Sir, – I refer to Carl O’Brien’s article (Front page, April 11th) regarding the operation of the performance management and development system in the civil service and I wonder at the sub-heading, “Pay levels or promotions may not reflect actual performance”.
This is problematic, first on the basis that it suggests that elsewhere they “really do”, and second on the basis that it naturalises the idea of the individual’s cognitive, emotional and bodily presence and engagement as a “performance”.
I would draw your readers’ attention to the acknowledgment in the cited Comptroller and Auditor General’s Report that the so-called distribution norm for so-called performance ratings “was not based on firm empirical evidence about expected performance”. In any case, we must seriously question the values of any “expert group” that would look at a workforce and expect that 10 per cent should be rated “unacceptable” and a further 20 per cent as “needing improvement”.
I appreciate that these “performance management” regimes have become quite commonplace and that many will argue in their favour: employers and managers who wish to reduce the indeterminacy of the employment contract and secure a more efficient “input-output ratio”; and employees who are structured to compete with one another for recognition and reward.
This not to argue that there is no room for improvement. Rather it is to question the idea that any competent manager would need recourse to such a technical instrument as a rating system.
The decision to sanction managers because there are too many high ratings and not enough low ratings is a technicist response and “needs improvement”. Where is the research on the dysfunctional effects of such rating systems?
We must seriously question how we are relating to one another and question the increasing domination of social relations by instrumental and economic rationality.
Are we really arguing that in order to improve societal outcomes it is both necessary and desirable to treat each other as units of cost and rate one another?
We need more, rather than less, trust – more co-operation, collaboration and more faith in our humanity. We need to look after one another. – Yours, etc,