cqen.list Weekly Digest Subject: Re: CQEN interest? Subject: Re: CQEN interest? Subject: Pay for Performance Subject: Re: Pay for Performance ---------------------------------------- Subject: Re: CQEN interest? From: denise.kelley@cccbbs.cincinnati.oh.us (DENISE KELLEY) Date: Wed, 04 Oct 95 05:13:00 -0500 Content-Type: text David Kerridge, I am a Chief Union Steward for the Hamilton County Department of Human Services (welfare organization) and our management has been forced into the pay for performance disaster and at the same time the bargaining unit which I represent has managed to stay out of it. We are feeling the pain of it in that discipline is going through the roofbecause all those managers think they are not performing unless they are disciplining. I need as much information on the "Pay for Performance" disaster in your experience as you are willing to share with we me. PFP has only been instituted since July and I can see that Management wants toforce the Union into the same mold and we are resisting mightily. Further more our illustrious director (who considers himself something of an innovator) is now pushing "Strategic Business Units" in the public sector. I respect all the knowledge contained in subscribers to this list and I am hoping someone out there along with you can help me to get enough information to either further the SBU concept and benefit all employees or conversely help me get rid of it. Everything I have read here gives me the impression that forcing competition between teams aka SBUs is bad as is Pay for Performance. Please give me you expertise on both issues as the jobs of many, many people are on the line because of our experimentation. Incidentally, we formed an "Efficiency Team" in late December 1994 which was supposed to be equally Management and Labor. Unfortunately, it has become more and more management and as a result the Union has been pushed into agreeing to a Managed Competition project with in our Child Support Enforcement Division. Nothing is done by consensus. Help, help, help. Denise Kelley, AFSCME Chief Steward Local 1768 Hamilton County Department of Human Services ---------------------------------------- Date: Thu, 5 Oct 1995 19:58:49 -0500 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" From: cbrooks@luminet.net (Craig Brooks) Subject: Re: CQEN interest? At 05:13 AM 10/4/95 -0500, you wrote: >David Kerridge, I am a Chief Union Steward for the Hamilton County Department >of Human Services (welfare organization) and our management has been forced......................... ______________________________________________________ You may want to look at the ListServ "Quality"-- Send to LISTSERV@PUCC.PRINCETON.EDU no subject with the following in the body-- SUBSCRIBE QUALITY first name last name organization Or the same list can be accessed as a NewsGroup if your internet browser has a news reader or you have a news reader program AND your internet provider gives access to newsgroups. Over the last few months there's been allot of action on threads concerning performance appraisals and pay for performance issues. I've been in public human services for over 28 years. I guarantee you that paying individuals for performance not only fails in the private sector, it fails even more in ours!!! There are many books, articles and videos on this subject. The Deming video library has a couple good ones and Alfie Kohn (spelling ???) has written allot recently on the subject. Just look for stuff on ranking, rating, MBO, etc. I think if you read through the many entries on the newsgroup Quality covering performance appraisals you'll get allot of information and ideas. BTW I'm a County Director and have been for 17 years. Been in management and supervision for 26 years; 22 in counties and 4 for the State agency. I'm involved in our local Quality Council and have participated in many hours of Deming type training. I th9nk I know what I'm talking about or at least enough to admit how little I know and how far I have to go in my journey toward quality and transformation of how we do our business. The stuff about competing between work groups scares me. Look up material on team, teamwork, etc. and put that together with Deming's ideas about competition. Competing is OK on the football field when playing games--- NOT in the work place. *********************************** cbrooks@luminet.net Craig Brooks ____________________________________ Winona - The Micropolis That Fulfills Dreams *********************************** ---------------------------------------- From: sta010@abdn.ac.uk Date: Fri, 6 Oct 95 11:56:11 BST Subject: Pay for Performance As Craig Brooks says, the evils of targets, pay-for-performance, etc are as great or greater in public service than in private industry. The problem is that they create fear. So although I hear many things in confidence, there is little I can say openly.... And then people say "It must be working, because no-one is complaining". If you remember that far back, Josef Stalin used to conduct regular elections in the Soviet Union, in which he polled about 99% of the votes cast. The 1% probably didn't survive to the next election, so it must have been a different 1% each time. But I would not be at all surprised if he really believed the results. The easiest person to deceive is yourself, and if you engineer a situation in which no-one tells you the truth, what do you expect? We often talk about the damage that pay-for -performance and similar fear-generating systems do to the "workers". We must not forget that they do even more harm to the people who create the fear. "All power tends to corrupt....", and if you want your vision, character, and organisation to be corrupted, try generating fear. The one thing you can be sure of is that no-one will tell you what you are doing to yourself. And when in doubt, you can hire consultants whose income depends on telling you what you want to hear. Some people look on the Deming Philosophy as a sort of idealistic cult. Sorry to disillusion them, but it is about achieving good aims, with maximum effectiveness. It may be true that fear is bad in itself, but the most serious objection to it is that it does not work, and stops you seeing how to do things better. David Kerridge dfk@aberdeen.ac.uk ---------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Pay for Performance From: denise.kelley@cccbbs.cincinnati.oh.us (DENISE KELLEY) Date: Fri, 06 Oct 95 20:19:00 -0500 Content-Type: text David, you are right on target about the fear being generated in our Agency. My own immediate superior is a very fine man and he has already been threatened with loss of his job if he doesn't toe the line. Incidentally, the Director decided he was going to delayer the AGency and so over the past few months he has : 1. Raised all salaries of Line Supervisors and Coordinators so they are equal 2. Insisted that Coordinators be demoted to Line Supervisors thus losing a layer between himself and line staff. 3. As of October one he has also demoted all Deputy Directors to Section Chiefs but did not cut their salaries. 4. He has told those same section chiefs that they must find a way to get rid of 150 exempt (aka Management) positions. They have a year to 18months to do this. 5. In the Income Maintenance Division they are accomplishing this by having Line Supes work as line workers on a rotating basis. Now what this does to the client is just about unbelievable. Our clients are our customers and they are really getting hurt in the process. All this in an AGency considered to be the best in the State of Ohio in a matter of 3 months. Our error rate in administering the Aid For Dependent Children program has been quite high and just now have we gotten it down to 8% but he's not satisfied with that so we must "perform" to get it down further and further. People are leaving if they can -- retiring, quitting, doing anything to get out of the way. We are losing our experienced and knowledgeable people because of all these FADS going on at the same time. I believe I have said enough for now but I am sure you are beginning to get the picture of an Agency in chaos. That is why I am asking for help from someone who is so knowledgeable. Thank you and all of the others who have responded to my cry for help. Denise Kelley ---------------------------------------- ---------------------------------------- End of Digest Provided by Department of Industrial Engineering, Clemson University Comments to list@eng.clemson.edu