Archive
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Document Name: Chapter 3 -- Empowering Employees to Get Results Part III
Date: 09/07/94
Owner: National Performance Review
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Title:Chapter 3 -- Empowering Employees to Get Results Part III
Author: Vice President Albert Gore's National Performance Review
Date:7 September 1993 10:00:00 EST
Content-Type: text/ascii charset=US ASCII
Content-Length: 92972
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In short, it's time our government adjusted to the real world,
tightened its belt, managed its affairs in the context of an
economy that is information-based, rapidly changing, and puts a
premium on speed and function and service, not rules and
regulations.
President Bill Clinton
Remarks announcing the National Performance Review
March 3, 1993
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Washington's attempts to integrate information technology
into the business of government have produced some successes but
many costly failures. Many federal executives continue to
overlook information technology's strategic role in reengineering
agency practices. Agency information resource management plans
aren't integrated, and their managers often aren't brought into
the top realm of agency decisionmaking. Modernization programs
tend to degenerate into loose collections of independent systems
solving unique problems. Or they simply automate, instead of
improve, how we do business.
The President should expand the work of the existing
Information Infrastructure Task Force to include a Government
Information Technology Services Working Group. This working group
will develop a strategic vision for using government information
services and propose strategies to improve information resource
management. Also beginning in October 1993, OMB will convene
interagency teams to share information and solve common
information technology problems. In addition, OMB will work with
each agency to develop strategic plans and performance measures
that tie
technology use to the agency's mission and budget.
Step 4: --Enhancing the Quality of Worklife
When it comes to the quality of worklife, as measured by
employee pay, benefits, schedule flexibility, and working
conditions, the federal government usually gets good marks. Uncle
Sam is a family-friendly employer, offering plenty of options
that help employees balance their life and work responsibilities.
Flextime, part-time, leave-sharing, and unpaid family and medical
leave are all available. Pilot projects in telecommuting allow
some workers who travel long distances to work at locations
closer to home.
The federal government would be smart to keep abreast of
workplace trends. Our increasingly diverse workforce struggles to
manage child care, elder care, family emergencies, and other
personal commitments, while working conditions become ever more
important. Recent studies suggest that our ability to recruit and
retain the best employees--and motivate them to be
productive--depends on our ability to create a satisfying work
environment. Johnson & Johnson, for example, reported that its
employees who used flextime and family leave were absent 50
percent fewer days than its regular workforce. Moreover, 71
percent of those workers using benefits said that the policies
were "very important" to their decision to stay with the company,
as compared to 58 percent of the employees overall.46
The federal government must maintain its "model employer"
status and keep the workplace a humane and healthy place. It must
also ensure that, as we move toward improving performance and
begin to rely on every worker for valuable ideas, we create a
workplace culture in which employees are trusted to do their
best.
Action: The federal government will update and expand
family-friendly workplace options.47
Even under current workplace policies, federal workers still
encounter some problems. Many agencies do not fully advocate or
implement flexible work policies. For example, only 53 percent of
our employees with dependent care needs believe their agencies
understand and support family issues, according to OPM.
Thirty-eight percent indicated that their agencies do not provide
the full range of dependent-care services available. As one
example, OPM concluded that "...certain agencies may have
internal barriers that make supervisors reluctant to approve
employee requests to work part-time."48
The President should issue a directive requiring that all
agencies adopt compressed/flexible time, part-time, and
job-sharing work schedules. Agencies will also be asked to
implement flexiplace and telecommuting policies, where
appropriate. Starting next year, we will allow federal employees
to use accrued sick leave to care for sick or elderly dependents
or for adoptions.49 We will also give credit for all sick leave
to employees who have been separated from and then rejoin federal
employment, no matter how long they were out of government
service.
Congress has written into law some barriers to improving the
federal workplace. It should lift them. By January 1994, OPM will
submit legislation to remove limitations on dependent-care
programs and give agencies more authority to craft
employee-friendly programs, such as employee benefit packages. By
March 1994, OPM and GSA will propose legislation to enable
flexiplace and telecommuting arrangements.
