To Award or Not to Award: What’s the Postal Service to Do?
Filed under Field Financial, Human Capital
Tags: competitive market, employee relations, incentives, postal service, recruitment
Should the Postal Service be allowed to freely award employees for a job well done? The Postal Service operates as a businesslike entity, but it is also part of the government. Appearances count — particularly in tough economic times. The Postal Service has an interest in recruiting and retaining talented employees to remain competitive, but what is appropriate?
Competitors of the Postal Service are free to award employees with pricey gifts, tickets to major events, conferences held at resorts and other perks. These are rarely subject to scrutiny by Congress or provoke significant comment in the media. The Postal Service also uses incentives to reward employees for good job performance. While most Postal Service awards have been modest, Postal Service managers have authorized designer watches, espresso machines, global positioning systems, box seat tickets to sporting events, and personal computers as awards for their employees.
Loading ... Loading ...Tell us what you think about spending of this type. Is this acceptable spending for the Postal Service? How should the Postal Service recognize employees’ good performance during these tough economic times?
This topic is hosted by the OIG’s Suspicious Expenditures team.
52 Responses to “To Award or Not to Award: What’s the Postal Service to Do?”
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December 14th, 2009 at 10:09 am
I remember one award I got was a gift card to a restauraunt chain. I took my wife. We enjoyed our meal. But when I presented the card, it had almost no value whatsoever. It turns out they waited so long to give out the cards, their value had “withered”. I wound up paying cash. My wife said, “I don’t know what was sadder. That the card was bad, or you knew to stop at an ATM before we dared to use that card.”
Fast forward to recent times. I am now in a position to put others in for awards. I spent a lot of time to polish the narrative for this person’s award. When I hit submit, the screen said “The awards program has been temporarily suspended” There was no advance warning!
The really funny part is, if you figure out the hourly rate, I spent more on the process, that the award would have been worth.
Instead of motivating us, the award program is just another proof of how hopelessly screwed up we are!
November 9th, 2009 at 7:01 pm
I am currently a Supervisor and I agree with most of what you are all saying. I think i was crazy to think about moving up. What to do about an abusive postmaster? What to do about the giant amount of worthless reports?? I have asked them this question time and time – why not get back to basics and just deliver the mail. Do you really need 20 different reports daily to tell you whats going on?
We need to get rid of some of the upper management. The supervisors are the ones doing all the work. The managers just hand down the work and the postmaster just call and rip into you because the manager did not do a report.
My postmaster is abusive – rude – and a bully. She needs to go away. She needs to be put as a grounds keeper – let her yell and scream and treat the grass like poo. I am at my wits end in dealing with her abuse. Where do i go? The MPOO right the poo is just coming from him – and do we really need that many MPOO’s? Chop up their jobs too.
And why do the city carriers have to be so draining of the post office? Why so many rules and regs? The Post office is stupid in allowing the unions to become so stong. We had to pay one carrier a $1100 grievinene on something the past supervisor did and it probably took him 20 hours of OT to do the paperwork. Come on – get real – the UNIONS are killing the post office.
OK i am done for now – but there is alot wrong with the post office and I have been there for 22 years and counting.