“A Strategic Guide for Building Effective Teams”
Albertino
ppmsummer05.pdf
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Contents
How Much Should Federal Employees be Paid? The Problems with Using a Market Philosophy in a Broadband System . . . . . 121 Howard Risher
A Strategic Guide for Building Effective Teams . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 Laird Mealiea and Ramon Baltazar
Sexual Harassment and Demographic Diversity: Implications for Organizational Punishment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161 Jacqueline A. Gilbert
Preparing for the Unthinkable: Managers, Terrorism and the HRM Function . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 Ronald W. Perry and Lawrence D. Mankin
Extending Employment Beyond Retirement Age: The Case of Health Care Managers in Quebec . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195 Tania Saba and Gilles Guerin
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International Public Management Association for Human Resources 1617 Duke Street Alexandria, VA 22314 tel: 703-549-7100 fax: 703-684-0948 Internet: www.ipma-hr.org Email: [email protected]
Index to Volume 34 – by Title “A Strategic Guide for Building Effective Teams,” Laird Mealiea and Ramon Baltazar, 34(2), 141
“Essential Formal Mentor Characteristics and Functions in Governmental and Non-Governmental Organizations from the Program Administrator’s and the Mentor’s Perspective,” Wanda J. Smith, Jerusalem T. Howard and K. Vernard Harrington, 34(1), 31
“Extending Employment Beyond Retirement Age: The Case of Health Care Managers in Quebec,” Tania Saba and Gilles Guerin, 34(2), 195
“Frame of Reference Training for Assessment Centers: Effects on Interrater Reliability When Rating Behaviors and Ability Traits,” Duncan J. R. Jackson, Stephen G. Atkins, Richard B. Fletcher and Jennifer A. Stillman, 34(1), 17
“How Much Should Federal Employees be Paid? The Problems with Using a Market Philosophy in a Broadband System,” Howard Risher, 34(2), 121
“Human Resource Management in American Counties, 2002,” Sally Coleman Selden, 34(1), 59
“Indicators of Strategic HRM Effectiveness: A Case Study of an Australian Public Sector Agency During Commercialization,” Stephen T.T. Teo and John Crawford, 34(1), 1
“New Challenges for South African Development and Training — Linkages to Empirical Research,” Dinesh C. Jinabhai, 34(1), 85
“Preparing for the Unthinkable: Managers, Terrorism and the HRM Function,” Ronald W. Perry and Lawrence D. Mankin, 34(2), 175
“Sexual Harassment and Demographic Diversity: Implications for Organizational Punishment,” Jacqueline A. Gilbert, 34(2), 161
“Situation of Migration and Potential Available to Reverse the Brain Drain — Case From Pakistan,” Shahana Kaukab, 34(1), 103
Index to Volume 34 – by Author Stephen G. Atkins, 34(1), 17 Ramon Baltazar, 34(2), 141 John Crawford, 34(1), 1 Richard B. Fletcher, 34(1), 17 Jacqueline A. Gilbert, 34(2), 161 Gilles Guerin, 34(2), 195 K. Vernard Harrington, 34(1), 31 Jerusalem T. Howard, 34(1), 31 Duncan J. R. Jackson, 34(1), 17 Dinesh C. Jinabhai, 34(1), 85
Shahana Kaukab, 34(1), 103 Lawrence D. Mankin, 34(2), 175 Laird Mealiea, 34(2), 141 Ronald W. Perry, 34(2), 175 Howard Risher, 34(2), 121 Tania Saba, 34(2), 195 Sally Coleman Selden, 34(1), 59 Wanda J. Smith, 34(1), 31 Jennifer A. Stillman, 34(1), 17 Stephen T.T. Teo, 34(1), 1
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How Much Should Federal Employees be Paid? The Problems with Using a Market Philosophy in a Broadband System Howard Risher, Ph.D.
The General Schedule (GS) salary system is broken. It cannot be repaired. It’s no longer meeting the needs of government. No elements of the system are consistent with best practice thinking in salary management. It was designed more than 50 years ago for a very different world of work. At this stage it has no defenders.
The Departments of Defense (DOD) and Homeland Security (DHS) have the authorization to develop their own salary systems. They join a growing list of agencies with similar authority—the Federal Aviation Administration, the Internal Revenue Service, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the General Accountability Office. Each of these agencies has argued that the GS system is an impediment to their efforts to accomplish their mission and achieve their strategic goals. The list will continue to grow.
The new model for salary management that has been adopted or proposed in these agencies is based on the broadband concept. Within the bands, pay for performance is the basis for managing salaries. That policy change has been the focus of heated debates. While it is effectively a universal practice for white-collar employees in non-government sectors, it represents a radical and difficult change for public agencies.1
The new model also makes it necessary to rethink the strategy for aligning salaries with prevailing market pay levels. The locality pay concept adopted under the Federal Employee Pay Comparability Act (FEPCA) was never allowed to operate as planned, and probably has lost too much credibility to be resuscitated. It also suffers from a change in the way the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) conducts its salary surveys. The issues and problems associated with linking federal pay to market rates are the focus of this article.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 121
Federal Pay Problems
The need for a new salary system has been studied repeatedly. The study thatled to FEPCA in 1990 was by no means the first, but previously, initiatives forchange were unsuccessful.2 Since then there have been several other studies. The National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA) has studied it three times. The
most recent study, released in early 2004 by NAPA, is titled Recommending Performance-Based Pay. The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) also developed a major white paper in 2002, titled “A Fresh Start for Federal Pay: The Case for
Modernization,” that avoided specific recommendations but presented a strong argu-
ment for a very different salary model. These studies and others have repeatedly high-
lighted the problems with the GS system.
The problems can be grouped into three buckets.
• First is the need to end the culture of entitlement and move to pay-for-
performance.
• Second is the need to minimize the bureaucracy, and to make the system more
flexible and responsive to agency needs.
• The third is the need for more market sensitivity to make federal agencies more
competitive in national and local labor markets.
Public employers always have problems with labor market questions and particu-
larly with the policy decisions associated with the linkage to market pay rates. The
simple fact is that government agencies have not had the support to respond quickly
to labor market developments. FEPCA introduced what was believed to be a solid
answer but the politics overrode the plans. The shift to a broadband framework will
enable agencies to be more responsive to market trends, but the new flexibility makes
many stakeholders uncomfortable.
One of the most basic issues is the alignment of federal salaries with pay levels in
other sectors of our economy. That is viewed as essential for effective human resource
management. FEPCA was an attempt to make the GS system more market sensitive.
However, both the Clinton and Bush Administrations have declined to close the pay
gaps as anticipated when FEPCA was enacted. As the GS salary ranges are replaced
with salary bands, there will need to be new attention to the alignment problem. This
article looks at the problems associated with using market data in a broadband system.
It’s not a simple one.
Supply, Demand and Wage Determination Any college student who has taken an introductory microeconomics course has an
understanding of the basics. Every economics text has a graph with a demand curve
intersecting a supply curve. As demand goes up or supply diminishes, the price
increases. It’s that simple.
The nuance in salary management is that every job family has its own dynamics.
The demand and supply are for specific skill sets, e.g. network analyst, and the
122 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
employers competing for those skills define the labor market. In metropolitan areas
where demand and pay rates tend to be the highest, labor markets are further defined
by commutation patterns. For example, in the Washington, DC area, people who live
to the east of the city are unlikely to be interested in jobs in the Fairfax, Va. area
because of the commute across the Potomac River. When areas are dominated by a
single industry, especially if it’s growing rapidly, it drives up the pay levels for jobs
demanded in that industry. That and geography explain pay in the San Francisco Bay
area. Houston and the oil industry is another example.
The difference in demand across occupations explains why some pay rates go up
much faster than others. Since at least the end of World War II, the pay for jobs requir-
ing college degrees has gone up faster than the pay for clerical jobs and for unskilled
jobs. That trend can be traced over the decades in Census data. It explains one of the
basic problems with the GS after 50 years.
The demand curve also explains why those who graduated from, for example, Ivy
League schools, are paid more than those who did not. It has to do with presumed
skill level. This also explains why those who perform better on the job than others
earn more. Employers are willing to pay higher salaries for better-qualified individuals.
It’s simple. It’s consistently true across occupations.
Private sector employers almost universally work to understand and define their
labor markets, collect salary survey data for those markets, and rely on the survey data
to determine salary levels. It works well and is simple. That is the basis for a market-
based pay system.
Public sector employers try to balance economics and politics. They hold down
the pay of higher paid job families artificially. They pay a broad spectrum of jobs under
a single salary schedule—e.g., the GS system covers all white-collar jobs—which
inflates some pay levels over market levels and holds others down. For short periods it
can work, but in the long run, the economic pressures prevail—the number and qual-
ity of candidates for high paying jobs deteriorates and the public becomes sensitive to
the inflated salaries for low paying jobs.
Part of the public-private differential is also attributable to economics. Teachers
are a good example. There is always a large supply of new teachers entering the labor
market. It’s cheaper to hire inexperienced teachers because of the salary systems.
That’s supply and demand working. The new grads with better credentials are gener-
ally hired by the more affluent school systems. Some would argue that all teachers
should be paid more but excess supply defeats the politics. Those in purely public sec-
tor jobs are typically not paid well because of limited demand.
There are to be sure issues like pay equity that surface occasionally. It is
human nature that lower paid people are unhappy when they see others
receiving higher increases and moving ahead faster. Some of the gender gap is
clearly historical discrimination but it’s also supply and demand. The nursing field,
for example, is made up predominantly of females. There is currently a high
demand for nurses, and as a result those in the field are experiencing rapid pay
increases. The pressure for pay equity diminished as women moved into previously
male jobs.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 123
Many would argue that economics should not be this controlling, and occasion-
ally society elects to override the law of economics, as with the minimum wage.
However, in a society that believes in market forces, it is hard to gain enough political
support to override the controlling factors of economics. Decisions to override these
factors and pay above-market salaries add unnecessarily to labor costs. That’s the argu-
ment against increasing the minimum wage. Salary increase policies also reflect the
economics.
Labor Markets and Market Pricing One of the first steps in planning a salary system is the analysis and definition of the
relevant labor market. The understanding of the labor market is then the basis for col-
lecting and using survey data. For lower level jobs the competing employers are all
within a reasonable commuting distance. As salaries and job specifications demand
higher skills and experience, the market broadens. At senior levels labor markets tend
to be national and for some specialties global. Surveys are generally designed to sup-
port this logic.
Companies in several major industries rely strictly on surveys limited to invited
companies in the industry. One survey, for example, is limited to pharmaceutical com-
panies. These surveys are privately funded and conducted by a third party. The com-
panies define the relevant labor market by their product or service competitors. They
tend to be high paying companies. Colleges and universities as well as healthcare
organizations similarly focus their market analyses on employers in their own industry.
Actually every employer competes in numerous labor markets. That is particu-
larly true for public organizations, which tend to have a much broader range of job
families. Law enforcement and corrections, for example, are essentially limited to pub-
lic employers. Librarians compose another labor market that is dominated by public
employers. There are many jobs series that are limited to public employment.
To determine appropriate salaries for government jobs, public employers some-
times are forced to stretch the logic of labor markets to develop acceptable market
data. A case in point are the police in New York City. Police recruits come from the
boroughs of New York and a few surrounding towns. That is the labor market.
Surprisingly, perhaps, police pay in New York is not as high as it is in the two notable
suburban towns of White Plains and Yonkers. With the budget problems in New York
however, the city is not willing or able to match those salaries. Moreover, the jobs are
really not comparable. Therefore, the analyses of “market” pay looks at police pay lev-
els in cities like Chicago and Los Angeles — despite the recognition that those cities
are unrelated to the New York labor market.
The federal government under FEPCA and before relied on a single market —
all employers, private as well as public, with at least 50 employees. At one time the
minimum was 100 employees but the scope of the survey was expanded to
include the smaller employers because someone expected them to pay lower
salaries. It didn’t turn out that way but it significantly increased the cost to conduct
the survey.
124 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Despite these issues, understanding labor markets is relatively straightforward as
long as everyone is paid under the same salary system. A single salary survey can then
be used for the annual “market pricing.” The data are used to determine increases in
market pay rates and that analysis is used to adjust the salary ranges to maintain the
planned alignment with the market. The logic and steps are taught to compensation
specialists in workshops and spelled out in textbooks. It’s acceptable—unless the mar-
ket trends force employers to address specific problems, such as IT jobs in the 1990’s.
The GS system in theory covers all white-collar workers, but the OPM has been
forced to respond to market pressures numerous times. The special rate policy is a
way to address “special” situations, and special rate situations now run on for more
than 400 pages. There are so many special rates that OPM’s website makes it possible
to search by occupation and by agency. In addition, there are separate salary schedules
for IT specialists, engineers, law enforcement, medical officers, and for clerical
employees in DC. Beyond that, Congress has authorized several agencies to develop
their own pay systems to give them more flexibility.
Market data are only available in published surveys for 20 percent to 25 percent
of the jobs. Traditionally other jobs have been paid relative to the survey jobs. The
basic assumption has been that all jobs assigned to a salary range should be paid the
same. Job evaluation or classification systems were used to assign jobs to ranges.
That’s also spelled out in textbooks and workshops.
The logic, however, begins to fall apart when an employer shifts to a broadband
salary structure. The reasons for making the change are far more important than the
market pricing problems so this should not deter employers considering the change.
The logic of salary management in a banded structure is somewhat different and
to some degree still unfolding. For example, it makes no sense to start every employee
in a band at the lowest salary, and it makes even less sense to allow all salaries to
progress over time to the top of the band. Neither the lowest or highest salaries are
necessarily within the range of market pay for all jobs in the band.
Two best practice examples from the corporate world are IBM and Marriott. Both
have switched to banded salary systems. Both have delegated the day-to-day responsi-
bility for salary management to line managers and developed software to support
them. Both rely heavily on private, industry salary surveys. In each company, managers
are responsible for managing the salaries of their people. They have access to a data-
base of market information that tells them what the market is paying for a specific job.
Hotel labor markets of course involve essentially unskilled workers in local labor mar-
kets, and the hotel industry survey generates market data by zip code. They also can
access information on what other employees in similar and related jobs are paid
across their company. Managers are then expected to decide how much to pay
their people. They are very different companies but the way they use market data is
very similar.
The city of Charlotte, NC is another best practice example of salary management
in broad salary bands. The city is often cited as a model for other management prac-
tices. They have a banded salary structure and rely heavily on market data for manag-
ing pay. Managers have access to data on pay levels in the Charlotte area. The policy
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 125
calls for paying employees, based on performance, within a 30 percent range around
the market averages. Each manager has a budget for increases. (This policy has been
used by the city for more than a decade.)
Banded salary structures provide considerably more flexibility but they also
impose greater discipline for managing salaries. Salary management is very different
from the GS system. When the discipline is inadequate, salaries can lose the planned
alignment with the market.
Corporate Pay Policies Long ago the Fair Labor Standards Act locked corporate employers into separate pay
systems for exempt and non-exempt employees. Corporations from that point for-
ward maintained pay systems for hourly and clerical employees that were separate
from the pay system for managers and the growing number of professional and
administrative employees. The policies and practices governing pay have historically
been different for each group.
Employers in non-government sectors frequently take this a step further and
maintain separate salary systems for occupations that have unique demand and supply
dynamics. The faculty in higher education has its own pay system. Nurses frequently
have a separate system. Engineers often are paid under a separate system. IT special-
ists sometimes have a separate system. There is a growing trend to create separate sys-
tems for broad occupation groups to have more flexibility to respond to market
trends.
The planned linkage to competitive or market pay rates is referred to in compen-
sation jargon as the “pay policy.” The most common pay policy is to align salary ranges
with average market rates. To maintain the planned alignment, they use survey data
each year to determine the percentage increase in market rates and then adjust the
ranges by that percentage.
That is essentially the policy used to adjust the General Schedule under FEPCA.
The step 4 salary in each range is intended as the point of alignment, and the policy
provides for closing the gap to 95 percent of the market rate. (In other words, federal
ranges would be 5 percent below the market.)
As another policy variation, some companies decide to pay, for example, at the
75th percentile of the market. That is to say, when market salaries for a given job are
arranged from high to low, companies identify the 75th percentile value and use that
as the basis for setting salary ranges. Their goal in adopting the policy is to attract
above average talent. If their business strategy leads to a need for top talent in a spe-
cific job family, it may be that the policy applies only to those specialists. Pay is only
one factor in recruiting but studies by Watson Wyatt and others show that high per-
formance companies tend to pay above average salaries.
Conversely, employers that pay below market salaries have trouble attracting
well-qualified job candidates. In fact, the dynamics of labor markets suggest that an
employer’s pay policy serves to segment the labor market. The individuals who are
seeking and presumably qualified for high paying jobs are unlikely to consider a job
126 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
that pays below market salary. In the same way, high performance companies are not
going to consider applicants from the pool of marginally qualified people.
An employer’s pay policy serves as the basis for defining the salary structure, for
annual structure adjustments, and for planning salary increase budgets. Those deci-
sions flow from the work to develop and interpret market data. The goal is to maintain
the planned alignment over time. Consistency sends an important message to employ-
ees and to the labor market.
Starting Salaries for New College Grads Federal starting salaries for new college graduates are woefully inadequate in some
fields. Surveys conducted by the National Association of Colleges and Employers show
that the average graduate in an engineering field started at roughly $50,000, that new grads in business fields started in the $35,000 to $40,000 range, and that graduates in
fields like history and English were paid around $30,000. Those are averages—some
grads started in some cities or industries at higher salaries.
As a point of comparison, the base starting salary for a GS 5 electrical or electron-
ics engineer—among the highest starting salaries in the private sector—for 2004 was
$31,302. That is almost $20,000 below the market average. Federal starting salaries for
other jobs series are in the $27,000 to $29,000 range depending on the locality.
To be sure, there are regulations that permit agencies to offer higher starting
salaries under certain circumstances, and those regulations are sometimes interpreted
loosely to permit higher salary offers. A lot of new grads now start at GS 7. A number
of academic studies suggest salary is often not the most important factor considered
by young applicants. Those studies, however, commonly focus on the private sector
where starting salaries do not typically vary by more than a couple of thousand dollars.
Fortunately the career plans of many new graduates are not driven exclusively by
prospective compensation.
At the same time, one of the widely accepted “truths” in salary management that
is reflected in many corporate salary policies is that higher starting salaries help to
attract better candidates. This is consistent with labor economic theory as well as
simple intuition. “You get what you pay for” is an old axiom. In general, graduates
with higher GPAs or other credentials will get salary offers that are well above
federal levels.
The problems agencies have recruiting new grads have been documented.
Those problems along with hiring freezes prompted agencies some years ago to move
people working in clerical or technical job series where degrees are uncommon into
the so-called administrative ranks. NAPA did a study some years ago that showed the
numbers of people who moved from clerical and technical jobs to an administrative
career ladder, and the numbers are in the thousands. OPM may not require college
degrees for these jobs but the fact is employers in the private sector commonly hire
only people with degrees. That has compounded federal workforce problems.
Ignoring for this purpose any arguments about the adequacy of performance, it makes
any comparison of private sector and federal pay suspect.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 127
Problems with Comparisons at Higher Job Levels Comparisons of salaries for entry-level positions are straightforward and easy to
assess. The new employees are hired through a competitive process with access typi-
cally to several prospective employers.
The problems comparing pay levels start with higher level jobs. The standard
methodology is to collect pay data for so-called benchmark jobs — those that are
believed to be defined in more or less the same way across organizations. When the
survey organizations are similar in size or in the same industry, that is probably a
safe assumption.
However, the methodology is based on four other commonly unrecognized
assumptions.
• First, it assumes the individuals responding to the survey questionnaire under-
stand the jobs in their organization. Since the completion of questionnaires is
normally not a priority, it’s often delegated to the most junior analysts who may
not be willing to admit their lack of knowledge in some areas. That is a problem
with all surveys except the few that involve face-to-face meetings to discuss job
matching.
• Second, it assumes the career ladders reflected in the questionnaire—typically
with three or four levels—are comparable across the survey organizations.
Technically, however, if a career ladder has four levels and another has five, none
of the levels are exactly the same and job comparisons are suspect.
• Third, it assumes the people at each level have roughly comparable qualifica-
tions. They can be overqualified but agree to perform the work, but if they
are under qualified it raises questions about the job comparisons. An
incumbent with no degree and limited experience may not be able or
expected to perform the same level work as an experienced employee with
a degree.
• Fourth, it assumes the workforce is organized and managed in roughly the same
way in each organization. In the typical survey the number of employees
reported at each career stage is highest at toward the bottom with diminished
numbers at each level. Junior employees often cannot expect a promotion until
an opening occurs above them.
In the federal government, career ladders for the administrative and professional
series commonly have five or six levels — GS 5, 7, 9, 11, 12/13. A couple of those are
artificial, but it makes job matching with the private sector difficult. Moreover, there
are also serious questions about the comparability of incumbent qualifications above
the entry level. Federal employees are promoted virtually every year to the next high-
est grade while corporate employees are promoted only every two or three years.
That of course means there are differences in the experience at each career stage. A
federal employee can reach the top of his or her career ladder in as little as six years.
That would be rare in the private sector.
128 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
The fourth assumption is not consistent with the way the federal workforce is
organized. OPM data show that there are 612,000 employees in the administrative and
professional series in Cabinet-level agencies. Of the total, only 5 percent are in GS 5 or
7 while 58 percent are at the GS 12 or 13 level—the full performance work level. The
typical workforce in a private sector organization would flip that distribution, with
most of the people at the bottom. Again it reflects the differences in promotion prac-
tices. Every organization has “junior level” work that is usually assigned to less experi-
enced employees. The federal data suggest that public sector work is not managed the
same way.
There is another assumption that differs in that it is a widely recognized problem
across the federal government. The job matching process in surveys is normally based
on job descriptions. It’s certainly not scientific or objective but it’s an accepted prac-
tice. However, the problem referred to as “grade creep” is known to be prevalent in
federal agencies. 3 The studies of how extensive it is were stopped years ago. Grade
creep means simply than an employee graded as, for example, a GS 11, might actually
be doing work at the GS 9 level or lower. That of course means he or she will be over-
paid for the work they are performing. This is one of the reasons the Office of
Management and Budget and the Clinton administration were unwilling to fully fund
FEPCA and close the gaps. The work to identify the over graded jobs would be
extremely costly and require several years. But the problem seriously undermines con-
fidence in any pay comparisons.
Corporations are, to be sure, affected to some degree by many of the same prob-
lems. Their use of survey data would not satisfy statistical standards. Their use of sur-
vey data, however, does not affect a $100 billion payroll and is never subject to the
same level of scrutiny. Survey data are used more loosely and often only seen by com-
pensation analysts. The HR staff does not have to answer to a list of stakeholders and
employee representatives, and certainly not to Congress. Companies would not see
the issues as important problems.
These concerns in combination make the “pricing” of federal jobs with current
surveys suspect. The data for entry-level jobs should be valid. For somewhat the same
reasons it would be reasonable to compare pay levels for the most experienced “full
performance” level employees. The concerns do not apply to people at the top of a
career ladder. It would also be reasonable to compare the salaries of the “experts”
above the full performance level if their promotions were handled conscientiously.
Salary Survey Problems This is not to argue market data cannot or should not be used to manage federal
salaries. There are red or perhaps yellow flags but careful planning should overcome
the concerns.
For reasons that have never been adequately explained, the BLS stopped con-
ducting job-based surveys several years ago and switched to a new survey methodol-
ogy, the National Compensation Survey (NCS). The change in the survey methodology
prompted the Federal Salary Council and the Pay Agent to conclude the data are not
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 129
appropriate for use in determining the locality pay gaps. The reasons for the change in
the survey methodology as well as for not relying on the new data are not directly rele-
vant to this article. BLS data were at one time central to federal salary management.
However, the new survey methodology was not planned with that in mind and now
represents a problem in moving to a new federal salary system, especially one based
on occupation groups.
