Return to Article: Data brings out disparities in promotions, performance ratings
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53148
Life is not fair. I am treated differently because I am overweight and grey haired. That's the way it is folks. You can't change human nature. Is it better someplace else?
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30535
If you are qualified and have a good to excellent work performance, then you need to start by questioning as to why your performance rating or evaluation was poor. You have the right to disagree with your rating and to attain documentation confirming as to how your rating was achieved. Start to work on fixing the problem instead of yelling discrimination and racist!
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28314
Nothing surprising here! In my experience, managers select and promote near images of themselves. Bigots select and promote other bigots. Jerks select and promote jerks. Incompetents select and promote other incompetents. Military select and promote military and because of veterans preference, highly qualified get systematically excluded. Lastly and leastly, good managers select and promote other good managers. The end result is an exponential expansion of unqualified over highly qualified. Government will suffer and public confidence will plummet.
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27957
Why is it that whenever there is a report that shows that discrimination still exist, people assume that the minority must have poor work performance or was not qualified? Not that it could possibly be that the person doing the rating is clearly a racist. The sooner we open our eyes and judge fairly across the board, the better this world will be.
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27954
Please, favoritism and discrimation still abounds in the federal government. It has been going on for the last 30 years and will continue. How many surveys over the last 10 years addressing these topics have been sent for employees to "speak their minds". Has anything changed???
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27763
The best solution to sharply minimize discrimination in hiring and promotion is to administer exams to identify the best qualified. It works well for the military (navy) and the US Postal Service. An examination will go a long way in minimizing favoritism and gives everyone more of an equal opportunity to promotions.
Don't wait thirty years for the unqualified and incompetent to retire. Identify and replace them through rigorous testing and sharp scrutiny. At the same time hold accountable those managers who engaged in hiring and promoting incompetent and unqualified workers. They should be charged with fraud waste and abuse for personnel/manpower mismanagement by grossly misrepresenting unqualified employees
The incompetent will wail and moan while the competent will welcome the challenge.
"No problem can be solved by the same consciousness that created it" Einstein
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27754
I have a lot of experience poring over this kind of data and a lot of experience supervising a diverse workforce. The problems with the published data is that they don't include a great deal of analysis. I have supervised employees in the same position that have educational backgrounds ranging from an MPA to "no degree." Without getting into race or gender, it's pretty easy to guess which employee volunteers for the writing projects, the special studies projects, etc. In the past, I have tried to assign work to employees across the board to develop employee skills. The results have been mixed at best. Performance ratings are geared to recognizing employees who perform above the standard. It's hard to perform above the standard if you do not have excellent writing skills and other communication skills. In our pursuit of diversity, we promote employees who are "well qualified" as opposed to "best qualified." It is hard to simply be an employee when you get promoted to a series of positions where your are always just over your head. Employees at all grade levels suffer when they get promotions based on the minimum time-in-grade in a lower position. We need to analyze performance statistics and diversity statistics for ways to improve performance and job satisfaction and not to simply improve performance ratings. The country deserves government employees who are red, white, and blue before they are anything else. Diversity issues, first, should be dealt with at the recruitment level. An employee with a good education is always going to have a head start. Always.
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27749
How nice that diversity is looked at for one Agency...However, I think that if you look at diversity in areas that are historically of one race, gender, etc. You will find a reverse discrimmination happening. I have experienced this myself when I worked in Atlanta for an un-named Federal Agency...if you weren't of the predominant race in that area, and female, you didn't get promoted. A large number of the Supervisors & Managers were of the favored race (& gender) and the word was if you were white, forget getting promoted!! Diversity needs to be looked at from all sides, not just nationally, to make sure reverse discrimmination isn't occurring!!
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27743
How glamorous and exciting to examine and attack a decent legislative agency like the GAO for racism and discrimination. One has to look really hard at statistics to find any discrimination at GAO. It is really too bad that the backwater horrible legislative agency called GPO, where the working conditions are much worse than anything at GAO, can get away with so much discrimination and awful personnel practices against minority printers and other employees. But nobody seems to care about the racism and discrimination at this legislative agency called by its employees the "Plantation". It is shocking that a Democratic Congress would ignore complaints about its own legislative agency-- GPO is a stain on the reputation of Congress and nobody cares.
