02/08/2014

Folks,

I have spent most of my time this week reading each APR and doing various assessments and analyses of what I’ve read. We really spend a lot of time, collectively, on APR’s but it’s a very important component of our management responsibilities and our employees deserve that we all do our best on them. At this point in our agency schedule, I’m satisfied that we’ve all done that.

Nothing startling jumped out while I was doing my review. I did have a couple questions to help me clarify some things and I’ve talked to some of you about those. Thanks for helping me get a better understanding.

As you prepare for and conduct your employee meetings, I stress that a couple things need to be kept in mind…
1. Take every step and make every effort possible to have the employee make their 2014 work plan goals fit the S.M.A R.T. acronym we learned about in supervisory training. Goals should be S pecific, M easurable, A cknowledged, R elevant and T imed.
2. While specific documentation is required on the PRS only where you have rated an employee with a “1” or a “5”, I would like for there to be some supporting supervisory comments regarding a “2” and something you and the employee agree on where a “4” is rated.

The APR’s will be made accessible by the employees again on Sunday morning, so you may want to let your team know that. Apparently, some (maybe all) of you have employee meetings already scheduled for Monday.

Thanks for your work on this so far. There’s more to do, but we’re staying on track to get it done based on our schedule.

Jim Thomas, Executive Director
Municipal Technical Advisory Service (MTAS)
The University of Tennessee Institute for Public Service
Office (615) 532-4950 Cell (615) 972-9219

jim.thomas@tennessee.edu

www.mtas.tennessee.edu