The most recent Pay Agent’s report 4
highlights one of the problems with salary
surveys. In the report, the data from both the new NCS survey and the old
Occupational Compensation Survey Program (OCSP) are combined with a simple
average of the gap estimates. Despite the BLS concerns with statistical standards,
a city-by-city comparison shows the surveys are far from in agreement. In several
localities, the two surveys produce almost identical estimates of the pay gap. In
Boston, for example, the two estimates are 39.61 percent and 39.75 percent. The
values for Philadelphia are 36.30 percent and 36.03 percent. For other areas, the
estimates are unfortunately so disparate that it undermines the credibility of
the results. Alphabetically Cincinnati is the first, and shows 38.20 percent vs. 23.67
percent. The results for Columbus are 31.10 percent and 22.20 percent. For
Detroit the values are 42.64 percent and 33.98 percent. Yes, of course it is easy to
calculate the averages, but there are serious questions about which survey is valid —
if either.
A similar problem arose several years ago when OPM compared the results from
BLS surveys with data from the two largest salary survey companies — Watson Wyatt
and Mercer HR Consulting. OPM was at the time working to decide if either of the sur-
veys could be used to replace or supplement the BLS data. When results from the two
commercial surveys were compared, the surveys differed city-by-city, and when they
were compared with the BLS results the disparities were again evident. Significantly
the results reported in the commercial data tended to be lower than the BLS data.
Salary surveys should in theory be a representative sample of pay levels in the
labor market. BLS surveys are planned by people with expertise in sampling and start
with a solid sample of employers. That should mean the data are representative of pay
in the larger population of employers. Within an organization, the data collectors
rely on sampling methods to collect pay information for a sample of an employer’s
most important occupations. BLS data collectors are directly involved in the data col-
lection process.
The BLS data are presumably valid for the intended uses, primarily for the calcu-
lation of the Employment Cost Index (ECI). The problem is that the data cannot be
used for compensation planning since it is not job-specific. Average pay for an entire
job family is of little value since it says nothing about how pay is managed by job level
or how an employer’s workforce is distributed (e.g., younger workers tend to be paid
less). The BLS has been working to develop a version of the Factor Evaluation System
(FES) that can be used to estimate market pay by work level, but the results will not be
comparable with survey data for specific benchmark jobs.
At the same time, the methodology used with other national salary surveys
is also imperfect. Most are based on mass mailings of questionnaires to employers
130 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
on mailing lists. The questionnaires are planned around a group of commonly
used benchmark jobs. The methodology is virtually universal and widely accepted
by compensation specialists. Job analysts match their jobs to the benchmark
jobs and complete the questionnaires as their schedule permits. The incentive
to participate is a reduced price to purchase survey reports. The quality of the
data is unknown and the sample of participants by industry, company size, etc.,
is haphazard at best. The sample sizes are significantly smaller than those in
BLS surveys.
The private industry surveys are a different story. The participants are product
or service competitors that they jointly agree are important to their industry.
They contract with a third party for data collection and invest the time to ensure
the job matching is reliable. Many companies rely exclusively on private surveys of this
type. Those that do often are not willing to participate in other surveys. That means
it can be very difficult to get these often-prominent companies to participate in
new surveys.
There are also several good surveys conducted by professional groups. One in
higher education focuses on the common jobs in college and university administra-
tion. There are similar surveys in healthcare. These surveys share an advantage — the
organizations are organized in more or less the same way so there are a number of
comparable jobs.
That leads to one of the problems if federal agencies were to undertake a new
round of salary surveys. There are already a thousand or more salary surveys con-
ducted annually across the country. Companies will normally agree to participate in a
new survey only if they expect to gain needed data. The BLS has a relatively high num-
ber of companies that decline the request to participate. It is particularly unlikely that
a federal agency will be able to conduct its own surveys, except possibly for those that
focus on public employers.
The options for federal agencies are limited. The BLS is apparently unwilling to
revert to job-based surveys so that may not be an option. The Wyatt and Mercer sur-
veys are large but do not come close to the size or quality standards of the BLS. They
would be able to upgrade and expand their surveys with federal support. Survey firms,
however, generate revenue from their surveys and presumably will want that to con-
tinue; its doubtful they would be interested in conducting surveys exclusively for fed-
eral use. The DOD office that conducts surveys for the Federal Wage System (FWS)
also could expand its operation to cover additional occupational groups. Finally, there
are a number of volunteer survey groups, typically in major cities. The size of the
groups, the industry representation, the occupational coverage, and the quality of the
surveys varies from city to city. Federal agencies could probably become participants
in these surveys (although in some cities federal participation may be resisted). The
Washington area survey is a good one.
At some point in the very near future federal agencies will need to address their
market data needs. One of the overriding questions is how important it will be to
develop data that would meet the BLS standard. Most industry surveys fall far short of
that mark. It’s not clear if the BLS concern for quality is essential.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 131
How Competitive Are Federal Salaries? The conventional answer to that question is badly. Every year the Pay Agent’s report
shows the gaps are far from closed.
A Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report came to a different conclusion
using a “human capital” methodology for a comparative analysis of federal salaries 5 .
The idea comes out of economics where the originator, Gary Becker, won a Nobel
Prize for his work. Becker used Census data and multiple regression analyses 6
to show
that pay reflects an individual’s job tenure, education—an employee’s “human capi-
tal”—and other demographic characteristics. His analyses had nothing to do with fed-
eral pay but his model of the factors linked to pay is intuitively logical. The
methodology is now used occasionally in salary surveys.
The CBO database was limited and not job specific but their analyses led to the
conclusion that “federal employees earn about what they would in the private sector
for the human capital they possess.” They also concluded that federal managers
“accept less experience, education, and other human capital characteristics for those
jobs than do private sector managers.” 7
A somewhat different and less sophisticated analysis based on federal career pat-
terns leads to a similar conclusion. The starting assumption is that a new college grad
begins a federal career at GS 5, step 1, and then follows the typical pattern of promo-
tions. The steps and the annual increases in the federal salary ranges, 4.4 percent in
the illustration, are based on the 2004 Washington DC salary schedule and the 2003-
2004 adjustment.
The annual pay levels are as follows:
Year Grade/Step Step 1 Inflated Private Increase
1 5/1 $27,597 $27,597 $37,500 — 2 7/1 34,184 35,688 39,750 +6% 3 9/1 41,815 45,576 43,725 +10% 4 11/1 50,593 57,569 46,348 +6% 5 12/1 60,638 72,035 49,129 +6% 6 12/2 62,659 77,711 54,042 +10% 7 13/1 72,108 93,365 57,284 +6%
The comparative numbers for the private sector start with a salary that is
“competitive” for the business management job families. Salary increase budgets
until the recession were 4.0-4.5 percent and the 6 percent increase used in the
analysis would have been “good.” Now the increases in many companies are
slightly lower. Promotional increases are typically capped at 10 percent and the
individual then has to wait a year for the next increase. In the analyses, the
promotions in the private sector are granted at the end of the second year and the
fifth year.
If the federal employee starts at GS 7, the salary is more competitive but he or
she arrives at the same GS 12/13 levels one year sooner. That provides an even bigger
federal advantage over the first several years of a career.
132 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Is the federal advantage realistic? The conclusion is consistent with the CBO find-
ings. Slightly different percentages or a change in the promotion assumptions can
reduce the advantage but does not change the conclusion—through the early years of
a federal career the pay is surprisingly competitive.
If these data are reasonable, the implications are important. Federal salaries are
clearly above the market by their third year. By the sixth and seventh years, the differ-
ential is dramatic—more than 60 percent. That difference would make it virtually
impossible for the individual to find a comparable salary in the private sector, which
means he or she will be essentially locked into a federal career for the foreseeable
future. The salary advantage plus the value of federal benefits at that point may help to
explain the low federal turnover.
Since the promotion opportunities above the GS 12/13 level are limited,
the employee will possibly have to spend years there. An extended wait for the
next promotion would have to be frustrating after the quick, early promotions. It
can also be argued that higher starting salaries and more realistic career
management practices would result in a better use of the payroll dollars. These
practices will have to be reconsidered if starting salaries are increased closer to
market levels.
The comparative analyses of course apply to a small percentage of the work-
force. Most federal employees have worked in government for much longer than
seven years. But the experience affects their full career.
What Is an Appropriate Federal Pay Policy?
Despite the problems affecting the use and interpretation of survey data, there is a
fundamental need to understand how federal pay compares with prevailing market
levels. Every salary system has to be aligned on some basis with someone’s definition
of the relevant market.
The federal pay policy was reconfirmed with the passage of FEPCA. Federal
employees were to be paid 95 percent of the average salary for people in similar jobs
in the non-federal labor market. The 5 percent was a political bone at the time but it
can be defended in today’s world as a gesture to recognize the federal government
offers more job security.
There are many jobs in the federal government with counterparts in the private
sector. The logic of market pricing applies easily to these jobs. The common jobs
include those in business management, science and engineering, clerical support,
medical care, and information technology. These jobs are included in many surveys.
Market data could also be collected in new surveys because the jobs can be found in
most organizations. Salaries for these jobs should be based on market pay data. It may
be that the 95 percent FEPCA policy is too aggressive or costly but the discussion has
to start with a measure of market pay.
There are also other jobs with counterparts in state and possibly in local govern-
ment. These include specialists in agriculture, forestry, parks and recreation, correc-
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 133
tions, police, fire protection, procurement, and public health, to name a few. One can
argue that these specialists should be paid based on prevailing market pay levels for
these occupations. Realistically state and local pay levels tend to be lower than federal
salaries so there will be policy questions to address. The policy could be as simple as
the state salary plus 10 percent. Again the discussion starts with agreement on the rel-
evant market and the appropriate alignment.
But there are also jobs that are effectively unique to the federal government.
Several at this point are very sensitive and important to the country’s future—intelli-
gence, foreign affairs, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Presumably we would
want to once again employ “the best and the brightest” in these series. There are no
market data for these jobs. There are of course law enforcement personnel working at
the state and local levels but those pay levels are too low to attract the caliber of appli-
cants needed. Realistically federal and state agencies are not performing the same
functions or recruiting from the same applicant pools. Someone at a policy level will
need to decide how to determine the “right” pay levels for these unique positions. It
may be that a different pay policy should be used with these jobs to attract high cal-
iber applicants.
One possibility for the uniquely federal jobs would be to develop market data for
jobs that are known to be alternative career paths for individuals with the knowledge,
skills, and abilities needed for success in these roles. That is not going to produce an
exact answer but it would be useful information. It would also be possible to survey
the starting salaries for students who are invited to join college groups such as honor
societies. That would provide a little insight on what the brightest of our graduates are
looking for.
A related issue in salary management is the need to relocate employees
occasionally to make better use of the capabilities. The FBI particularly needs
to be able to move—or more accurately to entice—their best people to areas
like New York City and Los Angeles where the more sophisticated criminals
and terrorists are likely to operate. If these specialists are at mid-career, with
a spouse and family, the job opportunity may not be attractive if it diminishes
their lifestyle, and with housing prices and commutation problems to consider,
that can very easily be a problem. The locality pay concept does not provide a
solution to these problems.
This is best seen as a relocation problem rather than a pay policy issue.
Corporate policies provide considerable flexibility to make the job offer attractive and
federal agencies should have similar flexibility to make the best use of their people.
There are no easy answers for these situations. The true test of a pay system is
the impact on the employer’s ability to recruit and retain appropriately qualified peo-
ple. The recruiting and staffing data over the past decade or so suggest the capabilities
of the federal workforce have been allowed to degenerate. The quality of replace-
ments has not been as high as in prior generations. The demographic data for the fed-
eral workforce further suggest large numbers of people will soon retire. The salary
issues are only going to increase in importance as the need to replace this generation
of workers heightens.
134 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Salary Management in a Broadband Framework
Salary management at its core is an allocation problem. All employers have to operate
with a cap on salaries and on salary increase dollars– there is always a need to justify
increases. Outside of government, the high performers and high-demand jobs always
command a bigger share of the salary increase dollars. The purpose of the annual
salary planning exercise is to decide where higher salaries are justified or necessary
and how the budgeted dollars are best allocated. The decisions are not always easy
because it means some employees will see less than the average. But the problem is
unavoidable.
No employer outside of government would continue to live with the require-
ments of the GS system. The rationale behind the virtually automatic promotions in the
early years of a career is illustrative of how agencies have tried to overcome the pay
problems attributable to the GS. But that needs to be seen as a misallocation of funds.
Higher starting salaries and a slower career progression, keeping salaries aligned with
market levels, would be a much better allocation of the same salary dollars.
Realistically federal agencies have never managed salaries; the GS system and its
rules are intentionally rigid and require consistent administration. Agencies have not
had the authority to manage salaries. There are of course ways to bend or get around
the rules but that is not salary management. Those practices have been so prevalent
and have been going on for so long that corrective action within the existing legisla-
tive framework is no longer a practical alternative.
It has become apparent that the only reasonable solution is to scrap the GS sys-
tem and move to a different salary model. There is little question at this point that the
new model will be based on salary bands. That is the conclusion proposed in the plans
announced by the Departments of Homeland Security and Defense as well as in the
recently released NAPA report, Recommending Performance-Based Federal Pay. Each worked independently to develop its proposals. Each reached conclusions and pro-
posed program models that are surprisingly consistent. Each would rely on salaries
increases based on market trends and pay-for-performance. To this point there has
been no public interest in staying with a more traditional model based on overlapping
salary grades and ranges.
One design conclusion shared in the three proposals is the utility of separate
salary structures for broad occupation groups. DHS and DOD have not finalized the
groups but the NAPA report repeated its recommendations from a 1991 report on
broad banding that are in turn is largely consistent with the federal classification
scheme, as follows.
• Office services, including the generic office support positions
• General support, including aides, assistants, certain technicians and trainees that are more occupation-specific than generic
• Technical, including specialists, certain technicians, paraprofessionals and sub- professionals that directly support professional disciplines
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 135
• Administration, including administration and management functions and processes in support of operations
• Analysis, including job series involved in review, analysis and evaluation of pro- grams and processes
• Engineering, including series with a positive education requirement and profes- sional engineering job duties
• Sciences, including physical, biological and related scientific occupations that have a positive education requirement
• Health, including medical and health sciences directly involved in medical/health care
• Law enforcement and investigation, including all traditional job series in these fields
• Other, including job series in the social sciences, mathematics, accounting, con- tracting and procurement
The federal workforce has changed in many ways since 1991. For example, it
would make sense now to break out the IT job families and pay these specialists under
a separate system. It will be important to base any new salary system on credible and
defensible occupation groups.
The final groupings are not all that important at this point but the rationale is.
The creation of separate banded salary systems will enable the government to be
more responsive and fair in paying people within their labor markets. The job families
in these groups have a lot in common and are affected by many of the same market
trends.
Another system design feature common to each model is the plan to develop
salary bands that are consistent with career ladders. Market data would be used to
price each band. Salary increase policies would take into account market trends for
the job families that comprise each occupational group. The job families share work
values, job and work characteristics, and similar work credentials, education and expe-
rience requirements. That contributes to an affinity among workers that will facilitate
the development of career and performance management systems.
Under the GS system some people are overpaid relative to the market for their
skills while others are undoubtedly underpaid. That is inevitable with any pay system
where diverse job families are paid under the same policies and salary ranges. If there
is one thing that is manifest in light of what has transpired in our national labor mar-
kets since the recession of the early 1990s, it is that the federal government is compet-
ing in multiple, very different markets. The current system is not aligned at this point
with prevailing pay levels in any market—or more accurately where federal salaries are
competitive, it is coincidental.
There has been a steady message for decades that federal employees are under-
paid by a significant percentage—the announced gaps now range from 15.4 percent
136 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
for Orlando and increase to 55.4 percent for San Francisco, according to the latest Pay
Agent’s report. The magnitude of the gaps has been repeated so often that any other
conclusion will be ignored or scorned.
However, where occupational pay data are available, it may well be that job-by-
job analyses will show gaps, if they exist, that are far less than the overall area gaps
reported in the Pay Agent’s report. In the Washington, DC area, for example, a broad
based and widely used benchmark job survey shows pay differentials that are signifi-
cantly less than the official 36 percent gap. 8
Data for 36 jobs in this survey are reported
in an Appendix of the NAPA report. Federal pay is actually higher for 12 of the bench-
marks, and the “average” un-weighted gap is only 7.2 percent.
It’s been roughly a decade since BLS did a traditional benchmark job survey.
There is simply no survey data at this point to draw defensible conclusions. And of
course the way the federal workforce is managed raises serious questions about the
use of any benchmark surveys.
The proposed new salary model will raise the stakes and the need for survey data.
At this point the BLS is focusing on its Employment Cost Index (ECI) and not generat-
ing data that could be useful in planning the salary systems. However, there are already
a thousand or more surveys conducted annually across the country. Federal agencies
could participate in and help to fund the cost of local surveys. One of the consulting
firms working with DHS, Watson Wyatt, is one of the two largest salary survey organiza-
tions, so the firm is well qualified to play a role in developing market data.
The data will be used to define the width or height of each band. There is no
standard practice for defining salary bands. However, following the practice with a tra-
ditional salary structure, survey data will be needed for a sample of the jobs at each
career stage or level. Instead of focusing on the means or medians and the range mid-
points, one strategy would be to make the bands wide enough to capture the 25th and
75th percentiles of the highest and lowest paying jobs in the band. That is to say, the
survey data are used to define the top and bottom of each band. That will make the
bands wide enough to pay the federal employees in each band competitively.
Exhibit I illustrates a possible band for senior IT specialists in the Washington DC
area. The market data used are from the 2003 survey used in the NAPA report. The
data are used in basically the way the city of Charlotte uses market data in its salary
system. The pay for each of these specialists would be managed within a range cen-
tered on the market average and calculated as 30 percent from the bottom to the top.
These ranges fit the band and capture the actual salaries paid in the area for these
jobs. Other senior IT positions could also be paid within the band, with 30 percent
ranges for each job family.
One of the decided advantages of salary bands is the flexibility to align pay with
the market. Even within an occupational band, there is flexibility to follow the occupa-
tion-specific markets. The average new chemical engineer for example starts at
$52,000 while starting salaries for new civil engineers average $42,000. It would make
little sense to start both job series at $47,000 — the simple average. That would over-
pay civil engineers and create problems attracting the better chemical engineers. But
bands do not impose that requirement.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 137
Pay-for-performance or contribution is the basis for granting annual salary
increases within the band. A variation of the IBM, Marriott or Charlotte practices could
be adapted for the federal environment. Each of the three employers relies on a pay-
for-performance policy combined with extensive market pricing to determine salary
levels. They share a common pay philosophy—people start low in a salary a range and
progress over time to the market level for their job. When an employee is competent
in performing his duties, he or she should be paid competitively. That idea is reflected
in many employer pay policies.
Only those employees whose performance is above average should be paid
above the market rate. The new SES pay regulations incorporate this idea. The regula-
tions specifically “reserve the higher rates [between Executive level III and II] of pay
for those senior executives who have demonstrated the highest levels of individual
performance and/or made the greatest contributions to the agency’s performance.”
This concept is new in the federal community and reinforces the pay-for-performance
philosophy.
Agencies are going to need to rely heavily on managers to make these decisions.
As that responsibility is delegated to managers, they and their people will undoubtedly
be uncomfortable for some time. However, there is no reason to think federal man-
agers cannot develop adequate skills with training, or perhaps have access to coaches
and to software to facilitate their decisionmaking. 9
If federal agencies are going to replace the thousands of people who will soon
retire, the white-collar salary has to be more competitive. When the basic salary model
reflected in the DOD and DHS proposals is fully developed, it could satisfy the needs
of the federal government for years to come.
The federal payroll is now roughly $150 billion, including pay across the three
branches of government and all job levels. The GS system and white-collar salaries
account for almost $100 billion. It’s no longer possible to determine how federal salaries
compare with similar jobs in labor markets across the country. Very little credible data
has been developed to make those assessments for more than a decade. Assembling
that data should be an important early step in planning a new salary system.
138 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Notes 1
The author previously published an article on pay-for-performance in this journal. Risher, H. “Pay
for Performance: The Keys to Making it Work.” Public Personnel Management, vol. 31 no. 3, fall 2002, pp. 317-332.
2 The author was the managing consultant for the reports that led to Federal Employee Pay
Comparability Act. In addition, he worked as a member of the National Academy of Public
Administration teams that developed the first and the most recent of the reports on the salary sys-
tem. He ahs also worked as a consultant to OPM on the use of salary surveys.
3 The grade creep problem commonly occurs when a job is reclassified based on overstated or
inflated responsibility statements in a job description. The usual justification is the belief that the
change raises salaries closer to market levels.
4 Dated Dec. 4, 2003
5 Congressional Budget Office, Comparing Federal Salaries with Those in the Private Sector, July 1997.
6 Multiple regression analyses make it possible to use several “independent” variables — here the
demographic characteristics — to predict or estimate a “dependent” variable — salary in these
analyses.
7 The CBO analyses included the following variables: education, experience, gender (1/0), minority
status (1/0), job tenure, union status (1/0), geographic region, company size (employees), broad
occupation group, and aptitude (as measured by scores on the Armed Forces Qualification Test).
8 The survey is conducted annually by the Human Resource Association of the National Capitol
Area.
9 For more on planning a pay-for-performance policy and helping managers prepare for this new
role, see the recently released report by Howard Risher, Pay-for-Performance: A Guide for Federal Managers, IBM Center for the Business of Government, 2004.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 139
Author Howard Risher, Ph.D.
3 Crow Creek Lane
Radnor, PA 19087
Email: [email protected]
Howard Risher has more than 30 years of consulting experience in compensation and
performance management in both the public and private sectors. He was the managing
consultant on federal pay reform and more recently has played a role in several National
Academy of Public Administration studies. He is currently working on these issues with the
United Nations.
140 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
A Strategic Guide for Building Effective Teams Laird Mealiea Ramon Baltazar
Managers must recognize that they play a central role in effective team building. However, to be successful, managers require a framework to guide their activities. The purpose of this paper is to provide such a framework in the form of a seven- step process that can guide managers in their team-building efforts. The model itself is built upon the assumption that there are identifiable team characteristics that, if present, will help ensure team success. The model presents a set of decision strategies for the selection and sequencing of team-building efforts and interventions. The model is an iterative, multi-staged effort that requires considerable planning and environmental knowledge to successfully implement.
In response to globalization, rapid changes in external environments, and a desireby organizations to remain competitive, organizations have continued to flatten,decentralize, re-engineer their business processes, downsize, and empower their employees.
1 To facilitate these changes and gain a competitive edge, managers are
increasingly turning to team structures. 2
The actual team design used to support orga-
nizational goals may include such structures as cross functional teams, functional work
teams, project teams, self-managed teams, intact work teams, employee participation
teams, problem-solving teams, maintenance or support teams, and management
teams. Cohen and Baily 3
indicate that in the United States, 82 percent of companies
employing more than 100 employees have turned to the use of groups to support
organizational goals. We must therefore draw the conclusion that “European and
North American employees often do not work in isolation from each other but work
in team.” 4
Unfortunately, the typical team-building effort proves ineffective, for three
reasons. 5
First, it relies on the services of an external consultant, who is often unfamiliar
with the particular characteristics of the business, the organization, and its people.
Second, it involves off-site activities in artificial settings that fail to adequately reflect
actual work-site conditions and therefore make transfer difficult. Third, it fails to plan for,
monitor, and assess the transfer of team-building activities to the work environment.
In our view, the principal reason for the ineffectual outcomes of many team-
building activities is the failure to use a critical team-building resource that is readily
available in organizations — the manager. Managers play a critical role in maintaining a
team climate through their day-to-day activities. For us, team building must be an
ongoing activity internal to the organization. As such, it should be made one of the
manager’s primary responsibilities, instead of the responsibility of an external team-
building consultant or third party within the organization.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 141
A Strategic Model
To fulfill the team-building role, managers require a framework to guide activities. The
framework should be action oriented and easy to understand and apply, while incor-
porating the critical factors associated with effective team performance found in the
team-building literature. Our purpose in this paper is to provide such a framework in
a seven-step process intended to guide managers in their team-building efforts.
Figure 1 illustrates our framework. Each step in the framework is discussed in the sections that follow.
Our action framework assumes that managers, during their day-to-day interac-
tions with others and when making decisions affecting their work group, can play a
key role in facilitating team development. The framework also assumes that the target
group of team building is an intact work group where members (a) work within an
organizational context, (b) engage in a number of interrelated work tasks or activities,
and (c) are psychologically aware of one another but do not necessarily perform in the
same physical location.
