Hello, Gordon Graham here with some miscellaneous ramblings about Performance Evaluations.

Here are my first impressions regarding this topic: Do away with them now . . . burn all current and past evaluations . . . burn the building where the records are kept (see your arson unit so you can do it right and not get caught) . . . kill anyone who mentions performance evaluations again (I have found that a .22-caliber contact wound to the back of the head works best . . . and take the casing with you). Take their watch and the money out of the wallet so it looks like a robbery instead of a hit related to performance evaluations. Dump the empty wallet in Modesto, and that will throw the Feds off for months.

Performance evaluations don’t work and can come back in the future to do much more harm than good. Do away with them now!

Now, after my initial salvo, what am I trying to say? Some of you will agree with the above thoughts, and many of you will not. Truth be known, I am a huge fan of performance evaluations…

WHEN THEY ARE TAKEN SERIOUSLY,

but most fire departments I have intimate knowledge of…

DO NOT TAKE THEM SERIOUSLY,

and if not taken seriously, they are a ticket to…

LAWYERVILLE!

You want a sound bite, Larry? Here it is: Ill-prepared performance evaluations today are sewing the seeds for major employment law issues in the future. Take them seriously or do away with the process.

The private sector subscribes to a concept known as “Creative Destruction.” If something clearly does not work, get rid of it. Government, on the other hand, subscribes to the theory that if something is not working, time and more money can fix it. Hint: If the process is fatally flawed, all the time and money in the world is not going to make it better.

Having said all of this, I believe they can work, and let me give you a couple of hints on how to fix the system so that maximum benefit can be realized from this process.

• First, they are a high-risk task (Definition: If not taken seriously, there are major consequences). So before you change anything, make sure you get the buy-in from your competent legal counsel.

• Second, they can be extremely valuable to the organization and the employee if they are taken seriously.

• Third, they are ripe for a systems approach.

If this all sounds like I have studied this issue, I have. In the early ’90s I sat on a performance evaluation task force for a major West Coast law enforcement organization. As part of our in-depth study of the issue, we pulled some performance evaluations at random. They read like . . . well, performance evaluations. Of course, our analysis was subjective, so to make it objective, we pulled the same employee’s performance evaluation written a year earlier. Newsflash!!! We found a couple of performance evaluations that were IDENTICAL to the one prepped the year earlier. I am not talking IDENTICAL, I am talking IDENTICAL. Same grammar errors, same spelling errors, same bogus boilerplate ratings . . . IDENTICAL! The only thing that was changed was the date. This was quite an eye-opener for all of us. We even had employees who had been disciplined during the reporting period, and we checked the evaluation. Voilà! There was no mention of the inappropriate proven behavior.

This is the kind of stuff I warned you about earlier. Performance evaluations are written documents and may well be subject to discovery downstream in litigation. Now, just a hypothetical, of course, but if you have an employee whom everyone knows cannot drive, and that employee has a history of inability to drive, and that employee consistently gets rated satisfactory or above in the performance evaluation with respect to driving, then that eval is going to come back to haunt you big time. Let me hear the plaintiff lawyer examining you now:

“So, Chief, you knew (or should have known) that Firefighter Wilber Doofus could not drive, and yet you constantly rated him as satisfactory.…”

This is not good. Of course, this scenario can be eliminated by taking the performance evaluation process seriously.

So, with all this in mind, where do you start? I have put together a 10-step approach to this topic entitled GRIPE — Graham’s Rules for the Improvement of Performance Evaluations (pretty clever, huh, and sorta like the rules I gave you last month on “Background Investigations”). It is too big for this column, but here is a quick summary of these 10 rules.

GRIPE #1 — Understand the purpose of employee evaluations.

When taken seriously, they work. They are an excellent tool for rewarding hard workers and giving notice to the others on how to improve their performance.

GRIPE #2 — Get a policy regarding evaluations.

We have policies so that different people in different incidents approach the issue the same way, so that there is consistency within the organization. Since this is a high-risk area, your policy needs to be reviewed by competent counsel.

GRIPE #3 — Select people to be supervisors who are capable of being honest with employees.

Many supervisors lack the spine to be honest with people, and others value their personal friendship with the employee more than their obligation to the organization. Promote people who can tell the truth.

GRIPE #4 — The process should not be a secret.

Good men and women will rise and fall to your level of expectation, so let them know what the standards are, and they will regularly meet and exceed your expectations.

GRIPE #5 — Before you put pencil to paper, think.

It is a discretionary-time task, so use the time wisely to check performance levels, specific issues of concern, and what needs to be done during the next evaluation period.

GRIPE #6 — Be specific during the evaluation process.

“You have difficulty getting along with others” does not cut it. Well performed performance evaluations contain specific, articulable facts that support good and bad ratings.

GRIPE #7 — Remember the importance of accuracy.

This document is important to your people, so ensure that it is accurate. Go ahead and ding an employee without knowing the full story. Real good move, Bucko.

GRIPE #8 — Always proofread your documentation.

This is more than a spell check. Supervisors (in this case, management) need to read the document to make sure that the issues raised in GRIPE #3 do not occur.

GRIPE #9 — If you’re right, don’t change it.

You do not overrate a loser employee because someone higher than you in the organization tells you to. Hey, bossman, you want to overrate the employee, then you do it and leave me out of it.

GRIPE #10 — Learn from and share your experiences.

Like any other task, if you learn something or find a better way to do business, then share it with others, so the process can be continually improved.

If you want the full set of rules, download them from this link:

http://www.gordongraham.com/cgi-bin/sitenav.cgi?0013

Well, that is about it for this column. Thanks for taking the time to visit. Good Luck, Good Health, Good-bye, God Bless You, and God Bless America.Gordon Graham signing off. Until next time, Be Safe.

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