As government and industry struggle to find creative ways to do more with less—or rather, better with less—engagement levels are at the forefront of most leaders’ minds. But what do you do with disengaged, unproductive employees? In the private sector, this is less of a conundrum; managers have the right to fire workers who are consistently poor performers. That’s not so easy in the public sector, therefore managers must be more creative in their methods to develop and maintain a high-performing team. There are several routes to be taken and often a combination of methods must be attempted in order to get to the root of the problem and hope to solve it.

Here are a few:

• Step one is to determine the root cause of the employee’s disengagement. If you can determine why they are unhappy, you stand a chance in resolving the issue and bringing their performance up to par. Sitting down with them to have an honest conversation, without judgment or fear of reprimand, will go a long way in getting insights into their unhappiness and also showing that you care about the individuals on your team, not just the success of a project.
•  Once you have a better understanding of why the employee has been failing to meet expectations, there are a few options you have. Most in-depth is creating an Individual Development Plan (IDP) for the employee which will help guide them towards greater productivity and also give them the opportunity to take on projects and responsibilities that interest them more. 
•  If they are simply bored and don’t have enough to do, offer your worker a stretch assignment; this gives them the opportunity to broaden their skill set, take on more responsibility, and offers them the chance to grow more with the organization. Very often, employees are disengaged because they do not feel connected to anything important, so challenging them with work outside of their day-to-day tasks can make them feel more tied to the mission. 
• Make sure it’s not you. Often, leaders look to their subordinates for blame in why productivity is down and engagement is low. So be certain that the problem does not lie within you and your misguided management methods before you go pointing fingers. Bear in mind, however, that this is something you must recognize yourself; no employee is going to tell you what a bad leader you are during a heart-to-heart session. It is also something you will need to work on yourself and perhaps in conjunction with a strong leader’s mentorship. Success starts at the top and positivity or negativity will always trickle down, so be sure you are not the main reason your staff is unhappy and unproductive. 
•  As a last resort and if all of the above suggestions have not led to any positive changes, it might be time to have a candid conversation with the employee. Ask them why it is they accepted this position and whether they really enjoy doing their job. Perhaps they would be better suited in another division, doing something quite different. Sometimes shaking things up is what they really need, or perhaps the government environment is not a good fit for them. Naturally, you can’t push them out the door, but you can have an honest talk with them to find out their goals in order to determine where they would fit best and be happiest.

 Which of these tips—if any—have you tried that seem to work best?

A study is being carried out by the Office of Personnel Management in order to find out the reason behind government having a hard time disciplining non-performing employees. OPM Director, John Berry said that they are analyzing how the agency penalizes nonperformers.  He shared that an emphasizing on performance accountability will provide an opportunity for OPM to cooperate with new congressional leadership.

Mr. Berry further added that “We have a credibility problem with the public. They believe that we have a tenure system, and nonperformers aren’t held accountable for their performance and good performers aren’t rewarded. And that is reflected in our employee surveys. It is crystal clear that we have a problem — our own employees are telling us this.”

This study, at present, is only being done for OPM; however, Mr. Berry wants to extend it to other agencies as well.

Findings from the largest survey ever of the federal workforce, and the first to be conducted by the Obama administration, were released Monday morning. The results demonstrate that while employees are mostly satisfied with their jobs, they remain unconvinced that career advancement in the government is based on merit.

Of the 500,000 workers who received copies of the survey in February and March, a little more than half returned their responses.

Over half of the respondents—56 percent— said they have a high level of respect for agency leadership, with 8 in 10 enjoying the work they do and more than 90 percent believing that their job is important.

In light of all the headlines conveying the public’s poor perception of Obama and the U.S. government in general, these statistics are good news.  It would be interesting to note, however, how the numbers would change (if at all) had every worker, and not just half, filled out their survey form. Would the results remain as positive or would there be more of a balance between the satisfied and unsatisfied employees?

Rather than conducting the review every other year, as they have done since 2002, the Office of Personnel Management will now perform the survey annually. The Partnership for Public Service will use OPM’s data for its annual “Best Places to Work” review, due in September.

In a memorandum released by OMB’s Shelley Metzenbaum on June 25, the Obama administration declares its intent to shift its emphasis from collecting information for government-wide reform initiatives to actually using the gathered data to improve performance outcomes.

Metzenbaum, associate director for performance and personnel management, called for agencies to consider this year a transition period in which they will focus more on performance planning, management, improvement and reporting framework.

To better track—and implement—the information it gathers, the administration aims to establish a single federal performance website to display organizations progress in achieving their targets.

While having a single source for all government agencies to log their performance data is undoubtedly a good idea, is it an active enough tool to ensure that performance is improved? Or does it fall more under the category of collecting data than actually implementing change?

How might you suggest the government go about ensuring performance improvement?

A Major Setback to the Public Sector

Employee productivity is a key concern for the Federal government, particularly in regards to the spending of tax payers’ money. According to the Office and Management Budget Director, Peter Orszag, much is to be desired of Washington’s IT performance. Orszag acknowledged that there appears to be a “significant IT gap” between the public and private sector.

Speaking at the Center for American Progress on June 8, Orszag said, “Public sector productivity growth matched the private sector until about 1987. But something changed in the late 1980s. From 1987 until 1995, private sector productivity rose by an average 4 of 1.5 percent a year. Meanwhile, the public sector’s productivity rose by only 0.4 percent per year – or about one-third as much – over roughly the same period.”

Orszag said that it was difficult to get the public sector productivity data after that point, as the Bureau of Labor Statistics stopped collecting the numbers as a part of their cost-cutting initiative. He cited an observation made by the McKinsey Global Institute, suggesting that the public sector continued to fall behind the private sector after 1995.

According to Orszag, “Some of this increasing gap has to do with advances in management techniques in the private sector. Some, undoubtedly, has to do with the challenges the federal government has in attracting and hiring top talent.” He said that “The average time it takes to hire a new federal employee is 140 days – and by that time, many of the best candidates, understandably, have gone elsewhere. But I believe that the biggest driver of this productivity divide is the information technology gap.”

Though the quantification of the extent to which there exists an “IT gap” between the feds and the private sector will be open to interpretation; Orszag offered some telling metrics, however:

• IBM reduced the number of data centers it uses from 235 to 12, while Hewlett-Packard has consolidated 14 data centers into one
• Since 1998, the number of federal government-operated data centers climbed from 432 to more than 1,100

Orszag also noted that:

• In the private sector, “high-performing” firms kill about one of three IT projects within their first six months
• Uncle Sam rarely ends a single one