Does Performance Matter to Government?

Let us imagine that you run an organization. You want it to perform well. And as part of that, you look to recruit and retain capable people, folk who can get the job done. For those who can’t deliver results, you either help to improve or politely ask them to move on. That, in skeletal form, is the basis of any level-headed organization.

Now let’s assume that one of your staff takes a week off work, well within his employment contract. What he does during that week is her or his business. During the first day of vacation, as it happens, your employee dresses up as a fairy or Darth Vader. That’s not your business as it happens and you don’t need to know which of the two. Thereafter, the employee visits family, across the border. Not your business either. 

Your employee returns, quarantines as per the restrictions of our COVID twilight zone while continuing to work from home. In fact, your employee has even mastered the art of putting extremely fancy backgrounds for Zoom calls. There has been no slip in performance. No legal or regulatory violations. And you have no clue about the employee dressing up as a fairy, or Darth Vader, not that it’s your business.

How then can you fire your employee? That is what Canada’s government is doing. Sameer Zuberi, MP for Pierrefonds-Dollard, was appointed to several parliamentary committees, ostensibly because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau thought that Zuberi would perform well. Unless of course …. hint, hint, nudge, nudge, say no more. Anyhow, having visited ill family across the border while legally compliant, Zuberi was then ‘invited to resign’.

This is disquieting and not just because there’s a scant reason why such sackings can’t be extended to the hundreds of thousands of civil servants. But it has implications for the private sector. If a firm doesn’t like what an employee legally does during their spare time, what’s stopping management from penalizing staff for what they do or don’t do during their vacations? Seems an Orwellian overreach.  

A second perturbing aspect relates to government delivery. Zuberi’s performance didn’t change an iota, yet he was ‘invited to resign’. What can we ascertain about the relationship between performance and government? Nothing new – the pair don’t sleep together. The “9-to-5 calibrate your watch” culture, incessant public sector project delays and implausibly high ‘sick’ days in the public sector all point to the same issue – under-performance. 

Rather than tackling COVID with overbearingness and celestial levels of debt, the PMO should introduce performance into government. And that means, assessing staff on their performance – and not what they do in their private lives.