Step 1 — Identify Team Characteristics Considered Predictive of Team Success
Behavioral scientists argue that the success of team-building efforts is a function of the
number of desirable team characteristics that can be built into a work environment.
The actual mix of factors considered relevant is a function of the type of team being
formed (e.g., temporary vs. permanent), tasks performed, the team’s level in the
organization, the length of time it has been in existence, and the ease of substitutabil-
ity of existing members.
When forming a new temporary team, the manager is normally interested in the
technical and interpersonal skills of potential members that are relevant to the group’s
tasks, the power distribution of selected members, and whether or not selected mem-
bers adequately represent relevant constituencies. The key to creating an effective
new, temporary team is balance in the attributes of team members, and the presence
of needed resources to achieve stated goals. For example, in problem solving and
implementation teams, managers must make sure that critical managers with power
are selected as members. Therefore, when decisions are made, non-participating man-
agers cannot easily resist. Similarly, managers want to ensure that the required expert-
ise and knowledge exists within the group. This increases the probability of creative
problem solving and outcome acceptance by non-members.
In the case of intact groups, where the work unit already exists, management is
likely to consider a different set of factors. This happens because intact groups do not
allow for easy inter-group transfer and typically engage in tasks that are well estab-
lished. Consequently, when intact groups are not achieving desired synergies, it is the
manager’s responsibility to identify those team characteristics likely to have a positive
impact on team behavior and change the existing climate so as to remove existing
deficiencies.
142 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 143
Figure 1. Action Framework for Managers Attempting to Engage in Team Building in Intact Groups
Step 1 Identify Team Characteristics
Considered Predictive of Team Success
Step 4 Use Pre-Established Decision
Criteria to Select the Appropriate Intervention Sequence to Change Deficient Climate Characteristics
Step 4a Enhance Understanding of the Existing Situation Through: • Ongoing observation and
interaction with group members and relevant others.
• Ongoing data collection about organizational culture, structure, systems, process, and politics.
• Follow-up interviews with group members
• Analysis of questionnaire subdimensions for further clarification.
Step 2 Measure Existing Team Climate
Characteristics and Produce an Existing Team Profile
Step 3 Identify Deficient Team Characteristics
Step 5 Identify Team-building
Interventions Capable of Over- Coming Deficiencies in Team
Characteristics
Step 6 Use Pre-established Decision Criteria to Select the Appropriate Intervention
Strategy or Set of Strategies to Improve Deficient Team Characteristics
Step 7 Implement and Assess Improvement
Our discussion focuses its attention on team characteristics for intact, permanent
groups. Therefore selection issues relating to personality characteristics, skills, or per-
sonal power are treated as givens within the existing work environment. Our argu-
ment for using this approach is that most managers do not have the luxury of
replacing existing group members. Put another way, once employees stay beyond des-
ignated trial periods of employment it is difficult to remove them without just cause.
Similarly, our discussion treats the group’s task and size as givens.
In a foundational article, Hackman argued for the development of a normative
model that would identify “the factors that most powerfully enhance or depress the
task effectiveness of a group and to do so in a way that increases the possibility that
constructive change can occur.” 6
Studies followed in the 1990s that attempted to
address Hackman’s call by investigating the relationship between team effectiveness
and a variety of contextual, compositional, and team process characteristics. 7
For
example, in a study of self-managed work teams, Spreitzer et al. 8
found such team
characteristics as coordination, expertise, stability, norms, and innovation related to
team effectiveness; Stevens and Campion 9
found conflict resolution skills, collabora-
tive problem solving, communications, goal setting, and performance management
practices important for team effectiveness. Taggar and Brown found a positive rela-
tionship between a typology of behavior observation scales (BOS) and the perform-
ance of problem-solving teams. 10
Based on this literature brainstorming session by subject matter experts (SMEs),
Mealiea 11
identified 12 summary dimensions of team climate and provided preliminary
empirical support to the argument that each of the 12 characteristics is significantly
related to team performance. A descriptive listing of these dimensions is found in
Table 1. The present authors have added another five team characteristics often dis- cussed in the team literature. We believe that team characteristics listed in Table 1
could be used as the basis for assessing team environments.
Most recently, Mealiea and Baltazar 12
found that collaboration, networking,
role/goal knowledge, and team orientation explained a significant proportion of vari-
ance in such team outcomes as group productive output, team growth, and individual
satisfaction.
Table 1. Team Characteristics Associated with Group Performance
Clear Purpose refers to the condition where group members agree on the group’s goals. These shared goals act to spark group effort by providing clear direction and buy- in. (It should be noted that such goals could have been unilaterally set by the leader, jointly set by the leader and group members, or set by group members independent of the boss.)
Consensus Decision Making occurs when groups allow all members to express their opinions and preferences openly and to discuss any disagreement that might exist. Within the consensus decision-making process, all members are allowed to “have their day in court” while building a consensus as to which alternative is correct. Some mem- bers may still believe that there is a better alternative but can accept the position taken by the other group members.
144 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Shared Leadership occurs when such leadership roles as contributor, collaborator, challenger, facilitator, and controller are carried out by the group members rather than by the group’s leader exclusively. Such shared leadership will vary from situation to situation and may not always be carried out by the same individual.
Listening reflects the willingness of group members to listen to others in an effort to achieve interpersonal understanding and facilitate interpersonal sensitivity. Team mem- bers will actively seek out listening opportunities to ensure open channels of communica- tion are maintained.
Open Communication occurs when group members take advantage of communication opportunities, openly share their feelings, provide timely and relevant feedback, and share relevant information with other group members.
Self-Assessment allows groups and their members to assess performance, changing environments, and existing goals. Such assessment allows groups to determine when changes should be made to ensure group success.
Civilized Disagreement implies that groups have developed appropriate internal mech- anisms and interpersonal sensitivities necessary to manage the full range of conflicts that occur within the groups.
Style Diversity occurs when group members are not only tolerant of style and behavioral differences but also actively seek out those differences necessary to perform and develop.
Networking reflects group members’ ability and willingness to link up with others exter- nal to the group. Such contacts can be drawn upon for information, support, and assis- tance when needed to facilitate goal achievement.
Participation by group members in a broad range of group activities and decisions facil- itates member buy-in. Participation also facilitates strategy development and increases member self-efficacy.
Informal Relations occur within a group environment that can be characterized by a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. Under these conditions, interpersonal interactions are sought out and maintained because members feel comfortable with each other.
Clear Roles and Assignments occur when group members have a clear understanding of their roles and assignments and other group members also agree.
Willingness to Share allows group members to benefit from the knowledge, experience, emotional support, energy, and tools/equipment possessed by other group members.
Prepared for Independence increases the probability that group members have the requisite skills necessary to perform required tasks. This can be achieved either through formal training, coaching, or self-development.
Structural Support creates a work environment designed to facilitate group perform- ance, e.g., open communication channels, team-based reward system.
Leader/Management Style relates to the manager’s ability to support, encourage, coach, and empower his or her staff so as to facilitate employee self-confidence, self- management, and interpersonal interactions.
Learning Environment relates to the degree to which the group/organizational environ- ment permits group members to learn from their experiences and the experiences of others.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 145
Step 2 — Measure Existing Team Climate Characteristics to Produce a Team Profile It is important to recognize that research demonstrates a clear link between the pres-
ence of positive team characteristics and team effectiveness. Therefore, managers must
find a mechanism to measure the degree to which relevant team characteristics cur-
rently exist in a given environment. Anderson and West argue that such information can
be used to create team climate surveys, create team climate diagnosis, create team inno-
vativeness, measure team development, and for the selection of new team members. 13
There are three traditional approaches to collecting this information: paper-and-
pencil questionnaires or surveys, direct observation, and interviews.
Paper and Pencil Questionnaires
Appendix 1 contains sample items from a 94-item team questionnaire that can be used to assess the existing team climate of intact work groups. A sample plot of this
questionnaire’s results is shown in Figure 2. Similar surveys have been developed and used by other researchers to assess team characteristics.
14 Paper-and-pencil ques-
tionnaires allow managers to effectively assess the perceptions of group members.
Unfortunately, they require significant time to develop and do not allow for real-time
clarification by individuals who complete them or follow-up questions by the manager
using them.
Observing Team Characteristics
Direct observation is a second proven technique that can be useful in assessing an
existing group or team climate. It requires managers to spend extended periods of
time observing, recording, and assessing pre-identified behavioral dimensions and
support behaviors. It is assumed that the observer knows specifically what he or she is
looking for and is skilled in observing and recording employee behaviors. In the case
of team performance in an intact group, it requires that managers have identified a rel-
evant team and the desired behaviors associated with each team characteristic.
While this technique can be effective, it does have its disadvantages. One of the pri-
mary disadvantages is that direct observation is labor intensive. To effectively assess an
existing team climate can require weeks of observation. At the same time, observation
has the potential of altering the behavior of those being watched. Therefore, it is impor-
tant to be clear with group members about the purpose of direct observation, e.g., the
improvement of an existing group climate and not the assessment of specific individuals.
Lastly, the process does not work well unless participants are willing to be observed.
Interviews
A potential compromise between a paper-and-pencil questionnaire and direct observa-
tion is the interview. Interviews allow managers to directly interact with group mem-
bers, respond to non-verbal cues, and ask follow-up questions should the need arise.
Interviews can also be used to supplement information obtained through question-
naires and direct observation. Interviews are most effective if they are well designed,
structured, and ask the same question of each participant.
146 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Figure 2. Observed Team Characteristic Profiles
Whatever the technique used, it is important to validate that the team character-
istics being measured are predictive of team effectiveness. It is also possible to use
any combination of these data collection techniques. The objective is to obtain as
accurate an assessment of the existing environment as possible. Ultimately, the
collected data will allow managers to construct a team characteristic profile. Figure 2
provides two such profiles. These profiles will be used as a basis for subsequent
discussions.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 147
Clear Purpose
Consensus Decision Making
Shared Leadership
Listening
Open Communications
Assessment
Civilized Disagreement
Style Diversity
Networking
Participation
Informal Relations
Roles and Assignments
Willingness to Share
Prepared for Independence
Structural Support
Management Style
Learning Climate
5 10 15 20 25 A B
Step 3 — Identify Deficient Team Characteristics
High scores in Figure 2 indicate that the climate being measured has more of
each team characteristic present than would be the case if a low score had been
obtained. In the graphic depicted, the maximum total score possible for a team
characteristic is 25 and the minimum possible score is five. Groups with profiles
that fall to the right are likely to be more effective than groups whose profiles fall
to the left. When considering team-building interventions, managers should be
primarily concerned with poor performing groups whose profile falls on the left of
Figure 2.
Profile B would represent a group that appears to have achieved a positive team
climate. All but three of the team characteristics are above 20. The three remaining
team characteristics (shared leadership, networking, and learning climate) have scores
of 19 — just below the 20 level. In the event that this group is not performing up to
expectations, the manager should look for something other than an ineffective team
climate to explain the shortfall. For example, poor performance could be caused by
misalignment between employee skills and task requirements, lack of training, lack of
practice, or the lack of appropriate tools and equipment.
Alternatively, profile A represents a group with numerous team characteristic
deficiencies. Only one of the 17 team characteristics achieves a score of 15. Of the
remaining 16, nine fall between 10 and 14, and seven have scores of nine or less. From
a team perspective, this group is clearly dysfunctional. Without listing all the group’s
problems we can see that (a) it lacks direction, (b) members do not understand their
roles and assignments, (c) the work climate prevents learning, (d) members are
unwilling to share, and (e) members are unwilling to share leadership responsibilities.
Until some type of team intervention is undertaken, and a more positive team climate
is created, management should not expect significant improvements in the group’s
performance. At the very minimum, management is unlikely to be taking advantage of
the group’s potential.
Step 4 — Use Pre-Established Decision Criteria to Select the Appropriate Intervention Sequence to Change Deficient Climate Characteristics
It is unlikely that individuals managing a group with profile A will have the time,
energy, or resources to attack all deficiencies simultaneously. Furthermore, given the
complexity and uniqueness of most business environments, and the interrelationships
between team characteristics, it would be administratively unsound to attempt a
broad-based intervention without considering how best to proceed; in other words:
which deficiencies should be addressed first and what would be the appropriate
sequence of subsequent interventions? Managers should therefore develop and con-
sider a number of decision criteria that would help them address the issues of setting
priorities and sequencing.
148 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 149
When selecting and sequencing intervention strategies, the criteria presented in
Table 2 should prove helpful. It is beyond the scope of this paper to go into detail for each criterion. However, several examples will help clarify how managers might use
these criteria to guide their actions. When operationalizing these criteria, managers
should already have a detailed understanding of their environments. First, they need
to understand the strengths, weaknesses, interests, and workload of their staff. Next,
they should be aware of the history, traditions, and existing culture within the com-
pany. Similarly, they need to know what resources are available and how power is dis-
tributed within the organization in the event that they need to get more. Above all,
they must know their own strengths, weaknesses, and aspirations. In those instances
where this information is not at managers’ fingertips they must take steps to increase
their K’s (knowledge) within the organization.
Table 2. Criteria of Choices: Selecting Intervention Targets
• Likelihood of Success
• Situational Importance and Urgency
• Complexity/Difficulty of Desired Changes versus Organization, Leader, and Group Member Competencies
• Leader Preferences or Competencies
• Organizational Culture and History
• Improvement in those Areas with the Greatest Deficiencies
• Relevant Sequencing Issues
• Availability of Internal/External Hard Resources (Money, Trainers, Facilities, Equipment, etc.)
• Team Member Characteristics and Preparedness
• Likelihood of Team Member Support
• Availability of Time
• Political Pressures and Organizational Realities
• Impression Management Issues (Organizational Optics)
The following examples represent how managers might apply the above criteria.
• One of the most often used choice criterion is that of importance, or relevance,
to successful group or unit performance. Most managers and researchers would
argue that it is critical to organizational success that group members are aware
of, understand, and agree with unit or group goals and that group members
150 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
understand what behaviors are expected from them. The logic here is that unless
there is consensus on where the group should be going and how this fits with
the organization’s vision, and members understand their roles (behaviors and
assigned activities), teams are unlikely to maximize their contribution to organi-
zational success. Therefore, managers facing profile A (Figure 2), and applying
the importance criteria may want to first address the issues of clear purpose and
member roles and assignments.
• However, the likelihood of achieving group consensus will be greatest in those
situations where group members are able to communicate openly to one
another. Similarly, it is more likely that groups will be able to work out their dif-
ferences when they can discuss these differences in a civilized manner. Given
profile A, it is unlikely that this will happen. Therefore, it might be appropriate
for the sequence criteria to take precedence over the importance criteria. In
such a case, the manager would decide to take steps to improve the group’s
communication, listening, and problem solving/negotiating skills before attempt-
ing to obtain consensus on group goals and member roles.
• Others might argue that team characteristics having the lowest scores (most defi-
cient) should be addressed first. The logic behind this argument would be that
the most deficient team characteristics are likely to do the greatest amount of
damage to the team’s ability to perform. Following this criterion, the manager
facing profile A would likely direct his or her attention toward open communica-
tion, informal relations, group members’ readiness for independence, and unit
conditions for learning.
• Alternatively, managers might want to consider the existing level of staff confi-
dence, or personal self-efficacy. It is unreasonable to expect employees with low
levels of confidence or self-efficacy to take risks, learn new behaviors, embrace
change, or assert themselves when challenged. Such individuals often do not
demonstrate persistence or exhibit the hardiness necessary to withstand stress
or adverse situations. Therefore, if levels of self-efficacy and confidence are an
issue in the group, the “likelihood of success” criterion may dominate managers’
decision-making process. By selecting one or two of the easiest team characteris-
tics to change, managers are more likely to succeed and at the same time
strengthen group member confidence or self-efficacy. By ensuring small suc-
cesses, managers can better equip or prepare group members to work towards
improving more complex or entrenched team characteristics.
• It should also be realized that choice criteria can indicate which team characteris-
tics not to change first. For example, if the organization’s culture encourages
a “command and control” type of relationship between managers and their
staff, it would be unwise to make “shared leadership” an initial goal of a planned
team-building intervention. This is in spite of the fact that such a change
would lighten managerial responsibilities of group leaders and empower
group members.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 151
• Similarly, it must be recognized by change agents that internal politics and orga-
nizational traditions may dictate which team characteristics should not be the
focus of early team-building initiatives. For example, given profile A, it might
appear logical to take steps to introduce better assessment tools, both within the
unit being measured and with other departments or groups. This would be espe-
cially true in those situations where assessment would provide objective data for
feedback, performance management, and other administrative decisions.
However, organizational tradition, history, or internal politics may have produced
a climate in which internal assessment, or interdepartmental comparisons,
would result in high levels of conflict or management resistance. Consequently, it
may be desirable to focus on other deficiencies first and allow time to gain inter-
nal and external support for one’s team-building efforts.
Clearly, the actual team-building strategy, or set of strategies, selected by man-
agers will reflect the unique characteristics of each situation. In other words, managers
must have an intimate understanding of the unit and the organization. As a result, it is
essential for managers to have what the authors call “Ks” in place. “Ks” refer to an inti-
mate working knowledge of the situation. Without this working knowledge of their
environment, it is unlikely that managers will be able to make correct decisions as to
which deficiencies to improve first and in what sequence to address remaining team
characteristic deficiencies.
There are four data-collection techniques that are capable of providing the
necessary “Ks” — real-time observation, review of historical data, interviews, and
questionnaires (step 4a — Figure 1). The first two are day-to-day data collection
techniques that help managers understand their micro and macro environments.
As such, they are not specific to team building, but rather should reflect the
efforts of managers to remain current with their work environments. The remaining
two data collection methods are designed to fine-tune managers’ decision-making
capabilities when engaging in specific team-building efforts. If a pencil-and-paper
questionnaire is initially used to collect team characteristic data, interviews can be
used to thoroughly investigate questions or issues arising from the questionnaire.
Similarly, summary scores for each team characteristic may fail to provide the
necessary detail assessment of what is occurring in the situation. To ensure that this is
not the case, managers can review the sub-dimensions or items used to produce the
summary scores.
Step 5 — Identify Team-building Strategies Capable of Overcoming Deficiencies in Team Characteristics All too often, managers, when attempting to build effective teams, turn to outside
professionals to create teams within their units or organization. Once selected, these
outside professionals typically take the natural or intact work group off site, and
engage in some type of intensive team-building experience. Carried out in this man-
ner, team-building experiences often take employees away from their jobs for two or
three days at a time. The assumption is that intact groups or individuals will transfer
appropriate team behaviors back to the job or organizational setting. While such
efforts can sensitize group members to the importance of team characteristics, or
kick-start an in-house team-building effort, it is the author’s experience that desired
behaviors are not often transferred to the work environment, and if they are, they
soon deteriorate.
Instead, the model being espoused by the authors argues that managers can and
do play a significant role in the development of teams. Therefore, once managers have
determined which team characteristic deficiency should be addressed first, and the
sequence of subsequent interventions, they should attempt to articulate available
team-building strategies. In constructing such a list, managers can turn to the team-
building literature, personal experience, in-house experts or managers, or benchmark
best practices in other organizations. Table 3 presents a list of strategies the authors have found useful when training managers to become more efficient team builders in
their own departments.
Table 3. Intervention Strategies for Building a Winning Team
• Goal Setting (Clarify Behavioral Expectations as to Desired Team Behaviors)
• Leadership — Modeling Desired Team Behaviors
• Structural Changes — e.g., Reporting Relationships, Required Relationships, Required Interactions, Pairing, Task Enrichment
• Empowering Group as a Whole — e.g., Allow for Group Decision Making and Problem Solving
• Changes to the Performance Management System — Especially in the Area of Reward/Behavior Links
• Formal Training in Deficient Areas
• Team Member Coaching by Team Leader or Peers
• Behavior Modification through Shaping
• Constructive Feedback
• Changing Membership (Transfers, Infusion of New Members, etc.)
• Kick Starting Retreats
152 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Step 6 — Use Pre-Established Decision Criteria to Select the Appropriate Intervention Strategies to Improve Deficient Team Characteristics
Here again, managers are unlikely to have the time, energy, or resources to
apply all improvement strategies simultaneously. Nor is it likely that all improvement
strategies will be equally effective when applied to any one team characteristic.
Managers should therefore once more articulate and apply a number of decision
criteria that would help them decide on the appropriate mix of improvement
interventions.
Table 4 provides criteria that managers might find helpful when attempting to compare and select intervention strategies. The criteria are quite similar to those pre-
sented in Table 2, but put greater emphasis on costs and benefits, organizational fit,
and alignment with managerial and group member competencies, risk propensity, and
preparedness.
Which interventions are selected will reflect the unique characteristics of the sit-
uation being considered and the managerial philosophies of key decision makers. As
was the case above, it is essential for managers to have their “Ks” in place. To facilitate
this process, the data collection techniques described in Figure 1 (see block 4a) can
again be used to collect the information necessary to make a quality selection deci-
sion. In this way, managers will select a mix of interventions that make sense for their
unique situation.
Table 4. Criteria of Choice: Selecting Intervention Strategy
• Likelihood of Success
• Cost Benefit or Utility Analysis
• Time Requirements for Completion
• Leader Preferences or Competencies
• Organizational Culture and History
• Availability of Internal/External Hard Resources to Support Intervention Strategy (Money, Trainers, Facilities, Equipment, etc.)
• Team Member Characteristics and Preparedness
• Likelihood of Group Member Support
• Political Pressures and Organizational Realities
• Impression Management Issues (Organizational Optics)
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Step 7 — Implement and Assess Improvements Implementation is a critical component of any team-building intervention. It is the
point at which analysis and planning become reality. Each intervention will have its
own unique sequence of steps designed to bring it on line and obtain the desired
improvement in the selected team characteristic. Space limitations prevent a detailed
discussion of appropriate steps for each intervention strategy. However, a brief exam-
ple will hopefully provide some insight into the implementation process.
For discussion purposes, assume that a manager has applied his or her choice
criteria to available intervention strategies and has selected goal setting and coaching
to improve goal consensus, open communications, and create a positive learning envi-
ronment. Figure 3 provides a brief overview of the steps that might be followed to implement such a goal-setting intervention. Let us briefly consider what activities the
manager would engage in during each of these steps.
Figure 3. Implementing a Goal Setting/Coaching Strategy to Improve Deficient Team Characteristics
Preparation — To begin the intervention process to improve open communica- tions, the manager must first identify what he or she believes are required support
behaviors. This can be accomplished through a detailed job analysis, analysis of critical
incidents, direct observation, personal introspection, or by seeking input from experts
or other successful managers. Output from such activities should provide the manager
with the required support behaviors necessary to help improve goal consensus. For
example, the manager might identify the following three behaviors:
154 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Preparation — Identify Required Support Behaviors for each
Deficient Team Characteristics
Communicate Required Behaviors to Group Members
Measure Demonstrated
Behaviors for each Group Member
Monitor Improvement and Adjustment
Response Accordingly
Initiate a Coaching Encounter with those Individuals Deficient
in Key Team Characteristics
Provide Feedback to Group Members as
to their Performance
• If confused about group goals, you should acknowledge your lack of personal
understanding and seek clarification from the team leader or peers.
• When the group schedules a meeting to discuss goals, you should come to the
meeting prepared, e.g., review appropriate support material and make an
attempt to clarify your personal views on what the group should achieve.
• If you believe that the group is moving in the wrong direction, or engaging in
activities that will thwart goal achievement, you should stop the group and
express your concerns.
Communicate Behaviors — Once identified, it is critical that the manager’s behavioral expectations are clearly communicated to group members. This can be
accomplished through a formal goal setting meeting, brief informal exchanges
with group members, or direct feedback to deficient individuals. When communicat-
ing one’s behavioral expectations it is also necessary to indicate why the behaviors
are important, the consequences of desired behaviors, the conditions under
which they should be exhibited, and how group members will be assessed. The key
is to make the employee understand, accept, and be willing to engage in the new
behaviors.
Measurement/Feedback — The next two steps should be linked by the man- ager. He or she observes, records, and rates group members’ behavior. When suffi-
cient information has been collected to draw meaningful conclusions, the manager
then provides meaningful feedback to group members. During this feedback
encounter the manager should indicate his or her willingness to help group members
improve their performance through one-on-one coaching.
