The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees - Hardcover

Liff, Stewart

9780814414507: The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0814414508 ISBN 13: 9780814414507

Publisher: AMACOM, 2009

Not only does government bureaucracy often make hiring a cumbersome, slow-moving process, but poor performers enjoy more protection from losing their jobs than their counterparts outside of government. With over thirty years’ experience as a federal government employee, insider Stewart Liff offers a solution to the government talent shortage--enabling government managers to cut through the red tape and take advantage of the best government employees out there. The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees also teaches readers the equally important skills of efficiently documenting and dealing with those who don't make the cut to ensure your team starts and stays strong. You’ll discover: how to take an anticipatory approach to recruiting; how to decide who to target, and where and how to advertise for open positions; how to screen and interview candidates; how to counsel a poor-performing employee; how to use progressive discipline; how to document a case and write a charge; how to develop internal political support; and much more. Bringing the best new people on board and weeding out the worst are both the most important and the most difficult tasks faced by any employer. For federal managers, the challenge is even greater. Filled with tried-and-true strategies, this step-by-step guide will equip you to continuously uphold, strengthen, and even grow an entire department of high achievers.

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Book Description:

Bringing the best new people on board and weeding out the worst are both the most important and the most difficult tasks faced by any employer. For federal managers, the challenge is even greater. Not only does government bureaucracy often make hiring a cumbersome, slow-moving process, but poor performers enjoy more protection from losing their jobs than their counterparts outside of government. The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees is filled with tried-and-true strategies that will enable government managers to cut through the red tape and take advantage of the best talent available, as well as efficiently document and deal with those who don’t make the cut. Readers will learn how to:

� Take an anticipatory approach to recruiting

� Decide who to target, and where and how to advertise for open positions

� Screen and interview candidates

� Counsel a poor-performing employee

� Use progressive discipline

� Document a case

� Write a charge

� Develop internal political support

� Prepare for and win a third party hearing

� And continuously maintain an entire department of exceptional performers.

From the Inside Flap:

It’s always hard to find a good employee, especially if you’re burdened with a lot of red tape and bureaucracy. What’s even worse is knowing that if the employee doesn’t work out, it could be difficult to effectively discipline—or in the worst cases, ultimately get rid of—your least effective employees.

Written by a proven authority on government careers who has himself worked for the government for decades, The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees arms you with tried-and-true, realistic strategies that will enable you to find and hire the best talent available, as well as efficiently document and deal with those who don’t make the cut.

Over the course of your career, you will probably hire dozens if not hundreds of people—and make no mistake about it; the quality of the people you hire will go a long way toward determining how successful you are as a manager. If you don’t properly strategize in the first place how to regularly bring in the best possible groups of new employees—instead of just making quick, individual judgment calls and hoping for the best—you run the risk of spending your valuable time dealing with performance problems and employee relations issues, rather than performing your own day-to-day job. Even then, all the time and effort you may spend trying to smooth out a less-than-adequate employee’s work may come to no avail.

With all the constraints posed by the government’s laws, rules, regulations, and procedures, neither hiring top-notch government employees nor removing consistently poor performers is an easy task. But you will need to be able to do both in order to succeed.

The Complete Guide to Hiring and Firing Government Employees provides you with a complete roadmap for recruiting and retaining highly qualified applicants in a logical, integrated, and systematic fashion. The book offers a series of philosophies, strategies, and recruitment tactics, based on a deep understanding of the government’s HRM systems. You’ll be able to customize an approach to fit your own specific needs and become familiar with the entire hiring process, ranging from the time before vacancies even exist, to the moment you begin your recruiting, through rating and ranking candidates, and up to the final selection and its aftermath.

You’ll learn concrete strategies for counseling and working with employees who need improvement, providing progressive discipline when necessary. The book then goes on to demonstrate how—in a worst-case scenario—you may go about firing an employee in a fair, logical, and defensible manner. Author Stewart Liff reveals valuable tips on how to document your actions, write charges, put together an evidence file, decide whether and when to settle a case, and if not, how to prevail before a third party.

Filled with commonsense tips and well-informed, hard-won guidance, this essential guide demystifies all the twists and turns you may come across in your journey to build a first-class government workforce—and prevents you from having to deal with more than your share of poor employees down the road.

STEWART LIFF began his career with the federal government in 1974. He is a winner of the President’s Council on Management Improvement Award and the Presidential Rank Award for Meritorious Service. His books include Managing Government Employees and Managing Your Government Career. He lives in Saugus, California.

Learn more about him at www.StewartLiff.com.

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