Gambar halaman
PDF
ePub

itself of the employees being dropped by the War and Navy Departments because of reduction of war activities. Every effort was made by the commission to induce these employees to accept appointment in other branches of the service in the District of Columbia, but they generally preferred to return home either because the salaries offered were inadequate, or because they were dissatisfied with housing and living conditions. Even personal appeals failed. In one office of the War Department where 77 employees had been informed their services would no longer be required, only 7 would give consideration to other Government positions. There was, therefore, only one way open to the commission to provide the rapidly expanding census office with thousands of new employees, the Federal Board for Vocational Education with its additional force for rehabilitation work, the Internal-Revenue Service with thousands of employees to collect the increased taxes, and the services generally with stenographertypists, and that was the way of new examinations. It was necessary, of course, to continue to hold examinations for scientific and technical positions, as these forces were greatly depleted in some parts of the service during the war. Many such positions were vacated through resignation to accept the higher salaries offered outside the Government service.

COMMON MISAPPREHENSIONS.

At the risk of repeating what has been said many times before, there are mentioned here some apparently self-perpetuating misapprehensions concerning the system of making appointments as provided by the civil-service law and rules:

Inflexible. In the minds of critics the laws of the Medes and Persians were not more unchanging and unchangeable than are the rules of the civil-service system. This is true when the proposal is to make a personal selection for appointment from the bottom of an eligible list, but when an appointing officer is concerned only with securing the best possible qualifications for the work in his office, then the system is as flexible and fluid as could be desired. If the general clerk register does not meet the needs of an office, a research clerk, a statistical clerk, or an accounting clerk register is available or can be established, and if there is urgency in the call for employees which can not be met from existing lists of eligibles, examination can be held and eligibles provided within two weeks. In the Executive order of November 22, 1907, relating to promotions, the order of March 26, 1917, an essentially war order, and in section 10 of Civil Service Rule II the commission has been delegated powers by the President which add to the flexibility of the system; and it is also provided in the original civil service act that the President may make any necessary exceptions, the exceptions and the reasons therefor to be stated in the commission's annual reports.

Slow. For the great majority of positions in the Government service the commission maintains, through regular examinations, an ample supply of eligibles, the only exceptions to this general statement being with respect to positions of stenographer-typist and some of the scientific, technical, and professional positions. Here the chief difficulty lies in the inadequate entrance salaries paid by the different Government establishments. As stated in the preceding paragraph, it is possible to provide eligibles within two weeks, and this is meant as applying to new positions requiring theretofore unsought qualifications. For the general positions, however, the commission will meet any emergency demand by holding daily examinations and rating the papers within 24 hours. An example of this is given in the chapter in this report on the Fourteenth Census. To perform its duty fully as the recruiting agency of the Government, and to

obviate delays as much as possible, the commission keeps track of pending legislation, and at the time of the passage of any new law, or even during its consideration by Congress, calls upon the office affected, in order that appropriate examinations may be prepared and other necessary steps taken to assure a prompt supply of qualified employees for the new work. This was done with the Federal Board for Vocational Education when Congress was considering the bill, which later became law, to provide for the rehabilitation of disabled soldiers, sailors, and marines, and also with the Reclamation Service in connection with a possible increase in its work to provide employment for returning soldiers.

Always a scholastic test.-The civil-service law, enacted nearly 38 years ago, expressly states that the examinations required by its terms "shall be practical in their character and, so far as may be, shall relate to those matters which will fairly test the relative capacity and fitness of the persons examined to discharge the duties of the service into which they seek to be appointed." The commission from the beginning of its existence has repeatedly and insistently called public attention to the fact that its examinations were framed to fit the job to be filled, and hundreds of thousands of persons have passed these examinations and received appointments to office. Yet it is quite common even now, on the establishment of some new office or service, for the newly appointed head of such office to plead that his force of employees should be excepted from the requirements of competitive examination because the kind of employees he needs are not scholars who can tell the "distance from the earth to the moon," and should not be called upon to take the civil-service examination, as if there were but one kind. It is common for one in the habit of selecting employees through the means of oral interview to think that they can not be properly selected in any other way. But the experience of the commission has proven in thousands of cases that the oral interview alone is far from an adequate test of fitness for all kinds of employees, or even for office workers. Improper selections, common when made solely through interviews, are costly because of the necessity of frequent discharges, resulting in decreased production, low morale, and large turnover. Adequate and appropriate tests of fitness having relation to the work to be performed require careful preparation, not fully appreciated by the average administrator, interested principally in other activities of the business he conducts.

