State if you agree or disagree with the summary below and why? Please re-frame f

Question

State if you agree or disagree with the summary below and why? Please re-frame from using ambiguous terms such as: "they, it this."

The first supervisor mistake I found important is ignoring windows of opportunity. This was also mentioned in an article I presented in class and in one of my last article submissions of a guide put out by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) on handling employee issues. It is critical that a supervisor act swiftly when disciplining an employee and the windows of opportunity can be anything from taking prompt action against the employee when he or she violates a policy, or terminating a poor performer during a probationary period. In the federal government workforce, most individuals have a probationary period when beginning his or her federal service. During this probationary period, it is less invasive to terminate an employee if they cannot perform the responsibilities of his or her job. If the individual makes it through the probationary period with satisfactory evaluations and is now a permanent appointment, it is extremely difficult to terminate the individual for performance. In this scenario, the supervisor missed two windows of opportunity. One being the opportunity to document the poor performance in an evaluation, and the other being to terminate employment during the probationary period. I found this to be an important mistake to focus on because handling an employee issue is never pleasant, so many supervisors will tend to avoid it or look the other way to not have to deal with the confrontation. Taking no action only makes the problem worse for the supervisor and can affect the entire team. It is very important for the supervisor to take the appropriate action when an issue is presented and confront it in a timely manner.

The other mistake I find to be important is inadequate hiring practices. The hiring process is when a supervisor has an opportunity to select an employee that can perform the work of the position and that will work well with the team that is already in place. When an organization has poor or inadequate hiring practices, the applicants that will not be mission oriented members of the team do not get weeded out and then become the supervisor’s problem employees. This leaves the supervisor in a worse position than having a vacancy because now instead of focusing on the team and the mission, the supervisor is left to deal with the problem employee, which can be very time consuming given the amount of documentation and disciplinary action that will have to occur.

My “Ah Ha” moment for the class was the difference in opinion on how to handle problem employees. For the most part, we all utilized a graduated scale of disciplinary action, but we all had very different approaches for documentation and what constituted verbal or written counseling and when to provide documents to HR. Because of this diverse interpretation, I have taken away the importance of working with your HR and legal departments at your perspective organization. As a supervisor, I am not an expert on HR policy or legal matters so it is important to seek the assistance of experts when approaching a tough employee issue to ensure the rules and laws are being followed. Also, HR and legal professionals can offer good advice to dealing with these situations as it is likely they have encountered something like this before. I feel that I have previously viewed HR and legal as a negative instead of a support function to assist supervisors.

Explanation / Answer

Regarding the windows of opportunity I completely agree because termination of employee during probation is less difficult compared to when he or she becomes permanent and dealing with the employee during this period is less exhaustive compared to the time when he or she becomes permanent because the employee also understands the consequence of not falling in line. Also the documentation part is completely necessary because it is a written proof.

Regarding the other mistake which is inadequate hiring practice, here also the recruiter has the chance of hiring the correct person and making the arrangement first time right which becomes troublesome at latter point of time due to numerous reasons like inadequate time, project urgency, and commitment to clients .

It is also very important to involve HR and Legal Team at very early stage since they with their expertise helps to resolve the problem at very early stage .

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