Coaching Encounter — Any coaching exchange initiated by group members, or the team leader, should be voluntary and reflect the assumption that the coach and
employee are joint partners in the process. The two parties will jointly (a) assess cur-
rent behavior; (b) try to understand why desired behavior or activities did not occur,
and determine if any environmental barriers exist; and (c) establish new behavioral
expectations for each other. It is at this point that the group member states his or her
willingness to change personal behavior.
Monitor and Recycle — No intervention strategy is worth initiating unless managers are willing to monitor its success. Therefore managers working through this
process must again observe, record, and evaluate group member behaviors. This
information will help managers identify new required behaviors, fine-tune the coach-
ing process, or directly act as the basis for group member feedback.
As indicated above, the process just described is only one of the intervention
strategies available to managers engaged in team building. What is important is that
the strategies selected fit the environment and have a high probability of success.
Finally, since the world is not a perfect place, the possibility exists that initial attempts
will fail to produce the desired results. Should this occur, managers much revisit their
available intervention strategies and select an alternative strategy.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 155
Conclusion It is hoped that the reader better understands and accepts the role that managers play
in building effective teams. The model presented here is an attempt to provide some
structure to this complex and demanding process and to help guide managers who
recognize the need to build an effective team within their units. The model itself is
built on the assumption that there are identifiable team characteristics that, if present,
will help ensure team success. It should also be recognized that this model implies an
iterative, multi-staged effort that requires considerable planning and environmental
knowledge to be successfully implemented.
156 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Appendix A Partial Team Evaluation Form Below you will find a number of questions that relate to the work climate existing in
the group you are thinking about. Please take 15 minutes to complete the form and
calculate your scores on the 12 dimensions listed on the last page of the question-
naire. Answer these questions in terms of the group’s actual climate and not what you
think it should have been.
Each statement is followed by a five-point scale. Please circle the number that
best reflects how your department currently operates. Please proceed.
1. If asked, group members could quickly and accurately describe the general objec-
tives important to the group.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
2. Once group decisions were made, group members actively supported agreed-upon
action, even when the final decision was not their initial position.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
3. Departmental meetings (problem solving, informational, fact finding, etc.) were
always chaired by the same person.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
4. Group members took the time to listen to what others were saying.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
5. Group members frequently gave accurate and timely feedback to each other.
Feedback given related to both content and process issues.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
6. Group members were comfortable assessing their own performance and the per-
formance of others.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
7. Group members openly discussed differences of opinion.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
8. Group members demanded oneness of approach in actual member performance or
behavior.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
9. Group members rarely interacted with individuals outside the group; i.e., in the
organization or in other classes if you have selected a student group.
Strongly Agree Somewhat Agree Strongly Disagree
5 4 3 2 1
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 157
Notes 1
Hitt, M., Keats, B.W., and DeMarie, S.M., Nov 1998, Navigating in the new competitive landscape:
Building strategic flexibility and competitive advantage in the 21st century, The Academy of man- agement Executive, 12(4): 22-44; Hammer, M. and Stanton, S.A., 1995. The reengineering revolu- tion, New York, Harper Collins; Jasinowski, J. and Hamrin, R., 1995. Making it in America, New York, Simon & Schuster; Hammer, M. and Champy, J., 1994. Reengineering the corporation, New York, Harper Collins; Nanus, B., 1992. Visionary leadership, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass; Conger, J., 1989. Leadership: The art of empowering others, Academy of Management Executive, 2(7): 17-24; Kanter, R.M., 1989. When giants learn to dance, New York, Simon and Schuster; Kanter, R.M., 1983. The change masters, New York, Simon and Schuster; Naisbitt, J. and Aburdene, P., 1985. Re- engineering the corporation: Transforming your job and your organization for the new infor- mation age, New York, Warner Books.
2 Wech, B.A., Mossholder, K.W., Steel, R.P., and Bennett, N., 1998. Does work group cohesiveness
affect individuals’ performance and organizational commitment? A cross-level examination, Small Group Research, 29: 472-494; Cohen, S.G. and Bailey, D.E., 1997. What makes teams work: Group effectiveness research from the shop floor to the executive suite, Journal of Management, 23(3): 239-291; Mealiea, L.W. and Latham, G.P., 1996. Skills for managerial success: Theory, experience, and practice, Chicago, Irwin; Gordon, J., 1992. Work teams: How far have they come? Training, 29(10): 59-65; Tjosvold, D., 1991. Team organization: An enduring competitive advantage, New York, John Wiley & Sons; Tjosvold, D. and Tjosvold, M.M., 1991. Leading the team organization, New York, Lexington Books; Parker, G.M., 1990. Team player and teamwork: The competitive busi-
ness strategy, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass; Schermerhorn, Jr., J.R., 1986. Team development for high
performance management, Training and Development Journal, 40(11): 38-41.
3 Cohen and Baily (1997)
4 Taggar, S. and Brown, T.C., Dec. 2001, Problem-solving team behaviors: Development and valida-
tion of BOS and a hierarchical factor structure, Small Group Research, 32(6): 698.
5 Mealiea and Latham, 1996.
6 Hackman, R., 1987, The design of work teams, in J.W. Lorsch (Ed.), Handbook of Organizational Behavior, 315-342, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, Prentice Hall.
7 Campion, M.A., Medsker, G.J., and Higgs, A.C., 1993, Relations between work group characteristics
and effectiveness: Implications for designing effective work groups, Personnel Psychology, 46(4), 823-850; Campion, M.A., Papper, E.L., and Medsker, G.J., 1996, Relations between work team char-
acteristics and effectiveness: A replication and extension, Personnel Psychology, 49(2): 429-440; Albanese, R. and Van Fleet, D.D., 1985, Rational behavior in groups: The free-riding tendency,
Academy of Management Review, 10: 244-255; Harkins, S.G., 1987, Social loafing and social facili- tation, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 23, 1-18; Gladstein, D.L., 1984, Groups in con- text: A model of task effectiveness, Administrative Science Quarterly, 29: 499-517; Hyatt, D.E. and Ruddy, T.M., 1997, An examination of the relationship between work group characteristics and per-
formance: Once more into the breech, Personnel Psychology, 50(3): 553-585; Regan, M.D., 1999, The Journey to Teams: The New Approach to Achieve Breakthrough Business Performance, Holden Press, Raleigh, NC; Staples, D.S., Hulland, J.S., and Higgins, C.A., 1999, A self-efficacy the-
ory explanation for the management of remote workers in virtual organizations, Organization Science, 10: 758-776; Edmondson, A., 1999, Psychological safety and learning behavior in work teams, Administrative Science Quarterly, 44(2): 350-383.
8 Spreitzer, G.M., Cohen, S.G., and Ledford, G., 1999, Developing effective self-managing work
teams in service organizations, Group and Organizational Management, 24(3): 340-366.
9 Stevens, M.J. and Campion, M.A., 1999, Staffing work teams: Development and validation of a
selection test for teamwork settings, Journal of Management, 25(2): 207-228.
10 Taggar, S. and Brown, T.C., Dec. 2001, Problem-solving team behaviors: Development and valida-
tion of BOS and a hierarchical factor structure, Small Group Research, 32(6): 698-726.
158 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
11 Mealiea, L., 1996, A preliminary assessment of team characteristics differences between high and
low performing groups, Third Conference on Management Proceedings, International Federation
of Scholarly Associations of Management, Paris, France, 241-242.
12 Mealiea, L. and Baltazar, B. In Press, “Team climate factors and team effectiveness: An extension of
Mealiea’s work.”
13 Anderson, N. and West, M., Nov. 1994, The personality of teamworking, Personnel Management, 26(11): 81-83.
14 Campion, M.A., Medsker, G.J., and Higgs, A.C., 1993; Anderson, N. and West, M., Nov. 1994;
Campion, M.A., Papper, E.L., and Medsker, G.J., 1996; Spreitzer, G.M., Cohen, S.G., and Ledford,
G., 1999; Stevens, M.J. and Campion, M.A., 1999.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 159
Authors Dr. Laird W. Mealiea
School of Business Administration
Dalhousie University
6152 Coburg Road
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 1Z5
Phone: (902) 494-1841
E-mail: [email protected]
Professor Mealiea, School of Business — Dalhousie University, has extensive experience
in human resource management. In addition to teaching responsibilities, Dr. Mealiea
provides consultative support to both public and private organizations. He is the author of
two management books and has published numerous articles in the human resource
management area.
Prof. Ramon Baltazar
School of Business Administration
Dalhousie University
6152 Coburg Road
Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada B3H 1Z5
Phone: (902) 494-1834
E-mail: [email protected]
Ramon Baltazar is assistant professor (Strategy & Law) at the School of Business,
Dalhousie University. Professor Baltazar has been training and consulting for 30 years. His
research focuses on types of linkages between organization strategy and structure, and the
impact of the linkages on organization performance.
160 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Sexual Harassment and Demographic Diversity: Implications for Organizational Punishment Jacqueline A. Gilbert
Sexual harassment has come to the forefront in the past two decades as an issue that warrants greater attention both in terms of social policy reform and academic research. Although sexual harassment has been found to negatively impact job satisfaction, somatic complaints, and supervisor satisfaction, little is known about the specific way in which changing demography in managerial ranks impacts the way in which harassment is perceived. As women continue to advance into managerial ranks, a closer examination of both supervisor and subordinate gender with regard to harassment consequences is warranted. In this research, we examine with a sample of 130 municipal court clerks whether gender impacts harasser punishment, the degree to which harassers are considered responsible for harassment, and the degree to which the harassment is perceived as serious. The design is a 2x2x2 factorial, with independent variables of harasser (male/female), harassee (male/female), and harassment type (quid pro quo, hostile environment). Contrary to what was hypothesized, men who harassed women were viewed more responsible for the harassment than men who harassed men, while a corresponding difference did not occur for women. Similarly, sexual harassment was viewed most seriously when men harassed women. When it came to administering punishment, however, women who harassed men were given more stringent punishment, providing support for views held by society regarding the appropriateness of men’s and women’s sexual behavior. Results are discussed with regard to status incongruency theory, societal views, and media attention.
“Sugar and spice and everything nice” is a well-worn verse from a familiarnursery rhyme. Like so many fables, fairy tales, and children’s stories, itis representative of basic beliefs and values held by members of the respective belief system. Similarly, traditional concepts of men and masculinity (many
of which date back centuries) are rooted deep in the history of the United States. 1
To
the ancient Greeks, pursuit of sexual gratification was considered natural, virtuous,
and important for the establishment of manhood: Zeus, the chief deity, was known for
his love of rape and adultery. 2
The double standard regarding sexual behavior present
in mythology and in many patriarchal cultures persists today in Western societies. 3
Indeed, there appears to be a cultural contradiction, “…which originates in the desire
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 161
of men to ensure promiscuity for themselves and chastity for women.” 4
The traditional
concept of masculinity states that men are strong, powerful, and aggressive, while
women by contrast are weak and submissive. Additionally, the dominant Judo-
Christian culture subtly if not openly suggests that women should remain chaste until
marriage. Many of these notions about sexuality are now formalized into beliefs and
standards, some of which have spilled over into the workplace.
It is the purpose of this research to describe existing stereotypes of men and
women with regard to sexual behavior, and to explore how these stereotypes impact
punishment for sexual harassment at work. In the following section, we further
expand on explanations of current stereotypes regarding appropriateness of men’s
and women’s sexuality and implications for organizational punishment.
Literature Review Victorian sexologists have described women as “sexless,”
5 a description reinforced by
the Scottish reformatory movement (1832-1874) that emphasized the “maidenly
reserve and modesty” required of women. 6 “For girls and women, sexual practices
were the key markers of their status, in the same way that criminal activity marked
boys…Although precocious or excessive heterosexual activity was not condoned for
boys, it was never condemned in the way that it was for girls.” 7
Sexually transgressive
women in Ireland are demonized and labeled as “exotic,” part of a strategy to demean
and demoralize sexually liberated women who do not conform to the stereotype of
virgins or chaste mothers. 8
Describing the case of a “sexually transgressive” woman as
late as 1984, Inglis (2002) states that she had to be “rooted out, pilloried, and exor-
cized as some form of contemporary demon that destroys the moral order…and is to
be punished for social and moral decay.” 9
More permissive sexual behaviors are con-
sidered less socially acceptable for women. 10
Results reported in the Journal of Psychology demonstrated a double standard, in that women were expected to have fewer sexual partners than men, and their sexual activity was judged more negatively
across both genders. 11
By contrast, the “real man” stereotype states that an integral part of growing up
male is to take as many female sexual partners as possible. 12
Regarding sexuality, a tra-
ditional patriarchy dictates the following: (1) male sexuality is defined to include
promiscuity; and (2) female sexuality is defined to dictate chastity. As late as 1971, the
positive aspects of prostitution (for men) were touted, in that the absence of emo-
tional entanglements served as less of a threat to established marriages [see discus-
sion in Jolín, 1994]. Men have been described as having “relative freedom from sexual
inhibition.” 13
Consequently, ambition, lust, and aggression have been viewed as posi-
tive male characteristics. 14
Bly’s (1990) 15
book Iron John describes a Wild Man hidden deep within each man, yearning to express his virile sexuality spontaneously; more-
over, “the only problem real men have with sex is that there are never enough female
partners available; [hence] an integral part of growing male is to take as many female
sexual partners as possible.” 16
When a man appears to be afraid to cheat on his partner
or is dominated by her, he is referred to as “pussy-whipped.” 17
162 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Similar beliefs about male and female sexuality span cultural boundaries. One
female U.S. expatriate described her gender discrimination in Mexico as follows:
“There is still a deeply rooted expectation that once married, a woman
should stay at home. Their husbands want them to stay at home…There is
a very unusual male-female thing in Mexico. Once married, the woman is
on a pedestal (the saint). The man is out in the world having fun. (He is the
sinner).” 18
Because prior socialization and gender roles play a part in how employees are
disciplined, female initiated sexual activity and bullying at work may receive different
sanctions than a man’s sexual transgressions in the same arena. Of particular interest
in this study is the growing phenomenon of sexual harassment and the manner in
which attributions are made regarding punishment.
The EEOC defines quid pro quo sexual harassment as an exchange of sexual
favors for something tangible: a promotion, job, good grade, etc. Hostile environment
is the pervasiveness of sexual content at work, in the form of posters, unwanted com-
ments, leers, stares, and gestures, to name a few. 19,20,21
Empirically, sexual harassment
has been inversely associated with perceptions of psychological well being and health
satisfaction 22
In Fitzgerald et al.’s (1999) study, sexual harassment was associated nega-
tively with coworker and supervisor satisfaction. Other job related consequences of
sexual harassment include decreased job satisfaction, 23,24,25
self-reported decrements in
job performance, 26,27
job loss, and career interruption. 28,29,30
Harassment has even been
shown to affect physical health, causing reactions such as headaches, gastrointestinal
disorders, and sleep disturbance. 31
Sex has been suggested as one influence in the disciplinary process 32,33,34
For
example, there is a greater willingness to put women in prison for their crimes 35
and to
give them harsher sentences. 36
It is in fact a tremendous stigma for a grandmother to
know that her grandchildren have always had to live with the fact that grandma is in
prison, or is a “granny gone bad.” 37
Podsakoff and Todor (1985) 38
suggested at least five
types of subordinate influence on the disciplinary process: performance levels and
competence, sex, employee desirability, likableness, and ingratiation. Supervisor attri-
butions have been shown to influence types of punishment and its intensity. 39,40
As a
consequence, a supervisor may believe on the basis of group membership (in this case
sex) that an individual has deviated from acceptable standards. 41
If managers are highly
inconsistent in applying punishment across employees, and men are typically afforded
more latitude in their behaviors than women, it may be that all types of sexually
harassing behaviors are regarded more leniently for men. Socialization and gender
stereotypes indicate however that female managers accused of sexual harassment may
be considered deviant. According to Tomaskovic-Devey (1994), “…there is very nar-
row band of acceptable behavior for anyone who is not a white male and wishes to
build a corporate management career.” 42
In addition, Rosen and Jerdee (1974) 43
have
demonstrated that individuals are highly inconsistent in applying punishment across
employees. Status incongruency theory, which suggests that demographic characteris-
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 163
tics exist in a hierarchy — males have more status than females, and within gender
Whites, Chinese, Native Americans, Japanese, Mexicans, and Blacks are hierarchically
arranged by race 44
— could shed light on how female harassers are viewed regarding
male and female harassees. Gender conceptualizations, combined with status incon-
gruency, suggest that women may be more harshly punished for harassment, particu-
larly for harassing men.
In a recent study, Pierce, Aguinas, and Adams (2000) 45
found that compared to
women, men on average indicated that it was more appropriate to simply ignore sexu-
ally harassing behavior. What the authors did not examine was whether attributions
differ based on whether the harasser gender is male or female. The above discussion
prompts the following hypotheses:
Hypothesis 1: Women will receive more harsh punishment for both quid pro quo and hostile environment harassment than men.
Hypothesis 2: There will be an interaction effect between harasser and harassee gender such that female harassers of male subordinates will receive greater punishment than female harassers of female subordinates.
Hypothesis 3: There will be an interaction effect between harasser and harassee gender such that female harassers of male subordinates will be perceived more responsible for sexual harassment than female harassers of female subordinates.
Hypothesis 4: There will be an interaction effect between harasser and harassee gender such that female harassment of male subordinates will be perceived more seriously than female harassment of female subordinates.
Method Participants A total of 130 municipal clerks attending a leadership conference participated in this
research. Average respondent full-time work experience was 24.52 years, and average
part-time work experience was 9.88 years; average number of subordinates per
employee was 4.85. The sample contained 81 Whites and 44 persons of color (18
Asians, 4 African-Americans, 2 Latino-Americans, and 20 who classified themselves as
“other”). Five respondents did not indicate race. Mean respondent age was 46.72
years; the average respondent had some college. The sample contained 114 women
and 16 men. Because of the small number of men, subsequent analyses were pooled.
The design was a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial, with independent variables of harasser
(male/female), harassee (male/female), and harassment type (quid pro quo, hostile
work environment). All variables were between groups measures so the study’s pur-
pose would not be apparent. Average cell size per condition was 16.75.
164 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Procedures
Distributed packets consisted in order of a cover sheet (explaining the study), which
contained the following description:
“You are participating in an experiment to assess appropriate types of disci-
pline in a sexual harassment case. After reading a brief employee profile
and harassment scenario, you will be asked your perceptions regarding the
best way to discipline the harasser. This information will be used to help
human resource and employment managers.”
The cover sheet was followed by a human resource profile that contained a
graphical depiction of an employee’s last two years quarterly performance ratings. In
all cases, the average performance rating over a two-year period was 10 on a 12-point
scale. Two human resource managers to ensure face validity of the instrument evalu-
ated the profile a priori. The candidate’s picture, name, and company logo appeared
at the top of the profile. The accounting profession was chosen since the proportion
of male and female accountants is roughly equal — 56.6 female vs. 43.4 male 46
and
gender job type has previously been shown to influence applicant qualifications. 47,48
The name and a 4 x 4 mm picture on the HR profile sheet indicated applicant
gender. Over 150 pictures of White men and women were rated to obtain the 4 pic-
tures used in this experiment. Pictures were rated on a 9-point Likert type scale by 30
student judges. Following the procedure of Heilman and Saruwatari (1979), 49
pictures
were matched on dimensions of “old-young,” “trustworthy-untrustworthy,” and “hard-
working-lazy” to avoid a confound of perceived age, moral character, or energy for
work with appearance and sex. Two pictures were used for each of the manipulations
so that individual characteristics associated with a particular photograph would not be
a confound. 50
Pictures were chosen so that they fell in the middle of the attractiveness
continuum. The average ratings across both pictures were: White female — M = 5.73;
White male — M = 5.83.
A section labeled “Additional Information” below the performance graph con-
tained the employee’s grade point average (GPA), education, and earned vacation
time. All fictitious employees had a GPA of 3.4, an undergraduate accounting degree,
and six years company tenure. The remaining pages consisted of demographic ques-
tions and Likert type perceptual variables on which respondents rated the employee.
Each subject received a different version of the questionnaire to complete. The
following are examples of female/female/hostile environment and female/female quid
pro quo harassment, respectively, at a large fictional corporation:
An investigate panel at a large corporation has found evidence against
Michelle regarding sexual harassment toward a female subordinate. During
a 12-month period, the subordinate reported that every time she saw
Michelle she was repeatedly looked up and down, and despite the fact that
Michelle’s underling expressed discomfort with her supervisor’s behavior,
it continued. Michelle is an accounting manager who has worked at the
company for five years, and this is her first sexual harassment offense.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 165
An investigate panel at a large corporation has found evidence against
Michelle regarding sexual harassment toward a female subordinate.
Following an increasing progression of harassing incidents from Michelle to
a particular employee, she last month demoted this woman for not sleep-
ing with her. Michelle is an accounting manager, who has worked at the
company for five years, and this is her first time sexual harassment offense.
All questionnaires looked identical. Moreover, several subjects mentioned that
they wished they had had more information, suggesting that the experimental manip-
ulation was realistic.
Dependent Measures Subjects responded to three perceptual questions: (1) What disciplinary action do you
consider most appropriate for the harasser? (a) verbal warning with no written record;
(b) verbal warning noted on employee’s record; (c) written reprimand noted on
employee’s record; (d) one week suspension without pay; (e) termination; (2) How
would you describe the seriousness of the offense [not at all serious/very serious]; (3)
Please describe the degree to which you think the offender was responsible for caus-
ing the harassment [not at all responsible/very responsible]. The last two items were
rated on a 1-9 Likert type scale. These questions were derived from a study conducted
by Rosen and Jerdee, published in the 1974 Journal of Applied Psychology.
Results A t-test was conducted to test Hypothesis one. The planned comparison (least squares
difference method) did not reveal a significant difference between men and women
on discipline for type of harassment t(127) = -1.46, p < .1481. Main effects are how-
ever uninterpretable in the presence of interaction effects.
Univariate ANOVAS were conducted for the variables of discipline, seriousness,
and responsibility. Significant interaction effects between harasser and harassee gender
were found for all three variables: discipline — F(1, 121) = 4.17, p < .0434; seriousness
F(1, 125) = 4.00, p < .0476, and responsibility F(1, 118) = 4.28, p < .0408. An analysis
of the means revealed mixed results (See Tables 1, 2, 3). In congruence with Hypothesis two, women who harassed men were given more serious punishment than
women who harassed other women (M = 3.72 vs. 3.29). Difference in discipline means
for men harassing men (M = 3.70) and men harassing women (M = 3.96) were negligi-
ble. An opposite effect was found for the variables of responsibility and seriousness.
Contrary to Hypothesis three, there was negligible difference between how responsible
women were viewed when they harassed men (M = 5.09) and when they harassed
women (M = 4.44). An interaction emerged when comparing how responsible men
were viewed when harassing other men (M = 5.12), as compared to how responsible
they were viewed when harassing women (M = 6.78). Similarly, for the variable of seri-
ousness of offense, there was virtually no difference between women harassing men (M
= 7.08) and women harassing women (M = 6.87); there was however a greater differ-
ence between men harassing men (M = 7.12) and men harassing women (8.12).
Contrary to Hypothesis four, it was harassment of women by men that was viewed
most seriously. The above relationships are graphed in Figures 1, 2, and 3, respectively.
166 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Table 1. Cell Means of Male and Female Supervisor and Subordinate Dyads for the Variable of Disciplinary Action
Subordinate Male Female
Supervisor Male
M 3.70 3.96 SD 1.36 1.21
Female M 3.72 3.29 SD 1.25 1.24
Note. The higher the mean, the harsher the disciplinary recommendation.
Table 2. Cell Means of Male and Female Supervisor and Subordinate Dyads for the Variable of Responsibility of Harassment
Subordinate Male Female
Supervisor Male
M 5.12 6.78 SD 3.21 3.12
Female M 5.09 4.44 SD 3.25 3.22
Note. The higher the mean, the more responsible the harasser is perceived for the harassment.