Finally, we urge Congress to reauthorize the Federal
Employees Leave Sharing Act which expires October 31, 1993 with a
few changes to improve program operations and allow interagency
transfers of annual leave. Voluntary leave enables employees with
family medical emergencies, who have exhausted all their
available annual leave, to receive donated annual leave from
their fellow federal workers. In just the last two years,
voluntary leave served more than 23,000 federal employees with
more than 3,742,600 hours of donated annual leave. The
dependent-care needs of more than 96 percent of federal employees
are met by the leave-sharing program.50
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One of the things we learned... is that there's a strong
correlation between employee satisfaction and customer
satisfaction. If your employees are unhappy and worried about the
various baseline, basic needs, you know, of the quality of their
work life, they won't worry about customers.
Rosetta Riley
Director of Customer Satisfaction
General Motors
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Action: The executive branch will abolish employee time sheets
and time cards for the standard work week.51
In a productive workplace, where employees clearly
understand their agency's mission, how they fit into it, and what
they must accomplish to fulfill it, everyone is a professional.
The work culture must send this message in every way possible.
One easy way is to put an end--once and for all--to meaningless
employee sign-ins and sign-outs on time sheets.
Many may consider this a trivial matter. But consider the
salaried Health and Human Services (HHS) employee who must still
sign in at a central location in her office every morning--and
sign out exactly 81/2 hours later. She must do this no matter how
many more hours she really works, and every employee in her
branch must sign the same list, in order of appearance.
Occasionally, when she gets caught up in a meeting or lost
in concentration at her desk, she forgets to sign the book at her
appointed hour. Supervisors have "guided" her to avoid this
problem. She tells her supervisor, who agrees that the practice
is senseless, that it discourages her from working longer hours.
"What about us overachievers?" she asks him. "You lose," he
answers.
The truth is, we all lose. Yet HHS continues to spend dollars
training timekeepers.52
The Department of Labor, by contrast, listened to complaints
from its employees about the needless paper-pushing and use of
administrative time that repetitive timekeeping required. Under
the leadership of Secretary Robert Reich, and with full backing
of union presidents who represent department employees, Labor has
begun to dump the standard time card. After realizing that nearly
14,000 of its 18,000 employees work a standard 40-hour week,
department leaders decided to trust their workers to report only
exceptions, such as overtime and sick and annual leave. Since
only one third of Labor's workforce reports any exception in the
average week, the department is already saving paper and
time--and money. Standard time records are now submitted
electronically, without bothering employees.56
The President should encourage all departments and agencies
to follow the Department of Labor's lead. The new policy will
allow for exceptions--for example, when labor contracts or
matters of public safety require them. But if we truly seek the
highest productivity from our workers, we must treat them like
responsible adults. In today's work environment, time cards are a
useless annoyance.
Action: The President should issue a directive committing the
administration to greater equal opportunity and diversity in the
federal workforce.54
President Clinton launched his administration by appointing
cabinet and senior officials who, in his words, "look like
America." In doing so, he sent a clear message: A government that
strives for the best must continue to break down stubborn
barriers that too often keep us from employing, training, or
promoting the best people.
While the President has set the stage, the current federal
workforce does not reflect the nation's diverse working
population. Overall, the federal government has yet to
successfully eliminate some discriminatory barriers to attracting
and retaining
underrepresented groups at every civil service grade level, or
advancing them into senior positions. A glass ceiling still hangs
over the employment and career prospects for women, minorities
and people with disabilities who work in the federal service.
Women account for only 12 percent of the top tier of the federal
employment ladder--the Senior Executive Service--and minorities,
nine percent.55 Serious disparity persists for both in promotion
rates to professional and administrative levels that serve as
the gateway to further advancement. The numbers for Americans
with disabilities are even worse.
