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<blockquote data-quote="TechGrrl" data-source="post: 817811" data-attributes="member: 4932"><p>Define "merit"; particularly in jobs where performance is a subtle thing. For a hub worker, will you define it strictly as % of the IE calculated pieces per hour? For a driver, will it be defined strictly as over-allowed? Even for these relatively straightforward (notice I did not use the word SIMPLE) operational jobs, a smart, hardworking person can be stuck in an inherently lousy position. So they get screwed?</p><p></p><p>Real-world example: when I was a newly hired hubrat on the Primary Unload, I noticed that my supervisor insisted that I have the same unload pieces per hour on two very different trailers: One was what I called the "coffeepot trailer" which had about 3,000 identically sized boxes containing coffee pots, which could easily be loaded onto the takeaway belt 3 at a time. The other was the "muffler trailer", which came from an auto plant, and was full of mufflers and attached tailpipes, each of which needed to be individually walked out of the trailer to the bulk belt. So, which time was I being hard working, and which time was I being lazy? Or was my supervisor being stupid? Worse, what happens when he compares my productivity on the muffler trailer to the guy on the coffeepot trailer, and threatens to fire me for not meeting standards? That actually happened, by the way, since the doofus didn't believe women should be working at UPS, and figured that was a good way to prove it. (I outlasted him by 33 years.....)</p><p></p><p>When I was an IE with a time study board, it didn't take me long to realize that the drivers that never broke a sweat, but did everything by the methods were the ones that generally came in underallowed. Whereas the running, sweating, "hard working" drivers generally came in overallowed, because they made so many mistakes in methods that the only way to come even close to completing their workday was to run run run.</p><p></p><p>Now let's move on to not-so-straightforward jobs: anything that requires something that can't be defined with a time study. I spent most of my career in knowledge-based jobs, and we constantly struggled with UPS' attempt to use IE defined processes on jobs that don't have processes. </p><p></p><p>Example: UPS rewards firefighters who love to fix crises. It has no way to reward people who are smart enough to make sure there are never fires to fight. The example I used was this: UPS loves the hero who puts out the fire underneath the hub. It ignores the person who insures that the oily rags and newspapers are never allowed to accumulate into a fire hazard. I judged my people on the fact that we never had to have a crisis review, because they were smart enough to head trouble off at the pass, and it never came to fruition. Since our area of responsibility required that the computer systems operated at 99.999% uptime, you can see why this was important.</p><p></p><p>Operational management jobs are not all alike, either. There were buildings, centers, hubs, preloads, that never, ever ran well, no matter how often a new "hero" was sent in to fix them. After the third or 4th time, you would think that upper management would step back and figure out that there was a SYSTEMIC problem in place that a "hero" couldn't fix. Sometimes something as simple as the fact that the feeder schedules sucked, and the preload simply couldn't go down on time without some district three interstates over fixing a schedule.</p><p></p><p>How would YOU measure these things?</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TechGrrl, post: 817811, member: 4932"] Define "merit"; particularly in jobs where performance is a subtle thing. For a hub worker, will you define it strictly as % of the IE calculated pieces per hour? For a driver, will it be defined strictly as over-allowed? Even for these relatively straightforward (notice I did not use the word SIMPLE) operational jobs, a smart, hardworking person can be stuck in an inherently lousy position. So they get screwed? Real-world example: when I was a newly hired hubrat on the Primary Unload, I noticed that my supervisor insisted that I have the same unload pieces per hour on two very different trailers: One was what I called the "coffeepot trailer" which had about 3,000 identically sized boxes containing coffee pots, which could easily be loaded onto the takeaway belt 3 at a time. The other was the "muffler trailer", which came from an auto plant, and was full of mufflers and attached tailpipes, each of which needed to be individually walked out of the trailer to the bulk belt. So, which time was I being hard working, and which time was I being lazy? Or was my supervisor being stupid? Worse, what happens when he compares my productivity on the muffler trailer to the guy on the coffeepot trailer, and threatens to fire me for not meeting standards? That actually happened, by the way, since the doofus didn't believe women should be working at UPS, and figured that was a good way to prove it. (I outlasted him by 33 years.....) When I was an IE with a time study board, it didn't take me long to realize that the drivers that never broke a sweat, but did everything by the methods were the ones that generally came in underallowed. Whereas the running, sweating, "hard working" drivers generally came in overallowed, because they made so many mistakes in methods that the only way to come even close to completing their workday was to run run run. Now let's move on to not-so-straightforward jobs: anything that requires something that can't be defined with a time study. I spent most of my career in knowledge-based jobs, and we constantly struggled with UPS' attempt to use IE defined processes on jobs that don't have processes. Example: UPS rewards firefighters who love to fix crises. It has no way to reward people who are smart enough to make sure there are never fires to fight. The example I used was this: UPS loves the hero who puts out the fire underneath the hub. It ignores the person who insures that the oily rags and newspapers are never allowed to accumulate into a fire hazard. I judged my people on the fact that we never had to have a crisis review, because they were smart enough to head trouble off at the pass, and it never came to fruition. Since our area of responsibility required that the computer systems operated at 99.999% uptime, you can see why this was important. Operational management jobs are not all alike, either. There were buildings, centers, hubs, preloads, that never, ever ran well, no matter how often a new "hero" was sent in to fix them. After the third or 4th time, you would think that upper management would step back and figure out that there was a SYSTEMIC problem in place that a "hero" couldn't fix. Sometimes something as simple as the fact that the feeder schedules sucked, and the preload simply couldn't go down on time without some district three interstates over fixing a schedule. How would YOU measure these things? [/QUOTE]
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