In 2013, South Dakota state government introduced pay for performance for “career banded” state employees—accountants/auditors, information technologists, nurses, environmental scientists, and engineers. Each year, state employees in those fields have received 0% to 4.5% raises, depending on their scores on the Accountability and Competency Evaluation.
But as we know, money’s tight in Pierre, and the Governor has to pick his priorities. Performance pay is not one of those priorities: instead of trying to quantify how well each of the thousand-some career-banded state workers does her or his job, the Governor is asking the Legislature to give them all the same 1% raise as the rest of state government’s nearly 12,000-strong workforce.
This proposal gets me thinking about Governor Daugaard’s evolution of thinking on teacher pay. When he first turned his attention to South Dakota’s abysmal teacher pay in 2012, Governor Daugaard tried to create a merit pay system. Voters recognized merit pay doesn’t work and rejected his plan at the polls. When our chastened Governor returned to the teacher pay issue in 2016, he simply advocated raises for all teachers, with no mention of merit pay.
In education and now in state government, Governor Daugaard appears to be acknowledging that merit pay is not an essential part of recruiting and retaining a good workforce.
Merit pay may not work as Cory said but recruiting and retaining quality workers requires competitive pay.
Merit pay for government workers is a fallacy, mal-adapted from the private sectors perverse “profit” motive. Do we really want to incentivize: cops for making more arrests? firemen responding to more calls? judges hearing more cases? teachers with more students in the classroom? bureaucrats for shuffling more papers, or spending less time with us when we have a problem? lawmakers for making more laws?
Government should have merit promotion. Government must have the means to protect due process while timely retraining or firing sub-standard performers. Government merit pay — no way, for soon everyone or nearly everyone is Lake Wobegon’s ‘above average’.
John, as I read through the dreary pablum of the state employees’ evaluation rubric, I saw the kind of “everyone is above average” thinking you speak of. The ratings are Unsatisfactory, Successful 1, Successful 2, Successful 3, and Exceptional. Good grief, why not keep it simple: either you’re successful or you’re not. Either your performance justifies keeping you on the job or it doesn’t. Let merit pay be (1) getting to stay and (2) as you suggest, getting promoted.
And as Mark says, if you offer a competitive wage to start with, you’ll be that much more likely to have good candidates walking in the door to interview.