his last minute humanitarianism would muck up the whole process. We had taken almost a year and a half to get to this point. The legal and personnel offices had reviewed every word in the two letters because the process is so specialized. It would not be appropriate for Sherri to rewrite the letter.
Second, how could we dream up a work at home assignment while we were firing an individual for non-performance? It seemed to me a willingness to give a paid work assignment after firing sent a confusing message and suggested we felt he was fully capable of doing our work. This was not the case.
The Commissioner told me to go upstairs and try to change the mind of the Chief of Staff. I did and she saw me right away. I gave her more information, but she liked the idea of giving the man an assignment at home after the firing. I reminded her about the long and complicated process in place to protect employees from arbitrary management actions. It had taken us 16 months to get to the point where we could fire this person. She agreed he needed to be off the books, and we agreed he reminded us of our own elderly, failing parents in years gone by. The time comes when each person needs special care and attention. Nevertheless, she wanted to see if there was anything we could do to soften the situation.
We both felt warm and sympathetic in this case so I agreed to talk with the HR department. The next day, the Commissioner asked how my meeting with the Chief of Staff had gone. I said I gave her a lot of information she had not had before, but I had not yet convinced her to allow a clean firing without a work at home assignment. The Commissioner took the case back from me.
The day after, he called to tell me he wanted to proceed with an after-firing work assignment. I pleaded once more for him not to do take this course of action because it would wreck the case. "You and everyone agree that taking him off the government’s payroll is the right thing to do," I said. “It has taken us 16 months to bring this obvious case to this point. I do not understand the gratuitous concern at this late date."
"I am not asking your approval," he said. "I am going to do it."
Later in the day, I met with Dale, the manager working all this time to allow the long overdue action, and with the two personnel specialists guiding us during the lengthy process. They were as incensed as I was about the gratuitous behavior by our boss, coming late in a case where everyone agreed the man should not be working.
Then I learned, from one of the two personnel specialists, that the employee in question had assured her he would never do any work again and nobody could do anything about it. She was concerned about the signals this attitude sends to all of the agency’s managers and employees. How can mid-level managers manage in these circumstances when senior managers will not allow appropriate action? To the employees, the message is, if management insists that you do work for your pay, and puts pressure on you, go to the Administrator’s office, cry a little, emote a little, and win some sympathy.
All senior executives are well aware of the futility of trying to deal with non-performing employees or those seemingly guilty of misconduct. G. Gerry Shaw, former general counsel for the Senior Executives Association, provided some other examples of the government’s problem.[i]
In one case, an employee discharged a firearm in the office. She was a driver for employees working in remote wilderness areas and her job was to pick them up and return them to home base. Periodically, she did not pick them up. These individuals, abandoned in the deep woods without food, water, or protection from the weather often hiked out of the forest on their own. When the agency tried to force the employee to perform her work, she filed a sex discrimination complaint. The agency’s public health physician further complicated the situation by saying the woman had a mental problem and could not maintain touch with reality unless she remained on the job.
In another agency, reported Shaw, a female manager had a habit of making disparaging remarks to Hispanic male subordinates. When employees complained, she requested a reassignment. Later, she filed an Equal Employment Opportunity complaint, alleging sex discrimination was the basis for her reassignment even though she had asked for it.
In another case I was involved in, a junior GSA lawyer assigned to an employee grievance case agreed with me, the complaint was not valid. However, since the division in my organization had lost a grievance case years earlier when it was part of another agency, the lawyer hypothesized the judge would look at us unfavorably because of the earlier, unrelated case.
After being involved in a few of these Equal Employment Opportunity type complaints and the hearing system associated with them, my deputy, Fred Sims, told me that the hearing examiners had quotas encouraging them to avoid decisions and to emphasize the “agreement process.” The agreement process allows the hearing examiners to require the government to defend itself, while making this process so onerous government officials give up the fight and agree to a settlement in favor of the claimant.
In this environment, the government (my part of GSA) never won a case no matter how frivolous the complaint.
So Fernando, with our elderly employee problem, I suggested that the Director of Human Resources meet with our Commissioner and the Administrator’s Chief of Staff to determine if all parties were familiar with the case, clear on their goals, and fully aware of the risks of late decisions like idea for the eleventh hour work-at-home assignment. Three days later the Commissioner agreed to drop the idea.
