Generic Standards that Fail to Measure Performance Effectively

By Barbara Haga, March 19, 2020

I’ve written about conduct issues making it into performance plans when those matters should be dealt with through other means, but there are other problems that we should address. This month, I’ll address generic standards.

I am not suggesting that agencies shouldn’t use generic standards. I am actually a fan of the concept – if they are written well. Unfortunately, there are a lot of examples of standards that are very difficult to use because they cover too much in one standard.

Here’s an example: In this system, the manager sets the elements and then applies these generic standards. So, the manager develops the “what” that’s being measured by these words. This is a Fully Successful standard that would apply to all jobs, no matter what the grade.

The employee demonstrates consistently successful performance that contributes positively to organizational goals. The employee effectively applies technical skills and organizational knowledge to deliver results based on measures of quality, quantity, efficiency, and/or effectiveness within agreed-upon deadlines, keeping the rating official informed of work issues, alterations, and status. The employee successfully carries out regular duties while also handling any special assignments and identifying opportunities to improve organizational operations/results that consider stakeholder perspectives. The employee plans and performs work according to organizational priorities and schedules. The employee communicates clearly and effectively and works effectively with others to accomplish organizational objectives.

Let’s review sentence by sentence.

The employee demonstrates consistently successful performance that contributes positively to organizational goals.

The first part just repeats the definition of Fully Successful. I’m not sure the second part is something for which we hold employees accountable. That’s on management to set measures that support agency goals.

The employee effectively applies technical skills and organizational knowledge to deliver results based on measures of quality, quantity, efficiency, and/or effectiveness within agreed-upon deadlines, keeping the rating official informed of work issues, alterations, and status.

This is the diamond in this standard.  This is what employee measures should have in them, and it should be universally applicable.

The employee successfully carries out regular duties while also handling any special assignments and identifying opportunities to improve organizational operations/results that consider stakeholder perspectives.

I would like to review this one in two parts.

I view the first part related to special assignments as a problem. First, just being on a special assignment shouldn’t be the measure. The quality of the work in that assignment is what should be measured. However, it should be measured based on the same criteria that apply to other assignments – applying technical skills and organizational knowledge and the other criteria in the second sentence. Secondly, special assignments shouldn’t outweigh the bulk of an employee’s work, which hopefully would be the normally assigned duties. And, often the employee has no control over what special assignments they are given. What we don’t want to create is perpetual volunteers who think that having some special project gets them a higher rating than the coworker who is plugging away doing the work of the unit. Third, not every job has these kinds of opportunities.  They may be jobs in remote locations, lower grade jobs, etc.

“Identifying opportunities to improve organizational operations/results that consider stakeholder perspectives” is written at a very high level. Not every employee is going to have these kinds of opportunities either.  It might be more reasonable to ask for well-thought out input regarding work procedures. That might be attainable for a lot more grades and types of jobs. You also want to qualify this, so it’s not just a lot of ideas, but they are ideas you could actually implement.

The employee plans and performs work according to organizational priorities and schedules.  

This one is reasonable for a lot of jobs that have the ability to decide what is performed when. However, lower-graded positions may have little control in this regard, so it may be difficult for the manager to use as a measure.

The employee communicates clearly and effectively and works effectively with others to accomplish organizational objectives.

Before jumping in with this portion of the standard, let’s think about designing elements that work effectively.  The way I explain it is that you would want to get all of the work that requires the same skills and abilities in one place.  You could have someone who is very good technically but whose writing and speaking skills are not very good. You could have someone who is very good technically who is a pain in the butt to work with.

I would suggest that you hold people accountable for these things but to do it in a separate element. There are two reasons:

• A generic standard like this usually is applied to some technical aspect of a job. It’s common to see HR Specialists in our business with an element on ER work and an Element on LR work (I am not saying that’s good, but it’s common). With this element description, the manager would have to assess if the employee communicated effectively on ER matters and then separately address the effectiveness of LR communication, and then make that same assessment on all of the other elements. It makes it very tough for the supervisor.
• The other issue I see with this is that the aspect of communicating effectively should really be critical by itself. Can someone succeed in our line of work if they can’t do these things? Isn’t that the issue that time and again we hear about from customers that HR doesn’t respond, doesn’t clearly explain, doesn’t provide options, etc. I doubt that HR is necessarily unique in this aspect of performance.  I would think that similar issues come up in other lines of work.

Our Employee Relations Week class June 15-19 in Denver, CO, will include much more discussion on writing good standards. Haga@FELTG.com