Performance Appraisal and Performance

Employee Selection

To firms of any size, the selection of qualified and able employees is a huge thing. Indeed, selecting the wrong employee can cause major issues and is simply expensive even in the best of circumstances as hiring and training new people just adds to the expenses and such that come up. As such, firms and organizations need to know precisely what they are looking for and how to find it. Just one organization that has had massive struggles in this regard, up to and including the leadership, would be the Veteran Affairs Administration. Even with a recent change of leadership, they are still having issues from top to bottom. While the Veteran Affairs Administration has had some gaffes and issues when it comes to hiring and selection, the core processes they have in place are actually very solid.

Analysis

The introduction to this report mentions the Veterans Affairs Administration. When it comes to organizations and their hiring practices and performance, public agencies like the VA are obviously (and should be) held to a higher standard, and for more than one reason. Indeed, there are taxpayer dollars in play, as is the case with all public agencies of any level, and the people ostensibly being served by the VA are veterans who have become injured and maimed in a wartime situation. The duality of those facts makes it all the more important to pick and select the right people. More than a few things have cropped up in terms of problems at the agency including documents being shredded improperly, veterans with life-threatening conditions dying or at least waiting too long when it comes to medical care and beyond. With those items and mind as a starting point, the author of this report is going to assess how the VA is currently operating and what perhaps (or definitely) the VA should do instead to make sure that the events of the past are not repeated.

Current VA Hiring Behavior

In terms of what is currently going on, what is widely known is really just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Indeed, a review of the VA's hiring practices from as recently as 2014 reveals that they are engaging in practices that are unethical or even illegal on their face. Just as one example, there was apparently a position created for a friend and not because it was actually needed. That job was part of the Cemetery Administration. In another case, a woman was unfairly provided with a letter of recommendation so as to help her procure government contracts that she might not get were she not to have the letter. In yet another case, a person was allowed to retire over a long amount of time so as to get the salary of the person to $100,000 a year before the retirement went through. In short, the amount of cronyism and favoritism that has been going on with the VA is just on top of the other bad or illegal practices going on that have led to veterans not getting the quality or amount of care that they ostensibly should be entitled to (Ybarra, 2014). Speaking of veterans not getting care, there is apparently a boon of bureaucratic red tape that is precluding the needed people from being hired. Per a 2015 article, there was to be the hiring of 28,000 new clinical professionals so as to improve waiting times and the quality of care. This was paired with a cash infusion of roughly $5 billion USD. However, the aforementioned red tape led to only a tenth of the requested and requiring hiring being completed (Robeznieks, 2015).

Even with the malfeasance noted above, the VA actually does a good job overall and should not be judged solely for what they do wrong. Indeed, they do a lot of things right and this includes the realm of hiring and selection. Just as one example, they have a rather advanced and detailed hiring portal on their website. They give a first-hand view to applicants about what the hiring process is like at the VA. They also have a frequently asked questions (FAQ) section to address the common concerns that applicants have. Beyond that, they have sections and programs tailored to certain kinds of applicants. Examples include students, trainees, the military and beyond. They provide a detailed Adobe PDF document that shows the steps to apply for a job one by one (VA, 2016). There are also regional sites that hire for specific offices. For example, the Houston office has their own website (Houston VA, 2016). When it comes to the performance appraisal process, the VA is also very open and honest about that. The VA has a number of articles and guidelines that they follow when it comes to the performance appraisal process. They have firm and complete rules regarding job classification, what define competence in a given job, what awards and recognitions that employees can get, merit promotions the performance appraisal process in particular and increases for employees within a particular grade (VA, 2016).

A few details that people might want to keep in mind include that unions are not allowed to negotiated over position classification, management has the right to change job duties in a way that will impact classification and positions duty lists must always be accurate in terms of what shall be done by said employee. In other words, if the job changes the position description will change. Upon being changed, an updated position description (PD) is to be provided to the impacted employees. What will not be seen in VA job descriptions are phrases like "other duties as assigned." As such, it is very clear what should have been done by the employee when it comes to performance appraisals. The performance appraisals are supposed to be related only to job performance and conduct that is not related to job performance is not considered. For each job duty, there is a rating scale that ranges from unsatisfactory to outstanding. In the event that an employee is not performing as they should be, they are put under a performance improvement plan (PIP) and are given 90 days to remedy their shortcomings (VA, 2016).

Recommendations

So as to solve or at least mitigate the issues that exist, the author of this response would offer the following recommendations and plan to help solve the problems that the VA is facing.

• The bureaucratic red tape that is flummoxing people in terms of hiring the authorized and needed people needs to stop. Whatever is stopping from the hiring from occurring needs to be stopped and this will obviously require intervention and oversight from leadership

• If there are rules, regulations and processes that are faulty but that must be changed by Congressional action, then that needs to happen immediately. If the fixes that are needed can be done at the discretion of VA leadership, then that needs to happen immediately