Much can be done to make equal opportunity an integral part
of each agency's mission and strategic plan. The President should
issue a directive in 1993, committing the administration to
attaining a diverse federal workforce and increasing the
representation of qualified minorities, women, and people with
disabilities at all career levels. The order should instruct
agency heads to build equal employment opportunity and
affirmative employment elements into their agency strategic plans
and
performance agreements. In turn, agency leaders should require
managers and teams throughout their agencies to build the same
goals into their own performance plans--and should publicly
recognize those who succeed.
Step 5: --Forming a Labor-Management Partnership
The federal workforce is changing. While the number of
employees has remained constant for a decade, the workforce is
much more diverse, with more minorities and women. It is better
educated and more mobile. And more employees work in
professional,
scientific, and highly technical jobs than ever before.
Today, more than 125 federal unions represent about 60
percent of the federal workforce. That's 1.3 million civilian,
non-postal employees, or 80 percent of the workforce eligible to
participate in federal unions. The three largest federal employee
unions are the American Federation of Government Employees
(AFGE), the National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU), and the
National Federation of Federal Employees (NFFE).
Federal employees and their unions are as aware of the
quality revolution as are federal managers. Consistent with the
quality push, federal employees want to participate in decisions
that affect their work. Indeed, GAO estimates that 13 percent of
federal workers already are involved in formal quality management
processes.56 At the IRS, for example, a Joint Quality Improvement
Process with the NTEU has spread throughout the agency--saving
money, producing better service, and improving labor-management
relations.
Corporate executives from unionized firms declare this truth
from experience: No move to reorganize for quality can succeed
without the full and equal participation of workers and their
unions. Indeed, a unionized workplace can provide a leg up
because forums already exist for labor and management exchange.
The primary barrier that unions and employers must surmount is
the adversarial relationship that binds them to noncooperation.
Based on mistrust, traditional union-employer relations are not
well-suited to handle a culture change that asks workers and
managers to think first about the customer and to work
hand-in-hand to improve quality.
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We want to be full partners. We want to work. We want government
to work better. We want to be there in partnership to help
identify the problems. We want to be there in partnership to help
craft the solution. We want to be there in partnership to help
implement together the solution that this government needs. And
we're prepared to work in partnership to make some bold leaps to
turn this government around and make it work the way it should
work. John Sturdivant, President
American Federation of Government Employees
Reinventing Government Summit, Philadelphia June 25, 1993
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The current context for federal labor-management relations,
title VII of the 1978 Civil Service Reform Act, presents such a
barrier. In 1991, the GAO concluded after an exhaustive survey of
union leaders, government managers, federal employees and neutral
experts, that the federal labor-management relations program
embodied in title VII "is not working well." GAO characterized
the existing bargaining processes as too adversarial, bogged down
by litigation over minute details, plagued by slow and lengthy
dispute resolution, and weakened by poor management. One expert
interviewed by GAO summed up the prevailing view: "We have never
had so many people and agencies spend so much time, blood, sweat,
and tears on so little. In other words, I am saying I think it is
an awful waste of time and money on very little results." Indeed,
the cost of handling unfair labor practice disputes using this
system runs into tens of millions of dollars every year.57
We can only transform government if we transform the
adversarial relationship that dominates federal union-management
interaction into a partnership for reinvention and change.
Action: The President should issue a directive that establishes
labor-management partnership as an executive branch goal and
establishes a National Partnership Council to help implement
it.58
The President's executive order will articulate a new vision
of labor-management relations. It will outline the roles of
managers and unions in creating a high-performance, high-quality
government. It will call for systematic training in alternative
dispute resolution and other joint problem-solving approaches for
managers, supervisors and union officials. And it will call for
agencies to form their own internal councils.
By October, 1993, the President should appoint the National
Partnership Council and charge it with the task of championing
these efforts and developing the next steps. The council will
include appropriate federal cabinet secretaries, deputy
secretaries, and agency directors; the presidents of AFGE, NTEU,
and NFFE; and a representative of the Public Employee Department
of the AFL-CIO. Federal agencies and unions will assign existing
personnel to staff the council.
