The Foreign Service Journal, September 2007

employees after over three years, at their first review. HR should change its policy and automatically tenure all on first review except the very few whose evaluations demonstrate real performance problems. Supervisors should be required to document such performance problems before the first tenure review, removing the tempta- tion for them to take the easy path of letting someone else counsel and deal with those very few whose perfor- mance will not eventually result in tenure. Implement Family-Friendly Policies for All Bureaus and Posts Many recognize that the worka- holic culture of the State Department needs to change, and management, which now is instituting welcome measures to make unaccompanied tours more palatable, provides many programs that enable workers to pay attention to their families and person- al lives as well as to their work require- ments. The State Department has in place excellent policies that allow employees to initiate flexible working schedules, to have two employees share a single job and, when feasible, to telecommute. Some bureaus have successfully instituted these policies; others adhere to them only occasion- ally. AFSA should urge management to ensure that in all bureaus these family-friendly programs are actually available to anyone who wants to use them. AFSA should also undertake the difficult job of figuring out which bureaus actually encourage employ- ees to use these benefits and annually publicize their efforts in the Foreign Service Journal and via the AFSAnet listserv. Specifically, it should let members know how many job shares each bureau offers and list how many FS personnel have had flexible sched- ules approved in each bureau and post. It should also provide a page on its Web site that would enable people to find others interested in job- sharing. And it should publicize which overseas missions provide the best services to members of household. Ensure Low-Ranking Decisions Have a Factual Basis AFSA has always supported the low-ranking and selection-out of people who are unable to do their jobs adequately, on the basis of documen- ted employee evaluations. Those individuals who are low-ranked twice in five years by different supervisors are then referred to the Performance Standards Board. At the same time, in its engage- ment with management AFSA should push for immediate termination of the requirement that at least 5 percent of each competition group must be low- ranked. All promotion board mem- bers I’ve talked to agree that it’s impossible to find 5 percent who truly deserve that dubious distinction. Most boards find that only about 2 percent of competition groups clearly qualify for referral to the Performance Standards Board, so they then invent reasons to low-rank the remaining 3 percent. The department suffers because boards have to complete the very dif- ficult task of low-ranking people whose performance has been good, and perform the administrative tasks necessary to refer some of them to the board, which has in the past refused to separate many of the individuals brought before it. (In 2005, the most recent year for which AFSA has statistics, 189 people were low-rank- ed, but only 14 were designated for separation by the PSB.) Adding insult to injury, conscien- tious employees with good evaluations receive the surprising news that they’ve been low-ranked just before Christmas. They then have to under- take the laborious task of contesting that designation, often with the help of AFSA’s labor-management counsel- ors, who are already helping many members. AFSA’s legal staff notes that while HR has sometimes claimed there is a legislative mandate that 5 percent of evaluated employees be low-ranked, there actually is no such require- ment. Another reason given for management’s continuing insistence on that quota is that congressional staff has insisted on it. But even if that were ever true, with a different party in control of Congress and numerous staff changes, it is no longer the case. HR defends the current policy by pointing to the fact that few employ- ees are low-ranked two years in a row; indeed, some are actually promoted the next year. Nevertheless, policies that arbitrarily inflict unjustifiable judgments and burdens on employees should be eliminated. Should management stand fast on perpetuating the quota, AFSA should at least insist that the low-ranked be notified when promotions are an- nounced, rather than just before the holidays. Make Security Enforcement Positive Instead of Punitive All who work in a classified environment know that only the exceptionally lucky avoid committing security infractions, no matter how faithfully they follow good security procedures. Just as 18th-century England didn’t stop crime by making sheep-stealing and about 200 other infractions capital offenses, the institution of draconian penalties for security violations hasn’t stopped them, and won’t. It has, however, made it difficult for some good officers to gain promotion, and the burdens of these policies fall dispro- portionately on those cones that deal most with classified material. In overseas missions, of course, S E P T E M B E R 2 0 0 7 / F O R E I G N S E R V I C E J O U R N A L 15 S P E A K I N G O U T