| Comment Number: | OL-10501481 |
| Received: | 2/25/2005 12:07:41 PM |
| Subject: | Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, Request for Comment |
| Title: | National Security Personnel System |
| CFR Citation: | 5 CFR Chapter XCIX and Part 9901 |
| No Attachments |
Comments:
PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT AND EVALUATION OF SUPERVISORS: There is a glaring omission concerning supervisory performance evaluations and disclosure. Why such secrecy? Employees are never apprised of the results, and supervisors who may have performed poorly undergo no noticeable change. There is never any disclosure of what supervisors are expected to improve on. Except that they should follow the general core values we are all expected to espouse, supervisory performance ratings remain a secret. The perception is that supervisors appear to have a wide latitude over how they can treat employees. When an employee feels mistreated, the only recourse he has is to file a complaint with a union representative, or the EEO office, not trusting upper management to side with him or her. Supervisors and their managers work as an elite team of friends, and are above reproach, knowing their immediate bosses will usually leave the matter with them. I have an unfortunate example, but it is true. My (white) supervisor joined a mixed group of my co-workers (I am African American) as we were discussing a popular movie and made the following comment about a famous black actor who had a starring role in it. He said: "...it was difficult for him to distinguish the black actor from the third gorilla on the left!" As blatantantly racist, alarming, and insulting as this was, when I reported it to the all white upper management, not one of them saw anything wrong with the comment, and took the supervisor's side, who by now had come up with an elaborate excuse that the movie was a satire, and that all the actors and gorillas were co-mingling. This was the latest negative comment the supervisor had been making to me about African American males in general, even after I had asked him to stop. But to make matters worse, after that specific incident, I was branded by the all white management team as "too sensitive," and "feeling sorry for myself" and "thinking everyone is picking on me...!" The supervisor even attempted retaliation at group meetings after I officially reported him to EEO, by trying to humiliate me in front of my co-workers during a presentation, and he continually made comments to my co-workers over the ensuing weeks about my sensitivity. Eventually, he realized after speaking to someone from the Office of Concil that he was way out of line, and he apologized. But he never received a reprimand of any kind, to my knowledge. I dropped the grievance, but I have remained vigilant and suspicious of his motives in anything regarding me officially, especially my performance evaluations. My respect for management disappeared and my motivation and job satisfaction plummeted. but I have managed to retain above average ratings despite this atmosphere, a credit to my character. If supervisors are being graded by some set of standards, they are kept secret from employees, and their performance ratings are never revealed. I suggest that employees be given some type of input into supervisor evaluation, even if anonymous. I've seen favoritism, cronyism, blatant racism, work assignment bias, inappropriate comments, and just plain laziness from supervisors with shoot-from-the-hip styles of management, and I have NEVER seen any displinary action taken against them. They emerge from closed-door, secret meetings with management after a complaint is filed against them, none the worse, it seems. Surely, the employee isn't always in the wrong.