Action: The National Partnership Council will propose the
statutory changes needed to make labor-management partnership a
reality.59
GAO cited the need for a new labor-management relations
framework that "motivates labor and management to form productive
relationships to improve the public service."60 The Federal Labor
Relations Authority, The Federal Mediation and Conciliation
Service, and several agencies have been encouraging and
facilitating new labor-management cooperation efforts. However,
their efforts are being hampered by legal restrictions that focus
on the traditional adversarial models. The council will recommend
legislation to the President to create a better framework.
Step 6: Exerting Leadership
Despite the federal government's solid core of capable
employees, it lacks effective leadership and management
strategies. In 1992, GAO delivered a stark diagnosis of the
situation. Our government, GAO reported, lacks the "processes and
systems fundamental to a well-run organization. Most agencies
have not created a vision of their futures, most lack good
systems to collect and use financial information or to gauge
operational success and accountability, and many people do not
have the skills to accomplish their missions." This situation,
GAO concluded in a burst of understatement, was "not good."61
The sweeping change in work culture that quality government
promises won't happen by itself. Power won't decentralize of its
own accord. It must be pushed and pulled out of the hands of the
people who have wielded it for so long. It will be a struggle.
We must look to the nation's top leaders and managers to break
new ground. The President, the Vice President, cabinet
secretaries, and agency heads are pivotal to bringing about
governmentwide change. It is they who must lead the charge. Under
President Clinton's leadership they are determined to make it
happen.
If we want to make the federal government a better place,
our current leadership must make it clear by what we do that,
when we offer change, we mean business. That is a promise we must
make to the entire community of hardworking, committed federal
workers. It is a promise we must keep.
Action: The President should issue a directive detailing his
vision, plan, and commitment to creating quality government.62
Graham Scott, who as Secretary of Treasury for New Zealand
helped shepherd reinvention of that country's government,
cautioned Vice President Gore, "Our experience is that government
won't change unless the chief executive is absolutely 100 percent
committed to making it change."63 CEOs of corporations the world
over echo Scott's call.
The first directive issued along with this report will
clarify the President's vision of a quality federal government.
It will commit the administration to the principles of
reinventing government, quality management, and perpetual
reengineering, as well as the National Performance Review's other
recommendations. In addition, it will detail the strategic
leadership roles of the cabinet and agencies in implementing
them.
Action: Every federal department and agency will designate a
chief operating officer.64
Transforming federal management systems and spreading the
culture of quality throughout the federal government is no small
task. To accomplish it, at least one senior official with
agencywide management authority from every agency will be needed
to make it happen.
Every cabinet-level department and federal agency will
designate a chief operating officer (COO). In addition to
ensuring that the President's and agency heads' priorities are
implemented, COOs will be responsible for applying quality
principles in transforming the agencies' day-to-day management
cultures, for improving performance to achieve agencies' goals,
for reengineering administrative processes, and for implementing
other National Performance Review recommendations.
The COO will not add an additional position in the
secretary's or director's staff. Secretaries and agency directors
should designate the deputy secretary or under secretary with
agencywide authority as the COO. The COO will report directly to
the agency's top official.
Action: The President should appoint a President's Management
Council to lead the quality revolution and ensure the
implementation of National Performance Review plans.65
A new President's Management Council (PMC) will be the
President's chief instrument to retool management systems
throughout the executive branch. It will act as the institutional
lever to drive management and cultural changes throughout the
bureaucracy. The PMC will ensure that quality management
principles are adopted, processes are reengineered, performance
is assessed, and other National Performance Review
recommendations are
implemented.
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Unless everyone understands what a work process is, how to map
it, how to analyze and quantify its essential elements, no
organization will be able to reap the enormous gains in
performance that come with an involved and empowered workforce.