Table 3. Cell Means of Male and Female Supervisor and Subordinate Dyads for the Variable of Seriousness of Offense
Subordinate Male Female
Supervisor Male
M 7.12 8.12 SD 2.34 1.77
Female M 7.08 6.87 SD 2.31 2.29
Note. The higher the mean, the more seriousness the offense.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 167
Figure 1. Disciplinary means for male and female supervisors and subordinates.
Figure 2. Offender responsibility means for male and female supervisors and subordinates.
0 Male Subordinate Female Subordinate
Male Supervisor Fem Supervisor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
D is
cp lin
ar y
Ac tio
n
0 Male Subordinate Female Subordinate
Male Supervisor Fem Supervisor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Re sp
on si
bl ity
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005168
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 169
Figure 3. Seriousness of offense means for male and female supervisors and subordinates.
Discussion In line with prior gender arguments, results showed somewhat of a double standard.
Men were viewed more responsible for harassing women and men’s harassment was
viewed more seriously than in the scenario for women. Although the means for men
on the variable of punishment was higher overall, the concept of women harassing
men was viewed more objectionable than women harassing women. Results taken as a
whole either suggest that the concept of chivalry is alive and well, and/or that recent
lawsuits (such as Anita Hill and the Smith-Barney “boom-boom room” scandal) have
highlighted sexual harassment of women as both a pervasive and serious problem. As
the “exposure hypothesis” 51
suggests, perceptions of women and sexual behavior may
be changing due to socio-political conditions and the media. The exposure
hypothesis 52
argues that seeing greater numbers of a minority group in non-traditional
roles (e.g., manager, self-supporting independent woman, plaintiff) will mitigate dis-
crimination, because stereotypes are operative in the absence of information.
Specifically, “lack of information may contribute to ...bias because decisions are often
based on negative stereotypes.” 53
A limitation of this research is that sample demographics prevented further
exploration of results by gender and consequent gender dynamics. The Queen Bee
Syndrome states that because of statistical discrimination, or a tendency of organiza-
tions to reserve only a small number of slots at the organizational apex for women,
0 Male Subordinate Female Subordinate
Male Supervisor Fem Supervisor
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
Se rio
us ne
ss o
f O ffe
ns e
women as a group will rate the behaviors and performance of other women more
harshly than the performance of men. As Cooper (1997) 54
argues, women may be a
more critical factor in the evaluation and subsequent success of female leaders.
Because women may in some circumstances be harsher critics of other women, they
may also view female harassers (particularly women who harass men) as more deserv-
ing of punishment. An alternative explanation for the potential of women to harshly
criticize each other is found in status incongruency theory. Women who have internal-
ized stereotypical societal perceptions are more likely to give other women lower rat-
ings and more stringent punishment than they deserve.
In a related demographic vein, issues of harasser/harassee race require more
exploration. Bell (1990) 55
notes that for black women, managerial legitimacy may be
particularly difficult to obtain. The following quote is from one of several black career
women she interviewed: “Black women are on the bottom of the heap. If they can’t
get you for one thing, they get you for something else…They may well let you in the
door, but white men aren’t comfortable with black women so you can’t advance.” 56
Other women have reported successful relations with their boss until revealing a par-
ticular aspect of their cultural heritage, such as their Native American roots: “She
made it known to her boss that she had ties to the [Native American] culture. Her
boss, a white male, became very cold to her, making his distaste for Native Americans
apparent.” 57
The less demographic status a supervisor has, the more suspect his or her
actions may be perceived, and the more a superior may try to topple him or her
through organizational sanction. One may also wonder if the punishment of a racial
minority who was found guilty harassing a racial majority member would be more
harsh? Relatedly, would peers and subordinates be more likely to file false claims
against someone they saw as an illegitimate source of authority in the workforce? As
organizations continue to diversify, more research regarding biases (particularly with
regard to career derailment) is essential. Empirical examination of sexual harassment
along with variables of race and gender, and dimensions such as disability, age, and
personality is necessary to answer the types of questions raised in this study.
170 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Notes 1
Morris, L. A. (1997). The male heterosexual: Lust in his loins, sin in his soul? Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
2 Ibid.
3 Jolin, A. (1994). On the backs of working prostitutes: Feminist theory and prostitution policy. Crime & Delinquency, 40, 69-83.
4 Ibid.
5 Morris (1997).
6 Mahood, L., & Littlewood, B. (1994). The “vicious” girl and the “street-corner” boy: sexuality and
the gendered delinquent in the Scottish child-saving movement, 1850-1940. Journal of the History of Sexuality, 4, 549-578.
7 Ibid, p. 557.
8 Inglis, T. (2002). Sexual transgression and scapegoats: A case study from modern Ireland.
Sexualities, 5, 5-24.
9 Ibid.
10 Kleinfelter, K. J. (2000). An investigation of college students’ personal attitudes and subjective
norms regarding acceptability of assertive and nontraditional sexual behavior in women: Re-exam-
ining the sexual double standard. (Doctoral Dissertation, University of South Carolina, 2000).
Dissertation Abstracts International, 60, (7-B): 3619.
11 Sheeran, P., Spears, R., Abraham, C. S., & Abrams, D. (1996). Religiosity, gender, and the double
standard. The Journal of Psychology, 130, 23-33.
12 Morris (1997).
13 Ibid.
14 Rotundo, E. A. (1993). American manhood. New York: Basic Publishing.
15 Bly, R. (1990). Iron John: A book about men. New York: Random House.
16 Morris (1997), p. 210.
17 Ibid.
18 Stephens, G. K., & Greer, C. R. (1995). Doing business in Mexico: Understanding cultural differ-
ences. Organizational Dynamics, 24, 39-55.
19 Fitzgerald, L. F. (1993). Sexual harassment: Violence against women in the workplace. American Psychologist, 48, 1070-1076.
20 Fitzgerald, L. F., Schullman, S., Bailey, N, Richards, M., Swecker, J., Gold, A., Ormerod, A. J., &
Weitzman, L. (1988). The incidence and dimensions of sexual harassment in academia and the
workplace. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 32, 152-175.
21 Livingston, J. A. (1982). Responses to sexual harassment on the job: Legal, organizational and indi-
vidual actions. Journal of Social Issues, 38, 5-22.
22 Fitzgerald, L. F., Drasgow, F., & Magley, V. J. (1999). Sexual harassment in the armed forces: A test of
an integrated model. Military Psychology, 11, 329-343.
23 Gruber, J. E. (1992, March). The sexual harassment experiences of women in nontraditional jobs:
Results from cross-national research. In Proceedings of the First National Conference on Sex and Power Issues in the Workplace. Bellevue, WA.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 171
24 Morrow, P. C., McElroy, J. C., & Phillips, C. M. (1994). Sexual harassment behaviors and work
related perceptions and attitudes. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 45, 295-309.
25 Schneider, K. T., & Swan, S. (1994, April). Job-related, psychological, and health-related outcomes
of sexual harassment. Paper presented at the Symposium on Sexual Harassment at the Society of
Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Nashville, TN.
26 U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. (1981). Sexual harassment of federal workers: Is it a prob- lem? Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
27 U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board. (1987). Sexual harassment of federal workers: An update. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
28 Coles, F. S. (1986). Forced to quit: Sexual harassment complaints and agency response. Sex Roles,
14, 81-95.
29 Gutek, B. (1985). Sex and the workplace. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
30 Livingston (1982).
31 (Fitzgerald et al., 1999).
32 Podsakoff, P. M., & Todor, W. D. (1985). Relationships between leader reward and punishment
behavior and group productivity. Journal of Management, 11, 55-73.
33 Jensen, I. W., & Gutek, B. A. (1982). Attributions and assignment of responsibility for sexual harass-
ment. Journal of Social Issues, 38, 121-136.
34 Kenig, S., & Ryan, J. (1986). A review and analysis of power dynamics in organizations in organiza-
tional romances. Academy of Management Review, 22, 750-762.
35 Immarigeon, R., & Chesney-Lind, M. (1992). Women’s prisons: Overcrowded and over-used. San Francisco: National Council on Crime and Delinquency.
36 Curry, L. (2001, February). Tougher sentencing, economic hardships and rising violence.
Corrections Today, 63, 74-76.
37 Aday, R. H. (2003). Older women in prison. In Aging Prisoners: Crisis in American Corrections. Westport, CT: Praeger.
38 Podsakoff & Todor (1985).
39 Green, S. G., & Mitchell, T. R. (1979). Attributional processes of leaders in leader-member interac-
tions. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 429-458.
40 Green, S. G., & Liden, R.C. (1980). Contextual and attributional influences on control decisions.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 65, 53-458.
41 Goffman, E. (1967). Interaction ritual: Essays on face-to-face behavior. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday & Co.
42 Tomaskovic-Devey, D. (1994). Race, ethnic, and gender earnings inequality: The sources and con-
sequences of employment segregation. Washington: Glass Ceiling Commission, U.S. Department
of Labor, p. 23.
43 Rosen, B., & Jerdee, T. H. (1974). Factors influencing disciplinary judgments. Journal of Applied Psychology, 9, 327-331.
44 Fernandez, J. P. (1981). Managing a diverse workforce. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
45 Pierce, C. A., Aguinis, H., & Adams, S. K. R. (2000). Effects of a dissolved workplace romance and
rater characteristics on responses to a sexual harassment accusation. Academy of Management Journal, 43, 869-880.
172 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
46 U. S. Bureau of the Census. (1998). Statistical abstract of the United States, 198 (118th edition). Washington, D.C.
47 Gilbert, J. A. & Stead, B. A. (1999). Stigmatization revisited: Does diversity management make a dif-
ference in applicant success? Group & Organization Management, 24, 239-256.
48 Heilman, M. E., Block, C. J., & Lucas, J. A. (1992). Presumed incompetent?: Stigmatization and affir-
mative action efforts, Journal of Applied Psychology, 77, 536-544.
49 Heilman, M. E., & Saruwatari, L. R. (1979). When beauty is beastly: The effects of appearance and
sex on evaluations of job applicants for managerial and non-managerial jobs. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 23, 360-372.
50 Dipboye, R. L., Arvey, R. D., & Terpstra, D. E. (1977). Sex and physical attractiveness of raters and
applicants as determinants of resume evaluations. Journal of Applied Psychology, 62, 288-294.
51 Heilman, M. E., & Martell, R. F. (1986). Exposure to successful women: Antidote to sex discrimina-
tion in applicant screening decisions? Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 37,
376-390.
52 Ibid.
53 McRae, M. B. (1994). Influence of sex role stereotypes on personnel decisions of Black managers.
Journal of Applied Psychology, 29, 306-309.
54 Cooper, V. W. (1997). Homophily or the queen bee syndrome: Female evaluation of female leader-
ship. Small Group Research, 28, 483-499.
55 Bell, E. L. (1990). The bicultural life experience of career-oriented Black women. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 11, 459-477.
56 Ibid, p. 474.
57 Bell, E. L., Denton, T. C., & Nkomo, S. (1993). Women of color in management: toward an inclusive
analysis (p. 119). In E. A. Fagenson (Ed.), Women in management: trends, issues, and challenges in
managerial diversity, pp.105-130. Newbury Park, CA: Sage.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 173
Author Jacqueline A. Gilbert
Department of Management & Marketing
Middle Tennessee State University
Jackie Gilbert is an associate professor of management in the Middle Tennessee State
University College of Business. She received her BBA in management from the University
of Texas at Austin, and her MBA and PhD degrees in management from the University of
Houston. Her research interests include cross-cultural studies, human resource
management, diversity and gender issues. She has presented her research at national and
international conferences and has published in numerous journals, such as the Academy of Management Executive, Sex Roles, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Human Resource Planning Journal, Journal of Business Ethics, and Group and Organization Management. She is a member of the Academy of Management and the Society for Human Resource Management.
174 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Preparing for the Unthinkable: Managers, Terrorism and the HRM Function Ronald W. Perry Lawrence D. Mankin
Particularly since the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, there has been renewed interest in emergency planning in both the private and public sectors. Government emergency planning tends to be conducted by specialized agencies and offices, such as fire departments, police departments or emergency management. Traditionally, most of this planning is oriented toward protecting the public and public structures. Selectively over the decades, some of this planning was oriented toward insuring that government could continue to function following a disaster. At the federal level during the Cold War, much attention was given to the problem of post-nuclear attack government functioning under the rubric of “government continuity.” In the past decade, private sector businesses have begun to plan for business continuity following a variety of disasters including terrorist attacks. In spite of sporadic research indicating that local governments are particularly vulnerable, little attention has been paid to planning for government continuity following disasters or terrorism. This paper reviews the literature on historic disasters and terrorist events to establish the level of danger faced by local government. Then six key planning measures for insuring post-emergency operations are reviewed. Data are presented from a large southwestern U.S. city on levels of municipal department emergency preparedness. The paper closes with a discussion of how human resources departments may be mobilized to make critical and unique contributions to local government preparations for terrorism and disasters.
A s elected officials often repeat, the world—including American govern-ment—has changed since the World Trade Center towers fell on September11, 2001. Certainly there have been many lessons learned and some of these lessons have changed the face of government. The managers of the new Department
of Homeland Security are struggling to accomplish its mission, while simultaneously
struggling to fit together it’s 22 constituent programs and agencies. 1
State and local
governments have established offices of homeland security or reorganized their exist-
ing emergency management departments, or both. 2
Ultimately, the changes observed
are explicitly aimed at creating administrative structures for the four traditional emer-
gency management tasks: prevent the danger through good law enforcement intelli- gence and perpetrator apprehension, prepare for incidents by effective planning to
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 175
respond to incidents when they happen and to recover afterwards.3 These efforts are designed to protect people and property. But the people protected in most cases are
the public. While government rightly serves the public, the general strategy of protect-
ing the government so that it can continue to serve the public also is critical. The purpose of this paper is to explore actions appropriate for local government
managers and human resources professionals to insure the ability of government to
function following a terrorist attack (or any disaster). To accomplish this goal, we will
examine the literature to identify post-disaster demands experienced by governments,
review the relationship between managerial emergency challenges and jurisdictional
emergency planning and discuss some important actions for departmental heads. In
discussing these actions, we will report the observations of department heads regard-
ing their use in a southwestern city.
Context of Concern The national government began addressing the problem of keeping government func-
tioning in the Cold War era under the rubric of government continuity. 4
This type of
preparedness has continued for more than 50 years and is currently very sophisti-
cated. Private businesses, particularly those working in information technology, for
decades have addressed the problem of business continuity following natural and
technological disasters—and terrorist attacks—as business recovery planning. 5
After
the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah building in Oklahoma City, the U.S. Office of
Personnel Management, in a concerted effort to promote planning, created a guide for
management actions and planning for traumatic incidents in the workplace. 6
At the
municipal level, however, workplace disaster planning has seen a much slower imple-
mentation. A decade ago local governments began to earnestly plan to recover com-
puter systems and business operations following disasters, adopting such measures as
off-site record storage and “hot” and “cold” computer backup sites. 7
But most munici-
pal emergency planning has focused on preserving citizens and public structures, with
much less emphasis upon protecting government employees and their ability to func-
tion at work. 8
Research indicates that the ability of governments to function effectively immedi-
ately after natural disasters has positive outcomes for victims as well as for governance
itself. The reasoning underlying this assertion rests on the obvious notion that a well-
functioning government is more likely to accomplish tasks associated with successful
recovery and reconstruction. 9
Such disaster tasks include reducing the negative conse-
quences of primary impacts (earthquake ground shaking, floods, or wind) and sec-
ondary impacts (hazardous materials spills, contamination of city water supply or
collapsed buildings). There are also the matters of resuming interrupted social serv-
ices, organizing and implementing short-term recovery, and managing intergovern-
mental relations (such as disaster declarations or mutual aid agreements).
Any disaster creates the need for effective management of disaster-related chal-
lenges, but at the same time, citizens expect government to continue uninterrupted
delivery of all routine services. Indeed, the legitimacy of government rests upon this
176 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
ability. Still, the key to effective government functioning—disasters or not—lies in
motivated personnel who are physically able to work, with access to the appropriate
equipment (for example, computers, vehicles) to do their jobs. Following a disaster,
the availability of such resources in any organization is a function of emergency plan-
ning. 10
For a local government, the pre-planning needs to be present at two levels: that
of the jurisdiction (accomplished by police, fire and emergency managers) and that of
the department (accomplished by managers and human resources staff). 11
Lessons from Disasters A series of California earthquakes—beginning with Coalinga in 1983, followed by
Loma Prieta (impacting the San Francisco area), and Northridge (affecting the Los
Angeles area)—generated some empirical information on the experience of local gov-
ernments following disasters. The key, recurrent observation from these experiences
is that local governments are inundated with service demands following earthquakes
and other disasters. 12
Silverstein 13
noted that it is possible to enumerate lists of specific
demands, which would vary widely among local governments, but that the common
theme is simply one of overwhelming service needs. Of course, many of these
demands were disaster-impact related and directed at fire departments, police forces
and emergency services offices. But many disaster-related demands as well as more
routine demands were directed at a broad spectrum of other government offices. 14
These included demands related to housing, financial support (temporary job loss
lead to applications for unemployment and other assistance), sanitation, schools and
other sectors of government responsibility. Furthermore, when citizens became frus-
trated with inadequate response times by federal or state government, they routinely
appealed to local governments. Similarly citizens frustrated by the response of a
municipal department appeal to another arm of the local government for assistance.
Darnell 15
described one situation following the Loma Prieta earthquake: “Though the
San Francisco Public Works Department set up a mobile operations van on site, angry,
anguished residents flocked to City Hall threatening lawsuits unless they were pro-
vided information about [structural safety of] their homes more quickly.” In many
cases, enhanced levels of citizen demands were sustained for periods of months. 16
A
similar pattern has been observed following volcanic eruptions, 17
floods, 18
tornadoes, 19
nuclear power plant accidents, 20
and other natural and technological hazards. 21
Citizen demands on government following terrorist attacks in the continental
United States have considerably exceeded those associated with other types of disas-
ter. After the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, which produced light damage
and injury by disaster management standards, the levels of demands for service in
New York remained elevated for nearly three months. 22
In 1995, when the Alfred P.
Murrah federal building was bombed, increased service needs impacted city, county,
state and federal governments simultaneously and post-crisis victim assistance contin-
ued for years. 23
The increased service demands were very visible for New York City fol-
lowing the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center. 24
Comparable levels of
service demands were recorded for Arlington County, Va., as a function of the attack
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 177
on the Pentagon. 25
It is worth mentioning, too, that while natural and technological
disasters usually generate service demands from victims and their families, the impact
of terrorist attacks is community (nation) wide, and generates needs among a broader
segment of the population. 26
Managerial Decisions and Disaster Plans The message from these experiences is clear: demands on government increase at a
time when government employees, physical structure and equipment have been
exposed to damage. Certainly, most of the demands of the direct impact are handled
within jurisdictional emergency plans and by a constellation of emergency manage-
ment agencies. It remains that the government must repair damage sustained to pub-
lic structures and at the same time deliver emergency services to victims while
continuing routine services to the remainder of the jurisdiction. This latter function is
critical, but unlike institutionalized jurisdictional emergency plans for citizens, the pro-
tection of government human resources is less institutionalized. Assuming that most
emergency management offices plan principally for the protection of citizens, physical
structures, and other issues, the question arises regarding who should plan for the
well being of departments and their employees. It has been argued 27
that the man-
agers themselves, supported by the human resources function, form a natural lead for
department planning.
An important question lies in determining what content should be considered as
departmental emergency measures. What constitutes a reasonable issue list for mana-
gerial crisis decision making aimed at maintaining and enhancing service delivery lev-
els? Decisions of this nature involve at least three levels of management. The
department manager is the lead decision-maker pursuing the goal of accounting for
people and resources to keep the department producing. The second level is the city
or county manager, who will need both crisis information and crisis action from
department heads and the jurisdictional emergency manager. Finally, the local elected
officials who are accountable to the citizens and, in most cases by statute, are respon-
sible for decisions about emergency response. This paper generates and discusses a
model set of emergency decision support actions appropriate for local government
departments. Such a model of decision support actions (perhaps planning targets)
is useful in at least two ways. First, it alerts managers to the issue of the vulnerability of
government operations and identifies specific actions that promote continuity.
Second, it provides a standard for decision guides against which jurisdictions can
compare existing measures and use as a guide for constructing or modifying
future plans.
It is exceptionally important to emphasize that the measures discussed here are
not intended to become elaborate or to replace any aspect of the local government
emergency plan. Emergency plans should be constructed through a defined process
managed by experts in emergency management. 28
The measures described here may
be used as managerial milestones for emergency response. Indeed, there is some liter-
ature available to guide such managerial emergency preparations. Soon after the
178 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Oklahoma City bombing, the U.S. Office of Personnel Management issued a book of
guidelines for managers who must respond to traumatic incidents in the workplace. 29
In 2002, the OPM 30
created a manual for federal managers that includes suggested
emergency planning measures. The crisis management and disaster planning litera-
ture also has identified a variety of plan elements or decision guides that contribute to
organizational viability following disasters. 31
From this literature, six decision elements
were chosen as having a direct impact on local government functioning in the imme-
diate aftermath of a terrorist attack or large disaster. These elements were selected
because they account for issues related to structural damage and personnel needs that
are crucial to the maintenance of organizational functioning. They are also mentioned
in the literature and are under the discretionary control of a unit manager without
supervisory consultation. The six decision elements are: possession of an alternate site
for operations, possession of an inventory of personnel and equipment, employee
protective measures for the workplace, possession of a plan to check on family wel-
fare, measures to enable extended hours of operation and possession of a plan for an
emergency documentation system. It is not argued that these elements constitute an
exhaustive list of decision challenges for manager’s following terrorist attacks or other
disasters. Collectively, however, the elements address critical short-term challenges
that routinely arise following all types of disasters.
Municipal Data Except for one study of government continuity following earthquakes,
32 the literature
lacks consideration of the preparedness levels among government departments
whose mission does not include emergency response. To facilitate the presentation of
the six decision milestones, the department heads in a large, southwestern city were
asked to answer questions about their levels of terrorism preparedness. 33
Following
accepted emergency management criteria, 34
this city would be rated as having an
exceptionally high level of emergency preparedness. The city maintains an established
emergency planning process addressing a wide range of environmental hazards that is
linked to experienced local response capabilities. The jurisdiction has specific plans
that have been disseminated (and tested with drills and exercises) for natural disas-
ters, technological hazards and terrorist attacks. The jurisdiction is one of several in its
metropolitan area that has established a Metropolitan Medical Response System (for
large numbers of casualties following terrorism) through the U.S. Department of
Health and Human Services and participates in many federal programs. As an innova-
tive municipality, there are a number of programs and departments that report to city
management; 28 of these departments representing standard municipal functions,
and with more than 50 employees, were selected to receive a mailed questionnaire.
After two follow-up contacts, 21 of the 28 department heads (75 percent) completed a
questionnaire. The City Manager’s Office (which includes emergency management),
Police, and Fire Department were excluded from the contacts. In addition to the
issues related to emergency decision support elements, department heads were asked
about their personal expectations regarding terrorist attacks.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 179
Attitudes about Terrorism Threats
Public opinion polls tracking attitudes toward terrorism have generally found that citi-
zens believe terrorist attacks will definitely take place, but simultaneously downplay
the likelihood that such events will place them in danger. 35
To gauge department head
attitudes, three Likert scale type statements about terrorist attacks were presented
with a request that respondents rate their degree of agreement. The first statement
posited “there will be a terrorist attack somewhere in the United States within the
next five years.” The second claim was “there will be a terrorist attack on a local gov-
ernment within the next five years.” The last statement was “my city will be victimized
by a terrorist attack in the next five years.” Table 1 shows the distribution of answers along a seven-point continuum ranging from strongly disagree to strongly agree.
Answers were coded such that higher scores represent higher levels of agreement (7=
strongly agree). For the most part the pattern shown by the department heads reflects
the public opinion polls; the mean score progressively declines as the questions focus
more on one’s own city. Seventeen (81.0 percent) of 21 department heads either
agreed or strongly agreed that the United States would see a terrorist incident within
the next five years. Only one person slightly disagreed, none were neutral and three
slightly agreed. The respondents were only slightly less confident that a local govern-
ment would be a target within the next five years. Fifteen (71.5 percent) of the depart-
ment heads chose to agree or to strongly agree, five (23.8 percent) slightly agreed and
only one slightly disagreed. When asked about their city in particular, the pattern of
agreement was weaker with only two strongly agree (9.5 percent), no agrees and six
(28.6 percent) slightly agree. Nearly half (10 or 47.6 percent) chose a neutral
response, and three (14.3 percent) slightly disagreed. It is likely that the neutral
response was chosen as a means of reporting “I don’t know” about the probability of
an incident.