We were now ready to move forward. The next step was to talk to the employee about the agency’s reluctant decision to fire him; and, to offer to accompany him to investigate assisted living homes in the Washington, D.C. area and its suburbs. I wasn't sure rules allowed this, but seemingly, the Human Resources managers understood allowable actions and those with potential for lawsuits.
The next day I went into the men’s room near my office. This facility is the size of three coat closets. As I stepped in, I smelled urine. The employee in question was the only other person in the room. I asked if I could hold the door for him. He didn’t answer but moved out with a slow shuffling gait.
I asked Dale about this, and he confirmed it, our man often wet his pants. Even in the men’s room, he went either on the floor or in his pants, another disheartening confirmation of his failing health.
Three days later, Dale came to my office and said our man had agreed to retire, voluntarily, from the government and would do so in seven weeks.
Fernando, in the government nothing is for sure until six months after it happens, but the signs were positive. We were pleased for the individual, for our other employees, and because it seemed that management could reverse course and make a correct decision after reconsidering all the facts.
Two days later, I saw the Chief of Staff, at GSA’s training facility across the street. We were both pleased the employee had chosen to retire rather than forcing the firing action.
The Commissioner called and congratulated me for handling a difficult, painful case, which resulted in the proper, humane outcome at the very end. I didn’t deserve accolades; but, I was satisfied the employee would be off the books and in a position to seek a living arrangement more suitable to his physical and mental conditions.
I was also pleased because all other employees would see that management was able to pursue a deliberate course of action it in a caring, human way despite the thorny thicket of regulations restricting, virtually prohibiting management action in cases involving people issues.
In government it isn’t over till its over. Since the employee was delaying his retirement for seven weeks, anything could happen in the period. Under this arrangement, we stopped our process to fire him in order to allow his voluntary retirement. If he changed his mind and decided not to retire, it would take time to rebuild momentum.
Nonetheless, for the first time in 16 months, proper action seemed to be at hand. Now, we could begin to plan to honor a man who had served his country for 51 years.
The Chief of Staff told me she would get a special “congratulations-on-your retirement” letter from President Clinton, and, a meritorious service plaque from GSA Administrator Roger Johnson. Dale began to plan a reception in the Administrator’s historic suite of offices and he said a few people would offer to clean his apartment.
In the next few days, the employee himself walked with a lighter step since his decision, while carrying a new pine-colored cane in his hand.
I spoke to the caring, dedicated personnel specialist in the lobby and thanked her for her help during the 16 months of preparation. I told her how much we appreciated her deft work in the last few days of the case. She said, with a warm smile, that it was one of the great achievements of her career. Indeed it was. Without her involvement, senior political appointees might have damaged the government’s case, while acting with the best of intentions but without really grasping the problems they would have caused.
Advice to Fernando. There are two lessons here. My boss, the Commissioner, demonstrates in this case the wisdom of the ancients: Knowing how to yield is strength. (Lao Tse). This is a key to success in a high level government job.
At the same time, removing poor performers is hard work as you can see. The system is simple on paper: Develop a performance improvement plan according to the personnel system, monitor it carefully, and assign frequent performance ratings. If an employee consistently performs poorly, despite counseling and warnings, you have built the record you need to fire the employee -- in theory.
However, as you can see, in practice, the “simple” process is very time consuming, taking well over a year even in straightforward cases, and anyone can derail it any time even on the last day before termination.
Faced with a poor performer, you need to decide whether it is worth your time or the time of one of your senior managers to pursue the termination process. You will likely make your decision based on a few factors, including the limited number of positions you have in your organization, and whether the individual is causing morale problems.
In your time in the government, you will find 10 percent of your staff will be able to help you move the organization to new heights. The vast majority, 80 percent, will go along and assist, doing their jobs capably. The final 10 percent will make it difficult. My advice is to spend your time with the top 90 percent except in the most egregious cases.
The most important task in your early days will be to identify those top few exceptional performers to help you move the organization forward. These special performers may not report directly to you or they may be two or three levels below you. If so, the challenge is to get them involved with you without wrecking the existing chain of command, creating confusion, and damaging the morale normally high when a new boss takes over.
As you can see, federal personnel management is considerably more complicated than you may expect. The examples in this chapter point out vividly that you will need a lot of help from several sources in your personnel management transactions.
[i] ..” The Performance/Misconduct Dilemma,” Action (newsletter published for members of the Senior Executives Association), November 1994, p3.
[i]... Federal Contracts Report, December 26, 1994.