A supervisor at the District’s 911 call center says she was ordered to downgrade more than two dozen employee evaluations after the workers had signed them because supervisors said no agency has that many outstanding performers.
Several workers who received the revised evaluations plan to challenge them before a city review board.
“I had to do it, [but] If I were called down to the board to testify to this, I couldn’t,” said supervisor Barbara Hammett, who did the evaluations and was ordered to make the changes.
E. Michael Latessa, interim director of the Office of Unified Communications, said that in several cases Mrs. Hammett’s written justifications did not warrant the outstanding rating. He said that in other cases she did not provide adequate documentation and that she duplicated several of the written justifications. “The supervisor in question did not follow the procedures,” he said.
He said Mrs. Hammett, a 21-year veteran at the call center, was not asked to change the evaluations, but asked to provide additional documentation or withdraw the outstanding ratings.
The dispute is the latest in a series between managers and workers at the call center, which fields about 1 million emergency 911 calls annually. The center’s call takers and dispatchers also take non-emergency 311 calls and answer the city’s 727-1000 customer-service line.
City officials have touted faster response times and fewer dropped calls at the center. However, The Washington Times reported in March that dispatchers were routinely giving rescue workers incorrect addresses to emergencies. The call center’s employees complained that the errors were the result of a hostile work environment created by the agency’s management.
Mrs. Hammett, who spent eight years as a call taker before being promoted to a supervisor in 1993, said she has evaluated employees for 12 years and has never before had her conclusions challenged.
The evaluations, which cover the period from April 1, 2004, to March 31, 2005, were reviewed, signed by employees and submitted to management in the first two weeks of April. Mrs. Hammett said she was ordered to make the changes after 5 p.m. on June 28. The evaluations are required to be submitted to the personnel office on June 30.
When Mrs. Hammett returned to work on July 2, she was notified in writing that she had been removed from her supervisory position and transferred to another shift.
According to copies of original and revised evaluations reviewed by The Times, Mrs. Hammett completed evaluations of 45 employees who served under her at the 911 call center in the midnight to 8 a.m. shift.
Of those, 27 persons were rated “outstanding,” 10 were rated “excellent,” six were rated “satisfactory” and none was rated “unsatisfactory.” Two employees who had been out on medical leave were not evaluated. After the revisions, the 27 persons who were rated outstanding were reduced to excellent. The others remained unchanged.
Mrs. Hammett said she also was ordered to submit satisfactory evaluations for the two persons who had been out on medical leave, although one had not worked during the yearlong review period. Mr. Latessa said he had no knowledge of those evaluations.
Mrs. Hammett said the demands of the overnight shift and the way the employees adjusted to the transition in October from working as a civilian branch of the Metropolitan Police Department to an independent city agency with a new set of policies and procedures justified the large number of outstanding ratings.
If a supervisor rates an employee outstanding, they also have to submit supplementary documents justifying each decision specifically.
According to the justifications in the documents, some of the reasons employees received the ratings included the volume of calls they handled or compliments received by residents and emergency workers.
The District Personnel Manual cites quantity and quality of an employee’s work, his or her work habits, interaction with colleagues and adaptability as factors on which employees are rated.
The performance evaluations are used to consider promotions, incentive awards and merit step increases. If an employee is rated outstanding in four consecutive years, he or she also would get special consideration if an agency needs to reduce its work force.
Randi Blank, a spokeswoman for the city’s Office of Personnel, said ideally a higher-level supervisor’s decision to change an evaluation should come in consultation with the evaluating supervisor and before the employee has been notified of the evaluation results.
Deborah Ennis, the president of the National Association of Government Employees Local R3-05, which represents the former police department employees, said that only two employees have signed the revised evaluations. She said the union plans to argue the case before the D.C. Performance Rating Impartial Review Committee. “I think they were cheated out of a fair evaluation,” she said.
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