Table 1. Likelihood of Terrorist Attack within Five Years
Incident in U.S. Government Attacked My City Attacked
Strongly Disagree 0 0 0 Disagree 0 0 0 Slightly Disagree 1 (4.8%) 1 (4.8%) 3 (14.3%) Neutral 0 0 10 (47.6%) Slightly Agree 3 (14.3%) 5 (23.8%) 6 (28.6%) Agree 8 (38.1%) 8 (38.1%) 0 Strongly Agree 9 (42.9%) 7 (33.4%) 2 (9.5%) Mean (standard deviation) 6.14 (sd=1.0) 5.90 (sd=1.0) 4.43 (sd=1.0)
From the perspective of insuring government continuity, it is important that
either uncertainty or even disbelief regarding terrorism be translated into a lack of
action on the part of managers. The compelling logic for department manager con-
cern rests upon two pillars. First, there is a non-zero probability that terrorists will
strike government anywhere, but the precise figure is unknowable. There is no calcu-
180 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
lus, no logic, and no guessing that permits emergency managers to accurately assess
the terrorist threat to a specific geographic locale. Because the motivation and target-
ing strategy of terrorists is not well understood, emergency authorities through sur-
veillance and intelligence attempt to detect events in progress and mount an
appropriate response. The dire consequences from a successful terrorist attack
demand that responsible local governments engage in preparedness for the known
range of terrorist agents. With targets as diverse as New York City and Oklahoma City,
it is possible that the appearance of vulnerability could even trigger an attack. The
inability of experts to place a reliable probability on an attack should be enough incen-
tive for preparedness rather than passivity.
The second convincing argument for attending to terrorist risks is the notion of
multiple applicability across many hazards. That is, measures that are useful in
responding to terrorist attacks are also useful in responding to a wide range of disas-
ters and emergencies. For example, having a decision plan to evacuate employees
from the workplace and transfer operations to another location is one means of deal-
ing with the destruction of a terrorist bomb or nerve gas or anthrax attack. The same
decision plan would also be useful in response to a workplace violence incident,
earthquake impact, hazardous materials spill, large-scale electrical failure, hurricane or
flood. Ultimately, such decision guides are simply good management practice.
Operations Relocation Potential The majority of terrorist attacks on United States targets have used either explosives
or incendiary explosives. 36
Consequently, structure damage is a principal outcome of
such attacks. Of course, building damage also arises from a wide range of natural and
technological threats, including earthquakes, floods, hurricanes, tornadoes, hazardous
materials events, fire and other high probability hazards. Secondary hazards can also
arise from structural compromise—including fires, natural gas leaks, electrical failures,
water or sewer main failures and toxic materials releases—and tend to extend the
period that buildings cannot be occupied. The increasing age of many government
buildings makes the potential especially high that government departments may find
themselves without a safe building in which to operate following any disaster. 37
The
likelihood of structural compromise can be reduced in a variety of ways (for example,
the reinforcing retrofitting in some earthquake and hurricane prone areas). While
helpful for some types of natural disasters, it is not possible to make a structure com-
pletely “disaster proof ”. The ability to strengthen a structure against explosions, very
high magnitude earthquakes, or other extreme threats requires considerable expense
that is not likely to be incurred. A nonstructural and considerably cheaper approach is
to plan for the temporary relocation of all or part of department operations.
The department heads were invited to characterize their level of planning for
temporary relocation into one of four ordered categories. It was acknowledged that a
city manager or other appropriate authority would devise a process and ultimately
select a site for any relocated operations. The activity of a department head would be
focused upon (1) the presence of a plan for relocation; (2) communication of the plan
to employees; and (3) the ability to relocate operational capability. The term opera-
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 181
tional capability was explained to respondents as possession of all personnel, equip-
ment, vehicles and records to immediately engage in normal service activity from an
alternate location. The lowest level of activity is simply “no plan.” In this case reliance
is placed on the experience, resourcefulness and skill of employees and supervisors,
without according them the benefit of pre-planning. The next higher category is
labeled “minimal plan.” Managers in this category acknowledged that some attention
has been given to generic issues (discussed below), but that more than half of a plan
to relocate would be improvised after an attack. The third category is “some plan.”
This category includes departments that have actively planned to relocate staff, equip-
ment and records, but would have to improvise at least as one-half of operational
capability at the time of impact. The fourth category of planning was labeled “firm
plan,” indicating that relocation measures had been devised and communicated to
staff, but that about 25 percent of operational capability would have to be improvised.
Finally, the term “detailed plan” was reserved for departments where measures for
relocation were planned, communicated and less than 5 percent of operations would
have to be improvised.
The department heads were spread widely across the distribution of plan out-
comes. More than one-fourth (6, or 28.6 percent) reported that they had no plan to
deal with the problem of relocating from a damaged structure. Certainly, some of the
departments are located within the same structure (as a function of being in the same
city) and managers may assume that a centralized authority is doing relocation plan-
ning for them. Hence it might be seen as an issue not requiring departmental atten-
tion. However, the important issue is not just having a building to which to move, but
in transporting one’s personnel and equipment so that service delivery can continue
from the new site. This latter activity would demand departmental attention without
regard to how or what authority located a safe target structure.
Six of the department heads (28.6 percent) reported that they possessed a mini-
mal plan. A minimal plan (as described above) offers only slightly greater utility than no
plan. That is, the idea of relocation needs was discussed, details have not been commu-
nicated, and to accomplish an actual relocation, more than half of the details of the
move would have to be worked out during the aftermath. Departments in this category
would be likely to experience a considerable time delay before operations could be
resumed. “Some plan” was possessed by four (19.0 percent) of the departments. In
these organizations, the specifics of personnel, record and equipment relocation had
been addressed and half of the details of the movement would need to be worked out
at the time of relocation. Three department heads reported having a “firm plan”(14.3
percent) in which specific elements were documented and 25 percent or less of the
relocation details were left to the aftermath. Only two departments (9.5 percent)
reported having a “detailed plan” for relocation wherein a plan was created, communi-
cated to staff and less than 5 percent of operations would require improvisation.
From an emergency management perspective, only the categories of “firm” and
“detailed” planning represent an acceptable level of preparedness to smoothly under-
take a change of operational venue. Only slightly more than one quarter of the depart-
ments fell into these categories, and consequently would be likely to continue service
182 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
delivery within a short time after a disaster. The remaining 75 percent of these organi-
zations would face the challenge of devising a relocation and operations resumption
strategy exactly when there would be the least time and resources available to do it.
Although stress levels will generally be high during emergency operations, one can
hypothesize even greater stress levels and more chaotic activity in departments with-
out detailed or firm plans. Other departments and citizens that are dependent upon
these departments for services may put pressure on other parts of municipal govern-
ment or other jurisdictions for the assistance that is needed.
Organizational Inventory A persistent problem for all organizations in the aftermath of any disaster is the
possession of an updated inventory of personnel, equipment, and records. 38
An inven-
tory for emergency use may overlap but is distinct from normal jurisdictional property
control. As opposed to listings with high levels of detail that may be maintained by a
centralized government department, an emergency inventory is kept in a focal depart-
ment, immediately accessible to managers and only with sufficient detail to identify and
quickly locate people and equipment. There are several reasons why such an inventory
constitutes a managerial asset. In connection with emergencies, an accurate accounting
of employees is necessary to determine needs for search and rescue, for welfare report-
ing to families and for establishing post-event staffing. A list of equipment and records
allows effective loss reporting, assessment of loss impact on operations, and determina-
tion of needs (replacements) for sustained service delivery. Much of this information is
needed early in the political process of requesting Presidential Disaster Declarations,
and will certainly be required for continued department operations.
Department heads characterized their organizational inventories in three cate-
gories. The lowest level of planning was represented by “no emergency inventory;”
these managers would have to assemble lists from surviving records and staff memo-
ries. Another designation was used for departments who maintained an inventory for
emergency purposes, but only of personnel. In these departments, equipment descrip-
tions and internal control numbers were not immediately available to managers. The
third category of departments retained a complete emergency inventory of human and
non-human resources specifically designed for emergency use and regularly updated.
Thirteen departments (61.9 percent) indicated that no emergency inventory list
was readily available to managers. Certainly, lists of personnel assigned and their con-
tact information were available from a personnel department and equipment and
records information available from other departments, but the information would
have to be sought out. The remaining departments were evenly split between having
an emergency inventory for personnel (4, or 19 percent) and having a complete inven-
tory (4, or 19 percent).
Workplace Protection Minimizing injuries to staff constitutes an obvious priority in disaster planning,
39 and
specifically contributes to continuity of operations following a terrorist incident. A vari-
ety of different specific protective measures are appropriate for different disaster agent
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 183
scenarios, including fires, explosions, earthquakes, floods and the like. Rather than
attempt to enumerate (predict) specific terrorism agents of destruction, two generic
protective functions were identified: provisions for site evacuation and provisions for
securing records and equipment. A third component that accompanies these two is the
notion that whatever preparedness measures exist must be communicated to employ-
ees. Based upon different combinations of these three issues, four categories of plan-
ning activity were devised. The category of “minimal plan” was reserved for
departments that reported only management awareness of the two issues and some
discussion. The term “some plan” was used for departments that had evolved an evacu-
ation plan and some records planning, but had not disseminated this information to
employees. The third level of “firm plan” was given to departments where evacuation
and record plans were devised and these plans were systematically communicated to
employees. The highest level of “detailed plan” included those departments with
explicit plans that were communicated to employees and that had conducted training. Nine of the department heads (42.9 percent) reported no planning in this area;
the assumption was that employees would follow the instructions of emergency
responders at the time of an incident. It is likely that this assumption is widespread
among managers in general, primarily because managers do no see themselves in the
“emergency” business. However, one must recall that when emergency responders
arrive, some have explicit responsibility for scene evacuation, but collectively they
must handle not just people, but also address the threat agent and undertake meas-
ures for immediate and long-term remedy. Since there is an inevitable lag between
impact and arrival of first responders, awaiting instructions for employee evacuation
or other protective action enhances the probability of employee injury or death.
Similarly, one should begin to secure records and equipment immediately. All jurisdic-
tions display building evacuation instructions as part of fire code compliance; mini-
mally, management should point these out, be sure employees understand them and
have dialog regarding when to act in an emergency.
The remaining departments ranged across four levels of planning activity. Three
departments (14.3 percent) reported a “minimal plan,” which amounts to no real
activity beyond managerial discussion. Three other departments (also 14.3 percent)
reported engaging in some concrete planning activity, but had not communicated the
plan to employees. This level of planning also achieves minimal protection, since the
lack of communication makes the likelihood of implementation in a crisis quite low.
Aside from perhaps enhanced awareness of the danger, no concrete action had been
taken to preserve the workplace. Managers in such departments would face the
prospect of engaging in a salvage operation to locate equipment and records, deter-
mine functionality, and re-deploy before they could resume service delivery. This
would constitute a tremendous challenge to be added to other necessary work imme-
diately following any disaster, and particularly a terrorist attack. Only the two highest
categories used here would be considered to afford a degree of preparedness by
emergency management standards. A “firm plan,” including planning elements for
evacuation and record preservation coupled with dissemination to employees
was reported by five departments (23.8 percent). One department (4.8 percent)
184 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
reported a “detailed plan,” which contained all the previous elements plus explicit
employee training.
Measures for Extended Operations There is much documentation that, following any disaster, business organizations
implement extended work hours as a means of achieving clean-up and refitting the
organization to resume business. 40
Local governments face the same challenges with
respect to clean-up for business resumption, but at the same time must deal with new
demands imposed internally (on personnel and finance departments for example by
employee emergency administration) and with new demands from citizen victims. At
the same time, however, governments must continue to provide routine service to all
citizens without pause. A common strategy for dealing with such increased demand lev-
els is to extend department operations, and in some cases to operate around the clock.
Some departments normally engage in operations 24 hours daily and conse-
quently have established protocols for such operations. Five of the departments (23.8
percent) studied here normally operate on 24-hour schedules. Among the remaining 16,
department heads were asked if they possessed an “emergency staffing plan that would
support 24-hour operation or extended hours in their department for an indefinite
period.” Eight of the departments (38.1 percent of the total) reported that they had no
such roster and no established plan for extended hour operation. These managers said
that, if needed, a roster would be devised after an event. Two department heads (9.5
percent) noted that they had no explicit plan, but that managers had discussed the pos-
sibility of extended operations. Three department heads (14.3 percent) had devised a
plan for extended operations but not informed employees, while the remaining three
(14.3 percent) had both created a plan and disseminated it to employees.
An issue related to the ability to extend departmental operations is the use of vol-
unteers. 41
Department heads were not asked about current use of volunteers or plans
for emergency use, although the city studied has an extensive innovative history of sup-
plementing operational personnel with volunteers. However, as an issue in emergency
decision-making, the strategy is worthy of mention here. Volunteers can come from the
general public or from among city employees without critical duties or possibly from
retired employees. Consequently, there is often a potential pool of volunteers available
to supplement the organizational workforce following a disaster. Only departments that
plan in advance for their integration into department operations can effectively use vol-
unteers. It is not generally possible to find volunteers with specific training who would
be critically useful to a given department following a disaster. Thus, since there is no
time for serious training during an emergency response, volunteers are best suited to
cover routine tasks as a means of either freeing trained employees to execute functions
requiring more skill or to provide rest to regular employees. Used in this way, and with
appropriate supervision, volunteer support can become an important supplementary
workforce. A roster of volunteers should be developed in normal times and volunteers
should be trained in the operations they would be involved in during an emergency.
Periodic checks should be made to ensure that the roster is current, and periodic train-
ing and refresher training of volunteers is advisable.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 185
Employee Family Outcomes
Another issue related to extended hours is the extent to which manager’s plan to keep
employees who work extended hours informed about the fate and safety of their fami-
lies. This practice is institutionalized among emergency response agencies. 42
The rea-
soning here is that employees will perform more effectively if they are reassured that
their families are not in danger. Department heads here were asked: “If your depart-
ment must operate following a terrorist attack, do you have a plan to check on
employee families and report that status to employees?” Ten of the department heads
(47.6 percent) simply answered no. Seven department heads (33.3 percent) said that
they were aware of the issue but had developed no explicit plans. The remaining four
department heads (19 percent) reported that some planning had been undertaken,
but that no explicit protocol was developed.
It is clear that no manager would intentionally expose employees to the added
stress of not knowing about their family following a crisis. But it is also impossible, in
most cases, for emergency management authorities to include such provisions in a
jurisdictional plan. Thus, many managers would be left to improvise a system in the
aftermath, a task that could prove impossible or minimally very complex. For example,
employees given time in a crisis to contact their families may find that telephone land
lines and wireless cell phones are not functioning or are inundated, or families may
have temporarily relocated. Another complication may be simply that there is no time
available to release employees. In spite of these challenges, managers often find a
means of contact and reassurance in crises, but a very small degree of preplanning
(even as simple as counseling employees about discussing issues with family matters)
can eliminate the challenge or reduce it substantially.
Documentation System
Systems for documentation of effort and expenditure are routine practice for local
governments. However, obtaining federal reimbursement (under disaster declarations
including terrorist attacks) often demands special accounting and documentation. 43
In many cases, a federally acceptable format and practice will substantially differ from
the normal output of local government systems. Also, normal documentation systems
are designed for normal circumstances, and consequently may be time intensive or
have other characteristics not well suited for operation during an emergency. Thus, it
is usually recommended that managers—ideally with the help of a finance depart-
ment—create a documentation system for services expended and materials acquired
and used in connection with the emergency response process.
When department heads were asked about their possession of a system for doc-
umenting expenditures, only three (14.3 percent) reported that no such system was
available and would have to be created after a disaster impact. Nearly half (9, or 42.9
percent) answered that they would intend to simply rely on existing city accountability
procedures and protocols. An additional three department heads (14.3 percent) said
that the issue of creating a system had been discussed among management, but that
no formal system had been devised. Six departments (28.6 percent) had both devel-
186 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
oped an emergency system and trained staff in its use. More than two-thirds of the
departments essentially had no plan for emergency documentation. Interestingly,
most of the six departments that did possess functional emergency systems routinely
dealt directly with the federal government on non-emergency issues (i.e., audit, hous-
ing, affirmative action, and engineering).
Conclusions A constellation of at least three conclusions may be drawn from the community stud-
ied here. First, these municipal managers, like the public at large, recognize the reality
of the threat of terrorist attacks, but as a group feel such incidents are unlikely to
directly impact them. Second, their managerial attention to decision support elements
aimed at insuring government operational continuity is generally low across all the
departments studied. This discovery is significant because it comes from a jurisdiction
that is otherwise a model of emergency preparedness, with immense resources and
capability for protecting the public. Given the observed level of planning, a large pro-
portion of departments would be confronted with many operational impediments fol-
lowing a terrorist attack or any large, damaging disaster. Knowing that these
conditions persist in a high preparedness jurisdiction suggests that one would expect
to find them among local governments with lower levels of overall preparedness.
A third conclusion is related to the pattern of particular decision elements that
had received less attention. In particular, more than half of the department managers
questioned had achieved no planning or minimal planning for the critical elements
associated with operational relocation, employee protective plans, personnel and
equipment inventories, operating for extended hours, and developing a documenta-
tion system. All terrorist incidents in the continental United States since 1990 (includ-
ing the anthrax attacks in 2001) have resulted in building damage or quarantine and
occupant evacuations. These conditions routinely produce the need for operational
relocation and planning for personnel evacuations. Over decades, emergency man-
agers have emphasized that plans for relocation and employee safety are most effec-
tively undertaken at a department level, rather than from a centralized office. 44
It is
important that this message reach operational managers.
Furthermore, workplace documentation and inventory systems are tied to the
safety and preservation of equipment, records and the work environment, and also
are critical in the recovery period where restorative funding is available inter-govern-
mentally. Finally, the one issue identified across all social science studies of local gov-
ernments following any type of disaster is a potentially astronomical increase in
demands for service. Of the 16 departments studied here that did not normally oper-
ate on a 24 hour basis, 10 had either taken no action on extended operations capabili-
ties or simply reported that they were aware of the problem.
These results suggest that in an emergency most departments studied would
have no plans for loss of workplace, potential personnel shortages due to injury, oper-
ational difficulty because of records and equipment loss and difficulty extending work
hours, as well as challenges in documenting losses and expenditures during a recovery
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 187
period. Certainly it is possible for a local government to weather all of these chal-
lenges, exhibit heroic efforts, and operate following terrorist and disaster events.
Indeed, many have done just that. An important issue, however, lies in why such a
challenging path would be chosen when effective planning and preparation reduces
many of the challenges? Clearly, the findings suggest that the development of local
government policy promoting awareness of threats to operational continuity and of
decision support elements would be helpful. Furthermore, this function of prepared-
ness fits especially well with human resources departments, which already have estab-
lished routine contacts with managers on other personnel issues and have capability
for training and education functions.
Human resources departments, in many jurisdictions, have a major responsibility
for training and education functions that could be extended to working with depart-
ments in training for emergency preparedness and communicating emergency plans
to departmental employees. Indeed, human resource departments can potentially
perform a critical role not only in planning for emergencies but also in assisting during
emergency situations through adjustments in employee policies, benefits, communi-
cations and deployment of psychological counselors to work with management and
employees in coping with the enormous stress that accompanies disasters.
To facilitate this, however, the human resource function needs to be accepted as
a key component in the emergency planning and operations of the jurisdiction and
human resource departments need to be become strategic human resource depart-
ments if not in name, in practice. Human resource departments since the early days of
merit systems have served as their guardians in warding off partisan political influence
within bureaucracies and although there were advantages accrued to governmental
operations as a result, there also were detrimental consequences that stunted the evo-
lution of personnel offices from playing a broader managerial role within government.
As Henry 45
observed “…public personnel administration as a field gradually was disas-
sociated from the substantive and managerial functions of government.” Added to a
heritage of generating rules and regulations to compel compliance with merit system
principles and policing departments to safeguard them, has been a myopic focus on
technique 46
without a holistic view of mission for themselves, their agencies 47
and juris-
dictions. Perry 48
observed a cultural divide between federal personnel operations and
line departments and this assessment can easily be extended to other jurisdictions as
well. 49
Different operating cultures lead to differing perceptual frameworks in assess-
ing problems and their solutions. The “wants” of departments are frequently not ful-
filled by personnel offices leading to antagonisms between them. 50
Given all of this,
human resource departments that should have a role in assisting departments with
emergency planning is an afterthought, if given a thought at all. In an era when the
terrorism risk is substantial and another terrorist attack on this nation is virtually a cer-
tainty, we can ill afford to allow antagonisms to impede human resource departments
and other departments from creating a strategic alliance for protection. The barriers
to a meaningful partnership for human resource management with emergency plan-
ning are formidable and reflect the same obstacles to more broadly participating in a
jurisdiction’s strategic planning.
188 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 189
Given the potentially catastrophic consequences of terrorism, an evolutionary
route for involvement of human resource departments in emergency preparedness is
potentially too slow and therefore too costly. A catalytic agent in the form of the city
manager needs to bring human resource management to the table not to dictate or to
police but rather to assist departments in the development of emergency protocols. If
human resource departments can succeed in being both mission and service oriented
there can be positive spillover effects in gaining their acceptability in all strategic plan-
ning 51
. Even more importantly, our study has revealed that departments are ill pre-
pared to handle the aftermaths of a disastrous attack once emergency management
personnel have left their premises and that vulnerability can be reduced with the assis-
tance of human resource management performing some of its traditional roles. As we
rethink emergency preparedness, the role of the human resource department needs
to be rethought as well as an integral part of this process.
Notes 1
U.S. General Accounting Office (2003). Major Management Challenges and Program Risks: Department of Homeland Security, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
2 U.S. General Accounting Office (2003). Bioterrorism: Preparedness Varied Across State and Local Jurisdictions, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
3 Lindell, M. & Perry, R. W. l992. Behavioral Foundations of Community Emergency Planning. Washington, DC: Hemisphere Publishers.
4 Perry, R.W. (1985). The Social Psychology of Civil Defense. Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath.
5 Elliott, D., Swartz, E. and Herbane, B. (1999). Business Continuity Management. London: Routledge.
6 Tyler, M. P. (1996). A Manager’s Guide: Traumatic Incidents at the Workplace. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
7 Hiles, A. & Barnes, B. (1999) The Definitive Handbook of Business Continuity Management. NY: Wiley.
8 Perry, R.W. & Lindell, M. (1996). Addressing Gaps in Environmental Emergency Planning, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, 39, 531-545.
9 Mileti, D. (1999). Designs for Disaster. Washington, DC: John Henry Press.
10 Dahlhamer, J. & D’Sousa, M. (1997). Determinants of Business Disaster Preparedness in two U.S.
Metropolitan Areas, International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, 15, 265-281.
11 Webb, G., Tierney, K. & Dahlhamer, M. (2000). Businesses and Disasters, Natural Hazards Review, 2, 83-90.
12 Tierney, K., Lindell, M. and Perry, R.W. (2001). Facing the Unexpected. Washington, DC: John Henry Press.
13 Silverstein, K. (1993). Rethinking Disaster Assistance, American City and County, 108, 12.
14 Cooke, D. (l995). L.A. Earthquake puts City Disaster Planning to the Test, Disaster Recovery Journal, 7,10-14.
15 Darnell, T. (1989). A State of Emergency, American City and County, 104, 22.
16 Anthony, D. (l994). Managing the Disaster. Fire Engineering, 147, 22-40.
17 Perry, R. W. & Lindell, M. (l990). Living with Mt. St. Helens. Pullman, WA: Washington State University Press.
18 Erikson, K. (1976). Everything in its Path. NY: Simon and Schuster.
19 Taylor, J., Zurcher, L. & Key, W. (1971) Tornado. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press.
20 Houts, P., Cleary, P. and Hu, T. (1988). The Three Mile Island Crisis. University Park: PA: Pennsylvania State University Press.