Frank Doyle
Executive Vice President, General Electric
Reinventing Government Summit, Philadelphia June 25, 1993
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The President should appoint the Deputy Director for
Management of OMB to chair the PMC, and its progress will be
overseen by the Vice President. The council will include the COOs
from 15 major agencies and three other agencies designated by the
chairperson, the heads of GSA and OPM, and the President's
Director of Cabinet Affairs (ex officio). Its agenda will include
setting priorities, identifying and resolving cross-agency
management issues; establishing interagency task forces to
transform governmentwide systems such as personnel, budget,
procurement, and information technology; and soliciting feedback
from the public and government employees. It will secure
assistance from the CEOs, officials and consultants who have
helped transform major American corporations, states and local
governments, and non-profit organizations. In addition, the PMC
will conduct an annual performance review of the federal
government and issue an annual report to the public on its
findings.
Working together, the President, Vice President, PMC and
every agency head will carry the quality message into the
sleepiest corners of the bureaucracy. Successful and innovative
agencies will be cheered; slower moving organizations will be
prodded and encouraged until change occurs.
Action: The President's Management Council will launch quality
management "basic training" for all employees, starting with top
officials and cascading through the entire executive branch.66
However pressing the need, we cannot expect leaders,
managers and employees caught up in old ways to change overnight.
To nurture a quality culture within government, we must help the
entire workforce understand the President's vision. Unless we
train everyone in the new skills they need--and help them
understand the new roles they are expected to play--they can,
through passive or active resistance, frustrate well-intentioned
attempts to progress. So first and foremost, everyone will need
to learn what working and managing for quality is all about.
The President and agency heads must send a clear message
about their commitment by becoming directly involved in the
design and delivery of quality training in their agencies.
Therefore, the PMC, working with the Federal Quality Institute,
will begin quality training with the cabinet secretaries and
agency heads. Training sessions will focus on defining a shared
vision, developing a strategy to embed that vision in the each
department, committing participants to lead and be responsible
for change, and
establishing a process for training the next level of management.
Even as agencies reorganize around quality and customers,
their staff may need training to fulfill expanded job
responsibilities. Line staff may need to learn budget and
procurement processes. Managers may need help in becoming coaches
rather than commanders. We will pursue the goal of reaching the
entire federal workforce with quality training.
It is worth noting that some cabinet secretaries already are
up on the quality learning curve. During the past few months,
more than 60 top field managers, contract lab directors, and
assistant secretaries have joined Energy Secretary Hazel O'Leary
for 6 days of total quality management training at Motorola
University in Chicago. They've agreed on a mission statement, set
the
department's core values, and put strategic planning in motion.
In the process, skeptics have become energized, egos have been
subsumed, hidden agendas unearthed and dispensed. In the words of
one participant, "Everyone is working as a team. We're incredibly
excited about doing better. In just 6 days of quality training,
we have moved from 'I' to 'we'."67
Other departments are hot on Energy's heels. Such agency
leadership is pivotal to moving quality forward. As quality
innovator Dr. Joseph Juran told Vice President Gore, "As we go at
it energetically in the federal government... we're still going
to see some of the agencies step out in front and everybody else
is going to watch. And as they get results and nobody's hurt in
the process, others will be stimulated to do the same thing."68
Conclusion
To change the employee culture in government, to bring about
a democracy of leadership within our bureaucracies, we need more
than a leap of faith. We need a leap of practice. We must move
from control to collaboration, from headquarters to every
quarter. We must allow the people who face decisions to make
decisions. We must do everything we can to make sure that when
our federal workers exercise their judgment, they are prepared
with the best information, the best analysis, and the best tools
we have to offer. We must then trust that they will do their
best--and measure the results.
Indeed, we must let our managers and workers fail, rather
than hold them up to public ridicule when they do. Only if they
fail from time to time on their way to success will we be sure
they are even trying to succeed. Someone once asked an old man
known for his wisdom why he was so smart. "Good judgment comes
from experience," he said. And experience? "Well, that comes from
bad judgment."
To transform the culture of our government, we must learn to
let go. When we do, we will release the same kind of creativity,
energy, productivity, and performance in government service that
was unleashed 200 years ago, and that continues to guide us
today.
.