The Federal Coach: Poor Performers — Dealing With Performance Issues in Federal Government

In the newest season of NBC’s The Office, Andy Bernard – self-admittedly the worst paper salesman at Dunder-Mifflin’s Scranton branch – has been promoted to office manager.

As a fan of the show, his unorthodox management style is pretty hilarious. To motivate the crew and impress his superiors, Andy recently promised the employees that they could tattoo whatever they wanted on his derriere if they met brand new and extremely high company sales goals. The tactic was a huge success, with even the primary office slacker and the most disgruntled employee jumping on the bandwagon.

In real life, no executive would expect a supervisor to go to such an extreme or sanction this type of management approach. But senior leaders are expected to motivate their employees and they are also expected to take action when employees are not doing their jobs and efforts to bring about change fail.

In the federal workplace, unfortunately, employees believe that their leaders too often turn a blind eye to those who are not meeting basic performance standards, and that is no laughing matter. According to the Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey data just released, only 30 percent of federal employees believe that their leaders take steps to deal with poor performers.

To read the entire article, please click here.