Performance norms

A friend sought professional advice from me last week. A manager who reports to him had been griping openly about not getting what he believed were rewards that were due him such as a promotion and a pay increase. I asked my friend if the complaining manager really deserved a promotion and a pay increase—in short, if he was producing superior performance. My friend was unsure: “His performance is generally okay, but not really exemplary. He delivers what is expected of him, nothing more.”

I agreed with my friend that the manager in question did not deserve a promotion simply because he was doing his job. In the words of my friend: “This is why he continues to be a manager, receives his salary and benefits, and enjoys the perks of his current rank.” I hope no one reading this piece is in danger of bursting a vein in anger over the previous sentence. I am clearly not an advocate of practices that promote entitlement without responsibility and rewards without performance. The truth is that the general paradigm that many people have is that they should be rewarded for doing their jobs.

My friend’s situation was not unique. I have been to many forums where human resource managers bewailed this culture of entitlement that seems to be prevalent in our culture. I can empathize because I personally have been there many times. There are just too many people in this world who think they should be rewarded extra for doing what is in their job descriptions. They forget that what is in their job descriptions is the minimum requirement of their jobs or for receiving their salaries. I know that this is, first of all, a question of performance norms. If norms were agreed early on, for instance as regards what constitute performance that is just “good,” “very good” or worthy of additional rewards.

But then again, we seem to have low performance norms as a people. God knows how many people we have in government who regularly receive salaries simply for coming to work or simply for having their names written in a plantilla somewhere. The general expectations of leaders are that they simply do not steal or don’t do anything criminal. We do have senators whose grand output in six years of so-called legislative work is a bill or two.

At the same time, I really couldn’t blame managers for getting the idea that they are left out just because no one seems to be openly batting for their rights unlike rank-and-file employees who have unions, party lists, even bleeding-heart politicians who don’t have compunctions about paying lip service to the issues of workers during elections.

The regional wage and productivity board for Metro Manila came up with a new wage increase order the other week institutionalizing a P22-hike in minimum wages. As can be expected, labor groups assailed the order for falling short of their expectations. The Trade Union Congress of the Philippines wanted a P75 across-the-board salary increase while the more militant Kilusang Mayo Uno—which called the P22 increase an insult—was asking for P125. How and where business organizations—particularly small and medium enterprises which comprise roughly 97 per cent of industry—will source the additional money is something that people don’t seem to care about.

The regional tripartite bodies are called wage and productivity boards. There is a reason why wages and productivity need to go together and the regional boards are supposed to address both. Unfortunately, the boards still have to do anything concrete related to productivity. So far, the full extent of what they have been doing is issuing wage orders and reinforcing this culture of entitlement rather than promoting productivity.

If it’s any consolation, at least the wage and productivity boards did not decree across the board increases. For a while there, it was rumored that the boards would go beyond their mandate and give in to the demand of the labor sector. By definition, the regional wage and productivity boards are only mandated to set minimum wages —not across the board pay increases, which would cover everyone else. However, the TUCP, which was accredited as a party-list group, batted for across-the-board pay increases in an effort to gain political mileage during the last elections. In case we’ve forgotten, the TUCP is very close to the outgoing administration, which reportedly owed it quite a number of favors.

Mandated wage increases don’t really do anything to productivity particularly since the increases are not linked to productivity measures. It’s literally manna from heaven. Empirical data show us that mandated wage increases don’t really increase satisfaction, either; they simply fend off complaints in the short term. Eventually, workers demand for more, more, more; which explains why we are stuck in this vicious cycle.

Anyway. What got me thinking about this topic of low performance norms in this country was the grand hoopla last Saturday at the Quirino Grandstand. The occasion was the annual celebration of the country’s Independence Day but this year’s celebration was hijacked into some kind of a despedida party for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her administration.

It is obvious that President Arroyo wants it known and probably put on record as well that her administration did produce a number of accomplishments. Unlike others who can’t see through their hatred and their prejudice, I will not begrudge her this fact. There are a number of accomplishments, notably in the area of infrastructure. My day job requires that I travel around the country a lot and I have seen major improvements outside of Metro Manila—I can easily rattle off some of the cities with new spanking airports: Bacolod, Iloilo, Davao, Cebu, etc. There are quite a number of new bridges— one built in Leyte is probably the tallest bridge ever constructed in the country. There’s the Subic Clark Tarlac Expressway.

There is also no doubt that the business process outsourcing industry did grow during Arroyo’s term of office and contrary to what many people would have us believe, the call centers did not just sprout like wild mushrooms.

It is not fair to simply brush off the claims of the administration. The question that should really be asked is whether the accomplishments exceeded targets. Arroyo sat as President longer than any president since Marcos. Are the accomplishments being trumpeted commensurate to the nine years that she sat in office? Are the accomplishments sustainable? Do they represent valuable investments in terms of fortifying growth foundations? Do these outweigh the many anomalies and scandals that wracked this administration?

It’s probably too early to make a full accounting of the strategic value of the accomplishments of this administration. But I hope that such an effort will be made in the near future, hopefully when emotions have died down, because it would be such a waste if we are unable to process our collective experience in and draw lessons from the last nine years. Bong Austero, Manila Standard Today