21 Alexander, D. (1993). Natural Disasters. NY: Chapman and Hall.
22 Caram, P. (2001). The 1993 World Trade Center Bombing. London: Janus Press.
23 U.S. Department of Justice (2000). Responding to Terrorism Victims: Oklahoma City. Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs.
24 Federal Emergency Management Agency, 2002. FEMA’s Delivery of Individual Assistance Programs: New York, September 11, 2001 through December 18, 2003. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office.
190 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
25 Arlington County [Virginia] Fire Department (2002). After Action Report on the Response to the September 11 Terrorist Attack on the Pentagon. Arlington, VA: County Fire Department.
26 Buck, G. (1998). Preparing for Terrorism. Albany, NY: Del Mar Publishers.
27 Mankin, L.D. & Perry, R.W. (2003). Terrorism Challenges for Human Resources Management. Tempe, AZ: School of Public Affairs, Arizona State University.
28 Drabek, T. & Hoetmer, J. (l991). Emergency Management. Washington, DC: International City and County Management Association.
29 Tyler, M. 1996. Op Cit. p.3.
30 James, K.C. (2002). Federal Manager’s/Decision Maker’s Emergency Guide. Washington, DC: U.S. Office of Personnel Management.
31 Banerjee, M. & Gillespie, D. (l994). Strategy and Organizational Disaster Preparedness, Disasters, 18, 344-354.
32 Perry, R. W. & Lindell, M. (1997). Earthquake Planning for Government Continuity, Environmental Management, 21, 89-96.
33 As a condition of collecting data, the authors promised that the identity of the municipality stud-
ied would not be revealed in any written material.
34 Drabek, T. (l990). Emergency Management. NY: Springer-Verlag.
35 Mankin & Perry (2003), Op.Cit. p. 11.
36 Perry, R.W. & Lindell, M. (2003). Understanding Human Response to Disasters with Implications
for Terrorism, Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management,11, in press.
37 Tierney, Lindell & Perry (2001), Op Cit. p. 213.
38 Jirsa, J. (l993). Buildings: General Issues and Characteristics, p. 3-18 in Committee on Mitigation of
Damage to the Build Environment (eds.) Damage to the Built Environment. Memphis, TN: Central United States Earthquake Consortium.
39 Kartez, J. & Lindell, M. (l990). Adaptive Planning for Community Disaster Response, p. 163-179 in
Sylves, R. & Waugh, W. (Eds.) Cities and Disaster. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.
40 Lindell, M. & Perry, R.W. (1998). Earthquake Impacts and Hazard Adjustment by Acutely Hazardous
Materials Facilities following the Northridge Earthquake, Earthquake Spectra, 14, 285-299.
41 Gillespie, D., Sherraden, M., Streeter, C. & Zakour, M. (l986). Mapping Networks of Organized Volunteers for Natural Hazards Preparedness. St. Louis, MO: School of Social Work, Washington University.
42 Mileti, D. & Sorenson, J. (l987). Determinants of Organizational Effectiveness in Responding to
low probability Catastrophic Events, Columbia Journal of World Business, 22,92-101.
43 Ward, J., Morris, J. & Carlile, J. (1989). On top of the Epicenter, American City and County, 104, 34-36.
44 Kartez, J. & Lindell, M. (l987). Planning for uncertainty, Journal of the American Planning Association, 53, 487-498.
45 Henry, N. (2004). Public Administration and Public Affairs. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, p.123.
46 Sayre, W. (1948). The Triumph of Techniques Over Purpose, Public Administration Review, 8, 134- 137.
47 Perry, J. (1993). Strategic Human Resource Management, Review of Public Personnel Administration, 13, 59-71.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 191
48 Ibid.
49 Ban, C. 2002. The changing role of the personnel office, p. 8-25 in Ban, C. & Riccucci, N. (Eds.)
Public Personnel Management: Current Concerns, Future Challenges. NY: Longman. Tompkins, J. (2002). Strategic Human Resources Management in \Government: Unresolved Issues, Public Personnel Management, 31, 95-110.
50 Perry, J and Mesch, W. (1997). Strategic human resource management, p 21-34 in Ban, C. &
Riccucci, N. (Eds.) Public Personnel Management: Current Concerns, Future Challenges. NY: Longman. Tompkins (2002), Op Cit. Perry (1993) Op Cit.
51 National Academy of Public Administration (1996). A Guide for Effective Strategic Management of Human Resources. Washington, DC: National Academy of Public Administration. Tompkins (2002), Op Cit.
192 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Authors Ronald W. Perry
School of Public Affairs
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0603
Phone: (480) 965-3978
Fax: (480) 965-9248
Ron Perry is professor of public affairs at Arizona State University. His primary interest
areas are public management and emergency management and planning. He is a member
of the Arizona Domestic Preparedness Task Force and for many years has been engaged in
promoting public sector organizational emergency preparedness.
Lawrence D. Mankin
School of Public Affairs
Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ 85287-0603
Phone: (480) 965-3926
Fax: (480) 965-9248
Larry Mankin is professor of public affairs at Arizona State University. He has served as
assistant dean of the Graduate College and as an assistant to three ASU presidents. His
primary interest areas are public personnel management, public management and arts
policy.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 193
194 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Extending Employment Beyond Retirement Age: The Case of Health Care Managers in Quebec Tania Saba Gilles Guerin
Baby boomers in public agencies are getting ready to retire and there are concerns about retaining the existing workforce apart from recruiting younger managers. Recent studies of workplace patterns of older workers have shown that the workforce of older workers should no longer be seen as a unidirectional journey to retirement. Older workers may value bridge employment or even prefer to extend their working lives. The motives for deciding to leave the workplace permanently can be related to unmet expectations, the desire for change, and the need to enjoy a new phase of life. Based on a survey conducted on 402 older managers working in health care institutions in Quebec, this study sheds light on the new alternatives to traditional early retirement that organizations will have to take into account while considering the preferences and intentions of employees who are approaching retirement.
Because of the decline in fertility rates and the increase in life expectancy, inmost developed countries there will, in the next few years, be a markedincrease in the proportion of the workforce that is over 45 years of age. During the past 10 years, the population aged 45 to 64 in Canada increased by 35.8 per-
cent to almost 7.3 million. This increase was fuelled mainly by the entry into this group
of the oldest baby-boomers born between 1946 and 1965. People aged 45 to 64 alone
accounted for virtually one-quarter of Canada’s total population of just over 30 million
in 2001 compared with only 20 percent in 1991. In 2011, these individuals are expected
to represent almost one-third of the nation’s total population. 1
While the trend in
recent years has been to downsize and cut costs by offering massive early retirement to
aging employees, this has unfortunately denied organizations the expertise of senior
employees, and has resulted in an over-representation of employees who are in their
late forties. However, like the generation that preceded them, this generation is getting
ready to retire, pushed by major organizational upheaval, work overload and especially
a culture of early departure which, in recent years, has taken root in workplaces as a
result of numerous early retirement programs. Replacements are therefore getting
scarce and focus is being put on a workforce largely found in today’s organizations,
namely the cohorts of baby boomers whose age hovers around 50.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 195
In Quebec, the health sector has been hard hit by this reality. The massive forced
retirement of hundreds of nurses has caused a labor shortage in this job category. The
entry of younger nurses has not compensated for the many retirements and the health
sector is still grappling with recruitment crises. Managers working within health care
institutions are currently experiencing a similar situation. Among the 3,450 managers
working in 141 institutions in the Montreal area, approximately 21 percent (704) will be
eligible for retirement in the next three years. This percentage will increase to 50 per-
cent in the next five years. The healthcare network of the Greater Montreal area will
undoubtedly be faced with not only a labor shortage but also the need to provide train-
ing to young recruits in record time in order to prepare them to take over. Human
resources planning departments have no other choice but to accept the conclusions of
the many studies that have tried to identify the problems associated with workforce
aging and established that the effectiveness of organizations will undoubtedly depend
on finding new effective ways to retain and manage employees who are 50 years and
older. 2
With the increasing number of mature employees in organizations and on the
labor market, organizations will have to implement human resource practices that will
make older employees’ jobs more challenging, encouraging them to extend their work-
ing life and empowering them to contribute to the organization’s success. 3
The main focus of this article is to point to new ways to retain an older work-
force by highlighting some of the benefits of implementing adequate human resource
practices that can encourage older workers to extend their employment. The work
expectations or values of older employees will first be examined in order to better
understand their needs. Secondly, the opportunity for older employees to realize each
of their work values in their current jobs will be assessed. The impact of unmet expec-
tations on two outcomes, namely the anticipation of early retirement and the expecta-
tion of extending working life, will then be examined while taking into consideration
some important individual and retirement characteristics that determine the point at
which people retire. Finally, human resource practices that are perceived as offering
the possibility to meet older managers’ expectations will be presented. By doing so,
we expect to be able to determine the profile as well as the organizational effort that
can dissuade employees from taking early retirement but also to determine the pro-
files and organizational practices associated with employees’ willingness to extend
their employment. By opting for a combination of these two outcomes, we expect to
be able to better identify and interpret the usefulness of the organizational strategies
implemented to manage the end of careers.
Research Issues Recent studies of workplace patterns of older workers have shown that the workplace
of older workers should no longer be seen as a unidirectional journey to retirement. 4
Despite legal provisions that prohibit arbitrary age discrimination in all aspects of
employment, attitudes toward older workers have been reported to be negative. 5
To
make decisions based on knowledge and not on prejudice, it is necessary to investigate
some factors related to the management of older workers. If the decline in physical
196 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
capacity due to the effect of age is inevitable, it is counterbalanced by added experience
and maturity. 6
Moreover, a common finding of meta-analyses in previous studies was
that, on average, the relationship between age and performance effectiveness is around
zero. In their longitudinal study, Yearta & Warr 7
found that there was no difference
between the overall sales performance of older and younger employees. Reviewing the
literature on age-related performance, Agarwal & DeGroote 8
concluded that individual
differences can better explain performance than age group differences.
To facilitate their integration and enhance their chances of remaining in the
workplace for a longer period, effective organizational policies should meet older
workers’ needs. 9
Therefore, the work values of older workers that may differ from
those of their younger colleagues need to be assessed in order to encourage their
active participation in the organization. 10
The provision of work alternatives as older
workers reach retirement age will broaden their career perspectives. Senior employ-
ees who are eager to retire will be able to leave the organization whereas those who
show some flexibility will be offered financial or work organization incentives by the
organization that encourage them to consider bridge employment. Moreover, it
should not be forgotten that those who are still performing well and looking forward
to advancement and career development should be able to continue to play an active
role and contribute to the organization’s success.
Retirement Issues Doeringer
11 found that although 50 percent of U.S. workers have officially retired by
the age of 60, only 11 percent have fully withdrawn from the workforce by that time.
The others choose bridge employment, namely, employment that takes place after a
person’s retirement from a full-time position but before the person’s permanent with-
drawal from the workplace. 12
At the end of their careers, workers can make three
choices that are different from the traditional separation from work by retirement. 13
The first choice, remaining at work, means that an employee meeting the retirement
qualifications of age and years of service chooses to continue working in a full- or part-
time job without a break in service. The reasons for this choice relate to financial plan-
ning in preparation for a reduced income, respect for older workers’ contributions,
and the desire to do meaningful work. A second choice is returning to work (paid
position) after the person has experienced a period of retirement. Such a choice is
often due to the need for a second career or a bridge job between periods of retire-
ment, the need to supplement income, the need for greater health insurance cover-
age, or just a desire to feel like a contributing member of society. Finally, a retiring
worker is an employee who meets the age and service requirements and elects to
leave his or her current employment with no intention of returning. The motives for
deciding to leave the workplace permanently can be related to job dissatisfaction, the
desire for change, and the need to enjoy a new phase of life.
Organizations will therefore have to take into account alternatives to traditional
early retirement and consider the preferences and intentions of employees who are
approaching retirement. Older workers may value early retirement or prefer to extend
their working lives. After careful examination of the preferences of older workers with
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 197
198 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
regard to their retirement plans, Rosen & Jerdee, 14
Sheppard 15
and Feldman 16
argued
that older workers often favor phased retirement, combining work and retirement,
instead of an abrupt end to their professional lives. Sheppard 17
noted in his study that
80 percent of workers prefer gradual retirement to early retirement.
The Influence of Older Workers’ Values on Their Desire to Extend their Working Lives There has been considerable research on the aspirations and work values of older
workers. As reported in the review by Crampton, Hodge & Mishra, 18
older workers, in
comparison with their younger counterparts, tend to enjoy themselves more on the
job and are less concerned with advancement and more concerned with finding stabil-
ity and developing a good relationship with co-workers. Furthermore, they are more
loyal to their company, have better job morale, are more aware of occupational health
and safety issues, and have much lower rates of turnover and absenteeism. Tschirhart 19
studied age-related differences among volunteers. She found that senior individuals
(over 60) were more motivated, more altruistic and less interested in career develop-
ment. Older volunteers were more receptive to feedback than to rewards and needed
to know that they were ‘making a difference.’ They perceived their work as more
meaningful and felt more responsibility for work outcomes than younger volunteers.
In an effort to synthesize the literature on the subject, we have classified older
workers’ values into five categories: work content, career development, recognition,
work conditions and retirement conditions.
Work content. Toward the end of their careers, older workers tend to value career autonomy.
20 They favor quality and prefer to work at their own pace.
21 They yearn for vari-
ety and the possibility to choose among tasks that reduce or better balance their work-
load. 22
Another important aspiration of mature employees is to deal with a supportive
and understanding supervisor who recognizes their experience and maturity, and pro-
vides them with work autonomy. 23
Zetlin 24
identified the importance of making older
workers feel useful. The need for older workers to reorient their careers, to assume new
roles, such as mentors, trainers or consultants, has also been studied by Sheppard, 25
Kelly, 26
and Lewis & McLaverty. 27
These aspirations are not necessarily shared by all
older workers. The desire to play new roles or start a second career is driven by tenure
in the profession and in the organization, by career stage and by a number of person-
ality traits such as self-efficacy, locus of control and work involvement. 28
Career development. Some authors have suggested that workers who reach their fiftieth birthday still have at least 10 to 15 more professional years ahead of them.
29 Older
workers need to have the same opportunities as younger workers and equal access to
training, career advancement and career development. They can still seek challenging jobs
with increased responsibilities. 30
Various authors emphasize the fact that older workers
value training opportunities. 31
Kelly 32
adds that older workers who are worried that their
careers are plateauing see training as a way of enhancing their chances for advancement.
Contribution recognition. Leibowitz & Farren,33 and Wright & Hamilton34 argued that older workers need to be heard and be fairly compensated for their contributions
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 199
to the organization. They fear losing status with aging and yearn to see their experi-
ence, maturity and years of loyal services to the organization recognized. Therefore,
recognition in their jobs is identified as a very important aspiration for older workers.
Adapted work conditions. Rix,35 and Dibden & Hibbett36 point out that older workers often choose to work part-time. Toward the end of their careers, they tend to
value spending more time with their families and therefore favor reduced workloads.
They would rather avoid long hours and hours spent in traffic, and eventually choose
to telecommute. 37
Individual Characteristics Influencing Bridge Employment Individual differences (health and age), family status, and job factors (organizational
tenure, salary at time of retirement, amount of pension benefits, and retirement coun-
seling) were hypothesized to influence the decision to engage in bridge employment
and therefore to extend working life. 38
Hypotheses about the positive relationship
between good health and bridge employment have been supported by research
results. Organizational tenure was found to be strongly correlated with engaging in
bridge employment. The higher a retiree’s salary, the less likely he or she was to
engage in bridge employment. Pension benefits, declined retirement incentives in the
past, and retirement counseling were not significantly related to engaging in bridge
employment. With spouses still in the workplace and children to support, retirees
were significantly more likely to engage in bridge employment. However, neither mar-
ital status nor retiree’s gender was related to bridge employment. 39
Managing Older Workers Age should be considered as a component of the diversity issue and managing older
workers as a part of diversity management that reflects the new challenges facing
human resource professionals as they manage a multi-cultural, multi-racial, well-edu-
cated workforce of both genders. Recent studies identified three key strategies used
to manage older workers efficiently. 40
Establishing supportive workplace relations. Two areas have been identified to achieve a supportive workplace environment for older workers. Alternative work
arrangements provide flexibility in terms of job redesign, job rotation, redesign of
equipment, leave policies and flextime. Other options are part-time arrangements, re-
employment of retirees, and using retirees as volunteers (it is estimated that a third of
all Americans, including older workers, are hired on a part-time, temporary or contin-
gent basis). The second area is retirement-related assistance through pension plan-
ning and providing early retirement incentive programs.
Encouraging career development can be achieved by developing annual career objectives, providing an environment of continuous learning opportunities, facilitating
transfer of knowledge from one generation to another and providing training. The lit-
erature suggests that some older workers are reluctant to participate in training.
According to Maurer, 41
one possible explanation is a decline in older workers’ self-con-
fidence in their ability to learn. It is necessary to encourage all employees to be
involved in training and to design the training so as to enhance its success. It is also
important to make sure that qualified older workers have as much access as their
younger colleagues to challenging tasks and assignments in order to avoid lost oppor-
tunities for older workers.
Performance appraisal and communication systems should be reliable, valid, and age-neutral, in other words, based on objective measures and free of stereotypical
thinking about aging. Among the most important concerns were the need to adapt
appraisals to the needs of older workers, to adopt a policy for older workers, and to
provide outplacement assistance. Grievance procedures and open door policies were
viewed as an effective way to better understand the needs of older employees and as a
gatekeeper for ethical behavior serving to prevent discrimination against them.
Study Design Sample The data for the present study were collected by a questionnaire completed between
April and March 2001 by 402 managers aged 50 years and older working in health care
institutions (response rate 28 percent). The respondents’ mean age is 53.5. Women
make up a slightly larger proportion of the population studied and account for 60.9
percent of respondents. As might be expected from a population of managers, the
level of education is fairly high: 34.3 percent of respondents have a bachelor’s degree,
35.8 percent have a master’s degree and 3.5 percent have a Ph.D. The great majority
of respondents live with a spouse (75.6 percent) and 43.8 percent have no depen-
dants. Their average salary is between C$55,000 and C$70,000. The mean tenure is 16
years in the organization, and 8.5 years in the current position. Most of the respon-
dents have decided to retire at the age of 59, even though only 19.9 percent of those
choosing to retire will be entitled to their full pension at that time. If given the chance,
they would prefer to retire at the age of 57.5.
Measures Work value. The work values of older workers were measured using 17 items relating to various working conditions that were identified in the literature. The scales used to
measure these work expectations each consist of a seven-point Likert-type format rat-
ing the relative importance assigned to the various aspects of work by the individual.
Work rewards. Using the same items that measure the work values of older workers, each individual also rated, on a seven-point Likert-type scale, the extent to
which he or she feels that their work aspirations can be achieved in their current job.
Unmet expectations were computed by calculating a difference score between the work values and the work rewards.
Retirement expectations. Using a seven-point Likert-type scale, respondents were asked to rate the extent to which it is important for them to retire as soon as possible.
Extending employment. Older managers were asked to rate the extent to which it is important for them to continue working after the normal retirement age.
200 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Human resource practices. Thirty-three practices identified in the literature as effective practices for managing older workers were included in the analyses. The
respondents were asked to indicate whether the practices existed or not. The prac-
tices refer to career management, compensation, retirement management, working
conditions, appraisals and new roles.
Individual characteristics. Work involvement was assessed using a measure developed by Kanungo,
42 which included six items on a seven-point Likert scale. The
scale had an internal coherence coefficient of .75, which indicated a fairly acceptable
reliability. Demographic and employment variables were collected from direct ques-
tions on age, gender (coded 1=female, 2=male), level of education, organizational
tenure, length of time in current position, family income and number of dependants.
Whether or not the respondent considered himself or herself to be in good health was
measured by 13 items developed by Health Canada. Examples are “I felt tired lately,” “
I was in a very bad mood.” The internal consistency of the scale is .87. The respondent
was asked some direct questions pertaining to their retirement (retirement age,
spouse’s retirement age, number of dependants at retirement and financial situation).
Statistical Analysis Four types of analysis were conducted. First, a descriptive analysis was used to rank
the work values of older workers and to measure the possibility of attaining those
work values in their current jobs. Secondly, simultaneous regressions were run to
explain the effect of unmet expectations on both the anticipation of retirement and
extending employment. Thirdly, hierarchical regression analyses were run to control
for the effect of individual variables in explaining early retirement and extending
employment. Finally, multivariate regression analyses were conducted on human
resource practices that are perceived by older workers as effective practices, inasmuch
as they help them meet their expectations.
Results Unmet expectations of older managers As indicated in Figure 1, older workers rate the need to work in a pleasant environ- ment as their most important work value followed by the need to feel useful. To be able
to balance work and family is considered as the third most important work value. The
need to self-actualize at work and work with a clear vision ranks fourth and fifth. Next is
the aspiration to see their efforts recognized. Enjoying interpersonal relationships is
slightly less important, ranking sixth on a seven-point scale. Having variety in work is
less important than having challenging tasks. To be able to transfer competencies ranks
tenth but still reflects, with an average of 5.83, the importance older managers give to
succession planning. To be able to make a difference is as important as transferring
competencies and knowledge. Less important for older managers are the needs to use
new technologies, acquire new competencies, have employment security, have power,
have lighter work loads and progress in their career. However, it is important to note
that the average for the latent needs remains above four on a scale of seven.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 201
202 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Figure 1: Work values, work rewards and un
Although managers seem to be able to fulfill their needs to a certain extent, there
is a significant gap between the aspirations and the opportunity provided by the organi-
zation to satisfy each of these work values. According to Figure 1, the gap between the
aspiration to work with a clear vision and the possibility of actually doing so is 1.93, that
is, nearly a two-point difference on a seven-point scale. A second large gap can be found
between the managers’ need to work in a pleasant environment and the possibility of
fulfilling this aspiration (1.73). The third source of dissatisfaction is the difficulty that
managers have in balancing work and family (1.71). Several other gaps should be noted:
the difficulty that managers experience in reducing their heavy workload (1.69); not
being able to make a difference (1.60); and not seeing their efforts recognized (1.39).
1.69
0.93
0.58
0.22
0.79
0.40
1.60
0.85
0.52
0.93
0.13
1.39
1.93
1.19
1.71
0.74
1.73
0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%
Feel useful
Work Values Work Rewards Difference
3.79
3.16
4.48
4.85
4.63
5.04
4.23
4.98
5.39
5.01
5.87
4.66
4.23
5.02
4.52
5.53
4.74
4.72
4.85
5.06
5.07
5.42
5.44
5.83
5.83
5.91
5.94
6.00
6.05
6.16
6.21
6.23
6.27
6.47 Work in a pleasant
environment
Be able to balance work/ family or leisure
Self-actualize at work
Work with a clear vision
See efforts recognized
Have interpersonal relationships
Have challenging tasks
Have variety in work
Be able to transfer competencies
Be able to make a difference
Use new information technology
Acquire new competencies
Have employment security
Have power
Be given a lighter workload
Be able to progress in career
The differences between aspirations and the possibility of fulfilling them that are
related to the desire for self-actualization at work and being able to progress in their
career, have challenging tasks, acquire new competencies, transfer competencies and
feel useful are lower than the preceding dissatisfactions, varying between 1.19 and .74.
Finally, managers seem to have satisfied aspirations related to having power and vari-
ety in their work, using new technologies, job security and interpersonal relationships
at work.
The impact of unmet expectations on the anticipation to retire early or to extend employment The results in Table 1 suggest that the predictive power of the model is stronger in explaining the anticipation of early retirement (R
2 =0.163) than in explaining extend-
ing employment (.061).
Table 1. Multivariate Regression Results: Dimensions of Unmet Expectations explaining Early Retirement and Extending Employment
Taking Early Retirement Extending Employment
Work values
b Acquire new competencies –.204** Use new information technology Feel useful
Have employment security Be able to make a difference Be able to transfer competencies –.118* .138* Work with a clear vision –.153** Be able to balance work/family or leisure .133* –.128* Be given a lighter workload .178** Work in a pleasant environment .169** See his/her work recognized Have challenging tasks Self-actualize at work Have variety in work .189** Have power Be able to progress in career .170** Have interpersonal relationships –.157*
R square .163 .061 Adjusted R square .145 .049 F 8.707** 5.131**
* p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 203
As indicated in Table 1, older managers did not anticipate retiring early when
they were more satisfied with their ability to acquire new competencies, to transfer
knowledge and when they felt satisfied with their interpersonal relationships at work.
