AbstractTranslateTreasury Board President Tony Clement recently unveiled a new directive - a government-wide policy to ensure a consistent and rigorous tracking of employee performance. About time, they will argue, that the public sector emulates best management practices in the private sector.
Full TextTranslateTreasury Board President Tony Clement recently unveiled a new directive - a government-wide policy to ensure a consistent and rigorous tracking of employee performance. It is hard to imagine that anyone could be against this initiative. Indeed many Canadians will be surprised to hear that such a system is not already in place.
Managers can only applaud the policy since it gives them the tools to be better managers. Front line employees who work hard and perform at or above acceptable levels - of whom there are more than is generally believed - can only see merit in this new directive. They know better than anyone the importance of having everyone pull their own weight. If a colleague is unproductive all too often the additional work burden falls on the high performers.
Canadian taxpayers also have every reason to support the new policy. Who can possibly be against a more productive public service? The Treasury Board minister, in outlining the merits of the new policy, compared the dismissal rate between the private sector and the Government of Canada. The dismissal rate in the private sector for unsatisfactory performance is between 5 and 10 per cent. He reports that in the government of Canada the rate is 0.06 per cent.
Advocates of the New Public Management (NPM), of which there are many in the senior ranks of the Canadian public service and in the academic community, are no doubt very happy with the announcement. They will invariably equate this initiative with better human resources management. They will point to $43 billion a year in pay and compensation and the need to improve productivity. About time, they will argue, that the public sector emulates best management practices in the private sector.
I join others in extending my best wishes to the Treasury Board minister and his senior officials in the implementation stage. Every Canadian and indeed every public servant has a stake in improving the performance of its public service.
I, however, would like to voice some words of caution. Unveiling a new policy and pointing to all its benefits is the easy part. We have, all too often, seen in the past new policies unveiled with great fanfare and promise only to fail miserably in the implementation phase. I recall well the day in the 1980s when the president of the Treasury Board announced that the government would cut executive positions and de-layer management levels. He said fewer management levels would improve morale. He expressed concerns that the category had grown to 2,567 members. Within seven years the number had actually grown to 3,762. Today there are more than 6,000 executive level positions. We can only hope the implementation phase of this new policy will be different.
Those charged with implementing the policy should look to lessons learned. Performance evaluation is not new to the public sector. Pay for performance, for example, has been tried at the management level in all Anglo-American democracies since the 1980s. Sadly we cannot point to a single jurisdiction where pay-for-performance schemes have seen a success.
Canada is no different. It will be recalled that its Chair of the Advisory Committee on Senior Level Retention and Compensation once declared that its committee "will refrain from recommending further increases to the at-risk pay program until the government shows a commitment to ensuring the program does not reward poor performers."
It will also be important for those charged with implementing the policy to bear in mind that private sector inspired performance evaluation schemes cannot always be made to work in government. Private sector managers manage to a bottom line, as they should, while government managers manage to a top line, as they should. They have to manage according to the wishes of Parliament (statutes) and the prime minister and ministers (policies). In the private sector, it is far easier to establish clear goals - sales, market share and productivity in a manufacturing plant. It is not so easy in government because of conflicting objectives - hence all too often performance in government is in the eye of the beholder.
It will also be important to guard against "gaming" in designing performance indicators. One example would be a manager at the Canada Revenue Agency deciding to evaluate employees on the basis of the number of cases processed. An employee may well decide to focus his or her efforts on simple straightforward cases to meet or exceed expectations. It only takes a moment's reflection to see similar cases in virtually every area of government activities from immigration to economic development.
My purpose here is not to appear like a skunk at the garden party. Dealing with nonperformers in government is vitally important for everyone. My point is that the implementation phase will be critical. There are many potential pitfalls along the way and everyone will have to lend a helping hand including public sector unions.
If politicians truly attach priority to this initiative they will have to adjust their behaviour and learn to give a freer hand to public sector managers to manage their operations. It is hardly possible to overstate the point that the onus to make the new policy work cannot rest solely on managers and their employees.
Donald J. Savoie is Canada Research Chair in Public Administration and Governance, Universite de Moncton.
Credit: Donald Savoie.; Ottawa Citizen
IllustrationFred Chartrand, Canadian Press / President of the Treasury Board Tony Clement has unveiled a government-wide policy aimed at monitoring performance in the public sector.; Caption:
Word count: 950Copyright Infomart, a division of Postmedia Network Inc. Jun 1, 2013
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Question 1Based on the lecture and the reading, which NPM characteristic do you think is the most important for governments to adopt and why?
Q2Thinking about performance, how do you think governments should use measures of performance in order to improve government functioning?