State Employment is No Lake Wobegon
Garrison Keillor famously wrote about a place called Lake Wobegon, where "all the children are above average."
Under the Blunt administration, the people who run the state have apparently worked very hard to make sure that we have an opposite Lake Wobegon effect. Bluntees have rigged the system so that state employees are always adjudged average or below.
Blunt administration appointees have invented and implemented an employee rating system called PERforM, on which they will presumably make "merit" pay increase decisions for workers. Because pay for working people hinges on the ratings, Bluntees have to be very careful to make sure that even employees who earn high marks don't get scored that way.
Consider the discussion of the PERforM system from this email, sent earlier this year by a manager from a state facility in southeast Missouri...
From: Howell, Michael
Sent: Monday, March 31, 2008 12:34PM
To: [Redacted]
Cc: Miller, Bradley; Harris, Tony
Subject: perform
As instructed all appraisal that are rated higher than a successful overall will have to be redone and scored no higher than a successful rating per Brad.
Please get this done ASAP
Mike Howell
VPS
Excellent. That's precisely the way almost everyone understands that rating systems like this work, yet rarely do we get so succinct and accurate an admission of the system's operation. It would almost be funny if it didn't actually affect the lives of hard-working real people.
Congratulations to all the lucky employees who earned scores higher than successful but got arbitrarily knocked down to a lower rating, and who'll probably lose out on discretionary pay increases as a result.
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They do have a union
But let's me frank, without teeth such as collective bargaining where is the power?
State employee pay is ranked 50th.......really something to be proud of huh?
State Employees Need a Union
When are state employees going to grow some balls and get a union to stand up to these evil managers that Blunt keeps appointing?
Missouri employees are paid about one-half of what comparable employees are paid in most states.
Blunt treats state employees like children.
What goes around...
What goes around ... comes back to bite you in the but or something like that.
Let hope that Bluntees are all sent packing after November. Any rating systems is only as good as the honesty of the people who use it. Maybe we can recognize them by the way the sit due to the bite marks.
I knew some supervisors and managers (still there) whom I would give a less than satisfactory rating especially on leadership ( honesty). I hope they have trouble sitting for a long time.
For a good look at PERforM goto http://www.perform.mo.gov/ and the check out the links in the side bar to all the information on this system. I wonder just how many dollars and employee hours went to this new system. Some one in Human Resources forgot than when you put lipstick on a pig you still have a pig. If you are going to have a employee rating system that functions they way it seems all you need is a simple form with two choices:
Satisfactory
Unsatisfactory
And possibly a comment area for optional comments. Should save a lot of paper, training, and endless other resources. Should also fee up a lot of supervisor and manager hours processing the current forms. And a big cost saving should be realized by the wholesale reduction in the staff of human resources that are no longer need to keep the present system operational.
Oh yes, merit pay, how high up the management (appointee) chains does one have to be to get merit pay? Hummmmm!
Concerned Missourian