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27742
I have been attempting to show this to management for at least 5 years. I think that this is a good start but that all facilities should be investigated for this..
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27739
If NSPS is instituted across the board, the inequality will only increase. It's another gimmick that promotes the "good ole' boy network".
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27735
As soon as the Country STOPS discriminating, verses one of your comments that states 'claiming' discrimination, then all will be well.
In federal employment as well as private, there is still lots of discrimination. To state otherwise, is foolish.
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27733
It amazes me that so many continue to dismiss the fact that racism is alive and well in America.
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27730
I've had the reverse happen when I was at the IRS. With a female manager, no man could get promoted. After 17 years in this office and all 5's on my evaluation, I was told that I was unpromotable but when I asked for training I was told that I could not have the training because it would make me promotable. I finally left and now have to start over elsewhere. My career is now a disaster. This managaer would continually move me around so I could never claim any kind of specialized experience and I am still stuck. This manager put job announcements on the desks of those she wanted promoted and the rest of us wouldn't even know there was a job promotion. Others were asked to step out of promotion packages so her people could be promoted and when we went to the union, nothing happened, she'd just ignore the union and do whatever she wanted. We even wrote to the commisioner of the IRS and the response back was "We support our managers". The blind can't see because they can't see. These people are blind because they choose not to see.
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27728
I would like to see the same data gathered for HUD, especially the data comparing the performance rating and pay and promotions data for HQ and field offices.
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27727
The article was informative up to a point. However once again an article(whether here or other venues) refers to women, minorities, diversity and other catch words but the majority of the write up is about black and white. In the government there are Latinos, Orientals and other that are given very little play.
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27722
This is one of the most biggoted articles I've ever read. Has it occurred to anyone the people received the ratings they actually deserved? Over my 30 years of federal service I've heard diversity and goals till I could puke. You have created an environment where people are intimidated in to employing people who believe they are entitled to the higher paying job because they are considered in your definition of "diverse"; and believe me, they are the furthest thing possible from being the best qualified. Treat all people with respect and forget the goals. The opportunity is there and it's about time people started working for their promotions instead of being placed in them to fit some greyed out mold.
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27721
If GAO wanted to truly perform a service to African Americans and the performance management system, it would follow the same practice it uses to assess its mission performance and would publish, not merely performance ratings and promotions, but actual accomplishments used to derive those ratings. Until it does so we will not know whether there is "parity" in performance management at GAO.
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27719
I am neither shocked nor surprised by this revelation-if truly investigated, I believe it would be found to reflect the "norm" throughout the Federal Government.
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27715
The sooner this country stops claiming "discrimination," the sooner we can start promoting those individuals that out-perform others fairly.
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27703
In 30 years of government service the only discrimination I've seen has been lost opportunities for promotion because I was a white male. Perhaps the stats show lower levels of performance. Should the discussion turn in that direction? If you apply equally rigorous standards in hiring/promoting and equitably manage your human capital, it would norm out. If you hire/promote people of less ability because of their gender or race, don't expect to see that reflected in promotions or awards to your best performers. The real discrimination starts on the front end and efforts to artificially achieve diversity have nothing to do with performance. Concur, under NSPS it will become even more arbitrary.
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27699
Equal performance and skill deserves equal opportunity for promotion regardless of race. But, middle management is a bureaucratic nightmare. It promotes favorites because it fears exposure. No matter how many laws are passed, middle management will find a way to preserve the empire.
The real problem is not that middle management discriminates against blacks. Its that it discriminates against diversity of opinion and progress. There are far too many middle managers for the amount of productivity and too little oversight. They fear for their job positions which could be eliminated without any affect to the output.
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27680
This is America folks! Race matters and will continue to matter. I guess it sucks to be anything color but white! Who is to be blamed?
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27679
Is anyone surprised by what happened at GAO? I would very much like to see the same type of data for our DoD agency. It will also be interesting to see how things progress under NSPS - National Security Personnel System, AKA pay banding. Ish
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