If they needed to balance work and family and could not achieve it, they anticipated
retiring as early as possible. They also would want to retire early if they had a heavier
work load, lacked variety in their work and if they were not satisfied with their work
environment.
On the contrary, the older managers who would want to consider extending
employment are the ones who are dissatisfied with their career progress and their
ability to transfer knowledge. By remaining employed, they are probably looking for-
ward to being able to better meet their expectations in that regard. They also antici-
pated extending employment when their expectations regarding their ability to
balance work and their personal lives and when working with a clear vision seemed to
be fulfilled.
The impact of unmet expectations after controlling for the effect of individual characteristics Table 2 provides the results of the hierarchical regressions controlling for individual characteristics and explaining both the anticipation of early retirement and extending
employment. Results indicate that older managers will be more likely to retire early if
they have health problems, if they consider that work is not central to their lives and if
they will be eligible for an attractive retirement pension. Most importantly, the smaller
the difference between their retirement age and the retirement age of their spouse,
the more they will consider early retirement. Respondents will consider extending
employment if they are in good health, if they feel that work plays an important role in
their lives, if their pension benefits are not attractive enough and if the gap between
their retirement age and their spouse’s retirement age is wider.
Interestingly, only two unmet expectations remain significant after controlling for
individual characteristics which account in both cases for a larger proportion of the
variance. The prospect of being able to work in a pleasant environment explains the
willingness to retire earlier whereas the dissatisfaction with the ability to acquire new
competencies encourages managers not to consider early retirement. Curiously, none
of the unmet expectations dimensions remained significant to explain extending
employment after controlling for individual characteristics.
Human resource practices reducing the perception of unmet expectations Table 3 presents the regression results for 33 human resource practices associated with the management of older workers on each of the two unmet expectation dimen-
sions that were identified as reducing eagerness to retire early. Results suggest that
eight human resource practices may increase the perception of satisfaction of expecta-
tions about acquiring new competencies. Regular evaluation of potential and of train-
ing needs provides managers with the opportunity to be promoted, to participate in
204 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
strategic committees and to share work with another colleague. Adapted training for
older managers allows managers to better meet their expectations about acquiring
competencies. Older managers will be able to fulfill their needs regarding acquiring
new competencies if their pension is indexed, therefore making their investment in
training worthwhile. Interestingly, the presence of a code of conduct adds to their dis-
satisfaction over the possibility of acquiring new competencies. One possible explana-
tion is that such a code increases their expectations of fair and equitable treatment in
the area of training, which could be difficult to achieve given the many stereotypes
that exist within organizations regarding the advisability of offering training to individ-
uals who are approaching retirement age.
Table 2. Hierarchical Regressions Results: Dimensions of unmet expectations explaining taking early retirement and extend- ing working life after controlling for individual characteristics
Taking Early Retirement Extending Working Life
b
Step 1 Individual characteristics Gender Education Employment Status Health –.243** .101* Length of time in organization Length of time in actual position Salary Family income Number of dependants Work involvement –.203** .184** Number of dependants at retirement Difference between retirement
age of respondent and spouse –.215** .204** Financial situation at retirement Amount of retirement pension .184** –.127* DR square .225** .108** DR square adjusted .206** .086** Step 2 Unmet expectations Acquire new competencies –.186** Work in a pleasant environment .165* DR square .053** DR square adjusted .045** Total R square .278 Total R square adjusted .251 F 10.461** 4.979**
* p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 205
Table 3. Multivariate Regression Results: Management practices influencing acquiring new competencies and working in a pleasant environment
Management Practices Acquire new competencies Work in a pleasant environment
Employee Appraisal • Performance appraisal • Feedback on performance –.177** • Evaluation of potential –.115* • Training evaluation –.153**
Career Management • Periodical career evaluation • Formal career plan • Career counseling • Opportunities for career mobility • Promotion opportunities –.144** • Special projects –.150**
New Roles • Act as a consultant • Act as trainer –.199**
Training • Management training .100* • Keep skills up-to-date • Computer skills • Adapted training –.146** –.135*
Communication/Employee Relations • Communication programs • Participation in strategic committee –.118* • Communication of operational information • Communication of strategic information –.183** • Grievance procedure • Code of conduct .117*
Rewards • Compensation linked to performance –.136* • Extended vacations
Retirement Conditions • Retirement preparation programs • Early retirement with penalties • Pension indexation –.129* • Gradual retirement • Incentives to extend working life
Flexible Working Conditions • Part-time work • Share work with another colleague -.122* • Flexible hours -.138** • Work from home
R square .202 .304 Adjusted R square .176 .282 F 7.956 13.768
* p < 0.05 ** p < 0.01
206 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
A pleasant work environment can be attained by regularly briefing employees on
performance, by sharing strategic information, by linking compensation to performance,
by providing flexible hours and by giving older managers the opportunity to act as train-
ers, to benefit from adapted training, and be assigned to special projects. Curiously, pro-
viding older managers with management training increases their dissatisfaction
regarding working in a pleasant environment. A possible explanation is that older man-
agers may see such training as a lack of confidence in their managerial abilities.
Discussion As the analyses clearly show, there will always be employees who want to take early
retirement — those in poor health, whose spouse is retiring or who do not attach great
importance to work. It would be ill-advised for an organization to put pressure on
these individuals to stay in the organization longer. In general, they are less motivated
and have poorer performance at work and thus both the organization and the individu-
als themselves would be better off if the latter took early retirement. The results clearly
show that decisions to retire, and even more particularly, decisions to extend one’s
working life, are largely due to individual characteristics (health, spouse’s career, finan-
cial situation at retirement age, etc.). No professional consideration really seems to be
able to motivate the managers in the health sector to extend their employment.
On the other hand, many employees retire early for the wrong reasons or
because they have been urged to do so by the organization. We are not referring only
to “golden handshake” plans and the lifting of actuarial penalties, but also to all those
values that promote the idea that older employees have lower performance, that they
must make room for young people, or that happiness can only be found outside the
workplace. In the latter case, organizations have the means to change their practices
and culture and to reverse the trend.
Two unmet expectations — the ability to develop new competencies and to work
in a pleasant environment — have emerged as reasons for reducing the desire to take
early retirement. These two dimensions undoubtedly have the greatest influence since
they remained significant after controlling for individual characteristics. The question
then is how to support these aspirations. What practices should be promoted that
would allow these aspirations to be fulfilled and thus discourage individuals from retir-
ing early? These considerations will frame the conclusions that we will attempt to
bring out from the analyses made in the present study.
Unlike young people, whose values, attitudes and behaviors are quite highly reg-
ulated by the educational and job entry systems, employees who are 50 or older who
have been in the labor market for several decades have had numerous and varied
experiences that have given them a high level of self-knowledge and allowed them to
develop precise and personalized life strategies. Like their values and attitudes, their
career plans are therefore much more diversified than those of young people, which
are aimed essentially at integration and growth. It is therefore essential that retirement
management be carried out on a case-by-case basis within a more global approach to
end-of-career management, one that takes into account not only the aspirations and
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 207
needs of individuals, but also their experiences, competencies, potential and motiva-
tion, not to mention, of course, the needs of the organization.
Career management is inevitably the first area of human resource practice that
should be considered by organizations since one of the most effective ways to re-inject
dynamism into careers is to have employees play new roles or to offer them new chal-
lenges. This form of subjective career enrichment or advancement, which is particu-
larly appreciated by older employees, is aimed at keeping them employed longer.
Taking on the role of trainer or being assigned to special projects can give older man-
agers a sense of fulfillment in their professional life, allowing them to work in a pleas-
ant environment which recognizes their experience and competencies. Meeting these
requirements does not depend on a specific policy or program but should take place
within end-of-career planning. Using evaluation of potential or the career interview,
the superior identifies, with the employee, new assignments that the latter could see
him or herself taking on and new roles that he or she could play. Of course, during
this process, the superior must harmonize service needs with the employee’s aspira-
tions. However, this is not an authoritarian exercise of work distribution but an effort
to reconcile expectations with organizational needs.
The efforts of older employees who perform well to progress in their career
should not be hindered. It would be a serious mistake for organizations to exclude
them from promotion processes as long as they remain competent and healthy and
want to put effort into their work. The possibility of progressing in their career allows
managers to contemplate delaying their retirement. These findings run counter to
preconceived notions found in texts that suggest, for example, that older employees
lack ambition and most choose to slow down the pace of work in order to achieve a
better work-family balance. Our results clearly show that some of them for whom such
considerations are no longer relevant because, for example, they have fewer family
obligations, wish to remain in their jobs longer in the pursuit of a pleasant work envi-
ronment in which they can develop.
The second area of human resource practices to consider is training. According
to the literature, it is essential for older managers, like younger ones, to develop com-
petencies. It is becoming particularly necessary for the former to become acquainted
with new technologies, update technical knowledge, increase their capacity to work in
teams or networks, and better understand the new organizational environment.
However, older managers appear to have a certain mistrust of training since none of
the training practices allows them to acquire new competencies or provide the oppor-
tunity to work in a pleasant environment. It must therefore be concluded that training
programs will have limited effectiveness unless they are adapted to the needs of these
managers to fulfill their aspirations and keep them on the job. However, more than
the acquisition of new knowledge, it is the transfer of their own knowledge that moti-
vates these managers to remain in their jobs longer. In fact, it is this mission rather
than a training project that older managers give themselves before leaving.
Time management is the third main area of human resource practices in a strat-
egy to prevent early retirement. Flexible time management integrates very well into
early 21st century management, which has generated many individualized or “flex”
208 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
practices. Among them, flextime has proven to have the greatest effect on the exten-
sion of employment, giving older managers considerable latitude and thus allowing
them to fulfill their desire to make a difference, self-actualize at work and work in a
pleasant environment. Interestingly, sharing work with colleagues is perceived as an
opportunity to acquire new competencies.
The fourth area of human resource practices concerns forms of recognition. This
is based on the fact that many respondents expressed needs in the areas of recogni-
tion, job atmosphere or ethical environment in relation to the possibility of extending
working life. Among highly qualified employees, this need for recognition is very
strong and constitutes an essential lever for maintaining the dynamics of participation
and involvement. Linking compensation to performance seems to be a practice that is
likely to provide greater recognition of managers’ contributions. However, it is seldom
used in health care institutions. The appraisal interview may be the ideal time to
demonstrate this recognition. It is up to the superior to provide this recognition and
give information to managers on their performance, which helps to create the pleas-
ant environment that the respondents identified as an essential condition for recon-
sidering early retirement.
The fifth area of human resource practices, communication of information, is
without a doubt one of the most obvious ways to encourage employee involvement.
Given recent developments in the health sector as well as the many major reorganiza-
tions that institutions have had to implement in recent years, providing employees with
information amounts to making them aware of clients’ needs, organizational con-
straints and operational and strategic actions to be undertaken. Very often decision
makers merely inform managers of recent developments. Unfortunately, this type of
communication is insufficient and does not generate employee involvement or motiva-
tion. Rather, what makes a difference is direct communication incorporating feedback
that takes into account employees’ suggestions and experience in the field concerned.
Moreover, participation in strategic committees, a practice that is a privileged means of
sharing information increases the capacity to acquire new competencies. The means of
transmitting information may take various forms. Those favored in the literature incor-
porate direct feedback and take employees’ interventions into account.
Similarly, certain managers require transparency and ethical treatment and dis-
trust political games. In this regard, the use of ethical codes, interpreted as a way to
decrease the disrespectful or immoral conduct of superiors, has paradoxically been
viewed as an impediment to the possibility of increasing one’s competencies. A possi-
ble explanation is that the presence of such a code increases awareness of the prohibi-
tion against the discrimination of older persons and the obligation to ensure that they
enjoy equal opportunity within the enterprise. However, as one might guess, in the
current context, these considerations pertain more to discourse than to reality, which
has an opposite effect to that expected.
The results of this study appear to have two key implications for HR practices
regarding older workers. First of all, organizations must demonstrate a real willingness
to retain an older workforce and do what is needed to achieve this. Although our
results explained the reasons for delaying retirement age, they could not explain the
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 209
measures that could actually encourage older employees to extend their work life. For
those who show some flexibility about when to retire, our results clearly demonstrate
that managers will not be prepared to postpone their retirement if this means simply
continuing to work for a longer period. Rather, they count on continuing to acquire
new competencies and therefore having a career plan that will put their experience to
use and allow them to continue to progress in their career while deriving a certain
pleasure from extending their employment.
Secondly, for health care managers, it is clear that extending employment is still
an issue that is more likely to be explained solely by individual characteristics. It may
also be presumed that the health care managers are even more aware of retirement
issues given the culture of retirement that has been established in recent years in the
health sector. They would be more inclined to delay retirement age than to consider a
formal extension of their working life. However, bridge employment may be viewed as
an excellent solution for some staffing problems since it would allow the institutions to
rely on an experienced and knowledgeable workforce instead of contingent workers.
To conclude, several limitations of this study should be mentioned. The ability to
generalize our findings may be somewhat limited by the nature of the sample.
Participants in this study are senior managers working in the health sector that, until
recently, has gone through major restructuring and organizational changes. The per-
ceptions of some of the work values and work rewards might have been influenced by
the particular concerns of this sample. Future research should therefore examine a
more heterogeneous sample and comparative studies should be conducted in differ-
ent organizational and cultural environments. Finally, other important issues such as
the impact of plans to retire on work performance and commitment to the organiza-
tion are beyond the scope of this article. They nonetheless deserve attention and
should be investigated.
210 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Notes 1
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no 96F0030XIE2001002. Auer, P. & Fortuny, M. 2002. Ageing of the Labour Force in OECD
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2 Saba, T., Guerin, G., & Wils, T. (1998). Managing older professionals in Public Agencies in Quebec,
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4 Stein, D., Rocco T.S. & Goldenetz, K.A. 2000. Age and the university workplace: A case study of
remaining, retiring, or returning older workers, Human Resource Development Quarterly, 11: 61- 80. Doverspike, D., Taylor M.A., Shultz K.S. and McKay P.F. 2000. Responding to the challenge of a
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5 Johnson, R.W., & Neumark, D. 1997. Age discrimination, job separations, and employment status
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6 Casey, B. 1992. Redundancy and early retirement: The interaction of public and private policy in
Britain, Germany and the U.S.A. British Journal of Industrial Relations, 30: 425-443.Kay, S. 1993. Age no barrier, perception is. Computerworld, 27: 85. Sterns, H.L. & Miklos, S.M. 1995. The aging worker in a changing environment: Organizational and individual issues. Journal of Vocational Behavior, 47: 248-268.
7 Yearta, S.K., & Warr, P. 1995. Does age matter? Journal of Management Development, 14: 28-36.
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9 Saba et al., 1998.
10 Wright, H., & Hamilton, R. 1978. Work satisfaction & age: Some evidence for the job change
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11 Doeringer, P.B. 1990. Economic Security, Labor Market Flexibility and Bridges to Retirement. In P.B.
Doeringer (Eds), Bridges to retirement, Ithaca: Cornell University ILR Press.
12 Kim, S., & Feldman, D.C. 2000. Working in retirement: The antecedents of bridge employment and
its consequences for quality of life in retirement, Academy of Management Journal, 43: 1195- 1210.
13 Stein et al., 2000.
14 Rosen, B. & Jerdee, T. 1986. Retirement policies for the 21st century. Human Resource Management, 25: 405-420. Rosen, B. & Jerdee, T. 1989. Retirement policies: Evidence of the need for change. Human Resource Management, 28: 87-103.
15 Sheppard, H. 1988. Work continuity versus retirement: Reasons for continuing work. In R. Morris,
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16 Feldman, D.C. 1994. The decision to retire early: A review and conceptualization, Academy of Management Review, 19: 285 -315.
17 Sheppard, 1988.
18 Crampton, S., Hodge J., & Mishra J. 1996. Transition — Ready or not: The aging of America’s work-
force, Public Personnel Management, 25: 243-256.
19 Tschirhart, M. 1998. Understanding the older stipended volunteer: Age-related differences among
AmeriCorps members, Public Productivity & Management Review, 22: 35-48.
20 Karp, D. 1987. Professionals beyond midlife: Some observations on work satisfaction in the fifty-to-
sixty decade. Journal of Aging Studies, 1: 209-223.
21 Kelly, J. 1990. Employers must recognize that older people want to work. Personnel Journal, January, 44-47.
22 Rix, 1990. Chusmir, L. 1990. A shift in value is squeezing older people. Personnel Journal, January, 48-52. Lewis, J. & McLaverty, C. 1991. Facing up to the needs of the older manager. Personnel Management, January: 32-35.
23 Wright & Hamilton, 1978. Duran, C. & Kleiner, B.H. 1992. Managing older employees. Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 13: i-ii. Ramsey, R.D. 1993. What it takes to supervise older workers. Supervision, 54: 9-10.
24 Zetlin (1992)
25 Sheppard (1988)
26 Kelly 1990
27 Lewis & McLaverty. 1991
28 Sterns, H. 1986. Training & retraining adult & older adult workers. In J. Birren, P. Robinson & J.E.
Livingston (Eds). Age, Health & Employment. New Jersey: Prentice Hall. Chusmir, 1990.
29 Rosow, J. 1990. Extending working life. In I. Bluestone, R. Montgomery & J. Owen (Eds). The Aging of the American Workforce:Problems, Programs, Policies, Detroit, Wayne State University Press.
30 Sheppard, 1988. Siegel, S.R. 1993. Relationships between current performance & likelihood of
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31 Doering, M., Rhodes, S. & Schuster, M. 1983. The aging worker, Thousand Oaks: Sage. Dychtwald, K. 1990. The age wave. Training & Developement Journal, February, 24-30. Pennington, J. & Downs, S. 1993. Fork truck training for older workers. Industrial & Commercial Training, 25: 22- 28. Elliott, J.R. 1995. Human resource management’s role in the future aging of the workforce.
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32 Kelly, 1990.
33 Leibowitz, K. & Farren, C. 1990. Managing career gridlock. Training & Development Journal, April: 29-35.
34 Wright & Hamilton, 1978.
35 Rix, 1990.
36 Dibden, J. & Hibbett, A. 1993. Older workers: An overview of recent research. Great Britain — Dept. of Employment — Employment Gazette, 101: 237250.
37 Rosow, 1990; Kelly, 1990; Lewis & McLaverty, 1991.
38 Weckerle, J.R., & Shultz, K.S. 1999. Influences on the bridge employment decision among older
USA workers, Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 72: 317-329.
212 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
39 Feldman, D.C. & Seongsu, K. 2000. Bridge employment during retirement: A field study of individ-
ual and organizational experiences with post-retirement employment HR, Human Resource Planning, 23:14-25.
40 Saba et al,. 1998. Hale, N. 1990. The older worker: Effective strategies for management & human resource development, San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. West, J.P., & Berman, E.M. 1996. A national sur- vey: Managerial responses to an aging municipal workforce, Review of Public Personnel Administration, 16: 38-58.
41 Maurer, T. 2001. Career-relevant learning and development, worker age, and beliefs about self-
efficacy for development, Journal of Management, 27:123-140. Maurer (2001)
42 Kanungo, R.N. 1982. Measurement of job and work involvement. Journal of Applied Psychology, 67: 341-349.
Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 213
Authors Tania Saba
Associate Professor
School of Industrial Relations
University of Montreal
P.O. Box 6128, succursale Centre-Ville
Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7
Tel.: (514) 343-5992
Fax: (514) 343-5764
Email: [email protected]
Tania Saba is associate professor in the School of Industrial Relations at the University of
Montreal. She was a visiting fellow at Cornell University in 1995-1996. Her research
interests include international dimensions of HR, psychological contract, career
management and older worker’s management in the private and public sectors. She has
published in academic and professional journals, and has contributed to many books on
human resource management.
Gilles Guerin
Professor
School of Industrial Relations
University of Montreal
P.O. Box 6128, succursale Centre-Ville
Montreal, Quebec H3C 3J7
Tel.: (514) 343-7333
Fax: (514) 343-5764
Email: [email protected]
Gilles Guerin is full professor in the School of Industrial Relations at the University of
Montreal. His research interests include career management in the private and public
sectors, high involvement management, organizational changes, older worker’s
management and the organization of the human resource function. He has published
extensively in academic and professional journals, and has contributed to many books on
human resource management.
214 Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005
Other featured speakers include… Monday, October 17 1:30 p.m. – 2:45 p.m. Carolyn Clark, Vice President of Human Resources, Fairmont Hotels & Resorts Topic: People Strategies
Tuesday, October 18 8:30 a.m. – 9:45 p.m. Paul Dolan, President, Mendocino Wine Company Topic: Leadership and its Responsibility for the Future
1:45 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. Dolorese Ambrose, Expert on Emerging Workplace Issues and Diversity, Author Topic: From the Inside Out – How to Lead, Follow, and Create from Your Personal Power Source
Wednesday, October 19 9:00 a.m. – 10:15 a.m. Gail Rossides, Acting Director, Business Transformation Office, Department of Homeland Topic: The Building of the Federal Agency – the TSA (Transportation Security Administration) Story
2:45 p.m. – 4:00 p.m. – Closing Session Mike Marino, Jr., Distinguished Toastmaster Topic: The Greatest Room in the World Is the Room for Improvement
Registration is open, so register today. Make plans now to join your public sector human resource colleagues from across the country and around the world for the IPMA-HR 2005 International Training Conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, at the Hyatt Regency New Orleans, October 15 – 19, 2005.
This year’s conference features hands-on pre-conference work- shops and three full days of sessions that offer real world insights, techniques, and methodologies pivotal to the increasing demands on the HR professional. You’ll have more than 35 sessions to choose from that will cover various topics in the areas of improving tactical HR skills, and strategic HR and leadership development.
Choose from special interest topics like:
� Successful Employee Orientation
� Grading the State Process
� Facilitating Employee Engagement through Pay for Performance
� The Art of Personal and Team Motivation
� Extreme Hiring Makeover
� Spontaneous Leadership
� Succession Planning
� Designing and Implementing Reward & Recognition Programs in State Agencies
� And many more
The IPMA-HR Annual Conference also offers plenty of opportunities for networking and peer discussions. Delegates can meet IPMA-HR members and other participants during the Products and Services Expo, evening events and a number of informal social gatherings hosted by IPMA-HR and the local chapter.
Conference Highlights Pre-Conference Workshops Arrive early in New Orleans and enhance your conference experience by partici- pating in one or more of the five full-day pre-conference workshops starting on Saturday, October 15. These specially designed workshops provide an in-depth look at topics and issues of greatest importance in the public sector human resources community. With real-life examples, case studies, vivid presentations and interactive sessions, you will gain a better understanding of hot topics such as managing employee performance, performance-based pay, promotional assess- ments and new strategies/applications for public sector compensation.
Pre-registration is required: Class size is limited to 30 and is based on a first- come/first-served basis, so register early. Registration includes continental break- fast, breaks, lunch and program materials.
Keynote Address: Erik Weihenmayer The International Training Conference gets underway on the morning of October 17 with the opening ceremonies and keynote address by world-class athlete and author of the best-selling book, Touch the Top of the World, Erik Weihenmayer.
A former middle school teacher and wrestling coach, Weihenmayer is one of the most exciting and well-known athletes in the world. Despite losing his vision at the age of 13, Erik has become an accomplished mountain climber, paraglider and skier who has never let his blindness interfere with his passion for an exhilarating and fulfilling life. Erik’s feats have earned him an ESPY award, recognition by Time Magazine for one of the greatest sporting achievements of 2001, induction into the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, an ARETE Award for the superlative athletic perform- ance of the year, the Helen Keller Lifetime Achievement award and the Freedom Foundation’s Free Spirit Award.
Weihenmayer speaks to audiences around the world on overcoming life’s chal- lenges, the importance of teamwork and the daily struggle to pursue your dreams. Clearly, his accomplishments show that one does not have to have perfect eyesight to have extraordinary vision.
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Public Personnel Management Volume 34 No. 2 Summer 2005 219
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