01-08-1990 Council Packet - Laserfiche WebLink

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MANAGEMENT r- -;v-• — t:;ii TAr:^ . - J-^teAy^-gf-yv ;ggir ® .-• ..V •■.:-M-V.SI^:S-.*'' -1 f *1 I 7 I U-.m.m-m ■•V'ts ‘. *7, . ’I I T'i* T/'iflSAA?: MichiKan Treasurer Robert A. Bowman is one of an increasinK number of managers in jjovernment turninK to pay for performance. 'You can only give out so manv framed awards, he says. up SI9 a week from 1987. Si.\ years ago. state employees got an annual raise of S29 per week, a 10 percent increase, compared to this year’s boost of just over 4 percent. This is why there has been a recent flurry of pay-for- performance activity at the state *evel. Michigan and .New Jersey have it in place ^or their senior management services. Colorado’s personnel director is hoping to launch it. North Carolina, which tried such a system early in the 1980s and dropped it. was directed by its legislature this year to try again. Massachusetts has a pay-for-performance system all ready to go, assuming it can convince the legislature, which has already approved it. to fund it. But the real pioneers in this area are local governments. Scottsdale. Arizona, put all 1,060 city workers on pay for performance in 1982. Biloxi. Mississippi’s 365 employees have operated on such a system .'ince 1986. In Hillsborough County. Florida, the county’s top 200 managers are paid for performance. Biloxi’s finance and personnel manager. Steve Held, is cautiously enthusiastic about the success of his citv’s program: ”I think that pay for j^erformance. in some form. is really the only way to go. It’s a true merit sys tem whereby the people who move your city for ward are the people who are being compensated. ” Scottsdale Assistant City' Manager Richard .A. E>ow- ers thinks things are work ing well there, although he is frank to say that "no one ever gets it right. Even after years, the system needs con stant review and tweak ing and turning and ask ing people how they feel about it. It needs to be checked so it doesn’t turn into a giveaway pro gram. ” Three m Jiiths ago. Denver put its entire city work force on pay for performance—all 8,000 employees. It is the largest experiment of its kind yet under taken in a modem .Ameri can c“ommunity. Under the old system, “you got exactly the same raise if you met expectations, if you e.xceeded expecta tions or if you made an outstanding contribu tion.’ says Personnel Di rector \. Fred Timmer man. "Where ’s the in centive to do anything more than meet expectatioris if I work outstandingly all year next to someone who ’s just meeting expectations and we get the same raise? Cogent reasons to the contrary, the move to pay foi performance is a shock for many public employees They don’t all like it, says Jay Schuster, a Los Angeles consultant on compensation issues. ‘Tve had managers stand up in meetings. ” Schuster relates, ’’and say. I came into the public sector to avoid having my performance judged. Whv would I want to have you come in and tell me whether I’m a pelican or an eagle?’ It’s a shock for citizens, too. sometimes. Ruth Ann Bramson, assistant county e.vecutive in Florida’s Hillsbor ough Countv', returned from vacation in September to find that her salary was news. Budget realities had cut the expected 3 percent cost-of living increx«ie for countv employees in half. Unhappiness over that fact focused on Bramson’s $22,000 increase m pay over the past two years, the result of a promotion and two pay-for-performance raises. Such raises, saul <’ne critic, ’’are ridiculous when you make over 60 grand for sitting on your duff The furor nOVKR.MNr.December 19H<)Rat^rr Motormni