Expensive. From the beginning of its existence up to a recent date the commission and its work have been regarded as an unwarranted overhead charge on the Government, but necessary in order to avoid the evils of the spoils system. The commission may have had the same view of itself for the first few years following 1883, but gradually there grew upon it the conviction that a well-organized and carefully conducted employment service such as the commission has been constantly endeavoring to build up is the best money maker and best money saver which any establishment, public or private, can install. Unfortunately, the commission was alone in this conviction until in recent years, when industrial experts began to make surveys at the request of large manufacturing corporations and showed that the "hire-and-fire" system of employment was responsible for heavy losses in efficiency and for increase in accidents and in damage to property. The result has been the establishment of personnel offices, having wide powers of testing qualifications, of employment and assignments, and of inproving working conditions. These surveys are quite uniform in showing a high turnover in personnel, costing immense sums for the training of new employees. As soon as a careful system of employment was installed the turnover was materially reduced and the production of the establishment increased.

FUTURE PROGRAM.

1. One of the most important matters requiring the consideration of the commission, and one which enters into all its work, is the problem of shortening the lapse of time between the date of examination and the date of appointment, and thereby reducing the number of declinations of appointment. In a preceding paragraph it is stated that eligibles can be provided through examination within two weeks to meet an emergency call, and this is true, but it is in connection with the great volume of the commission's work that delays occur, with resulting loss of the usually better qualified eligibles through declinations.

The problem of examining more than a quarter million persons annually and of rating the papers within a few days after each examination is held, has not yet been solved. Promptness in the establishment of eligible lists following examinations was not so urgent when the Government salaries were more attractive and when there was less demand for labor in private industry; but recent years have seen an unprecedented increase in the number of declinations, and it is believed that this number could be reduced were it possible to lessen to a considerable degree the lapse of time between date of examination and date of appointment. Special consideration is being given to a satisfactory solution by changes in procedure, and especially by shortening without weakening the kind of examinations now prescribed.

During the last fiscal year the commission examined approximately 75,000 persons for appointment in the various branches of the Postal Service, practically 70,000 of whom competed in what is known essentially as the secondgrade examination. With so large a number of candidates in one kind of examination it was natural that this examination should be the first to be given intensive study with a view to betterment. During the present year a new form of examination will be tried out for certain post offices, and it is hoped that sufficient data will be available to make the changed examination the subject of detailed mention in the next report.

The first consideration, of course, must be to make the examinations practical in their character, and this should presuppose that the commission had opportunity for careful investigation and study with a view to ascertaining the performance in actual work of the persons appointed through any examination; but the commission has not had this opportunity to the extent that when utilized it could be made of most value. There have been individual instances where general comparisons could be made which showed clearly that appointments through the present examination system produced much better results in work accomplished than where they were made without competitive examination; but what the commission has heretofore been unable to do with the great volume of examination papers to handle is to release any employees for this very necessary work of following up appointees and making a study of the quality and quantity of their production.

The nature of the work performed by postal employees is such as to lend itself readily to such a study, and this has afforded a further reason, besides the great number of competitors, why it will be possible to measure the value and effectiveness of the new test mentioned above. This test, it is believed, can be rated in much less time than the former examination.

If the application of this type of second-grade examination is extended to all branches of the Postal Service, examiners can be released to study other examinations with a view to improving the tests until there can be established essentially a laboratory for determining through actual accomplishment after appointment the relative value and appropriateness of the different tests given. Such study as has been devoted to the subject so far leads also to the conclusion

that the examinations for most of the clerical positions can be sufficiently reduced, without in the least impairing the accuracy of the tests, to require not more than half the time allotted at present to competitors for completing them. 2. Much more than half the commission's work is concerned with appointments outside the District of Columbia in such widespread services as the post office, rural delivery, railway mail, customs, internal revenue, ordnance and other War Department establishments, navy yards, lighthouse, steamboat inspection, immigration, and many others. It is of great importance that the work for these great field services be done promptly.

Two changes in organization, in addition to the form of examination, suggest themselves. The commission's central office in Washington is organized in three separate divisions, covering application, examining, and appointment work, respectively, each having its dealings with the field force according to its special function, and no definite agency is provided to coordinate all activities relating to the field services. Last year the commission estimated for appropriation to create the positions of superintendent and assistant superintendent of field service, but the appropriation was not granted, and the estimate is being repeated this year. Such a superintendent should be thoroughly familiar with all phases of the commission's work, so that when called upon to visit the different district headquarters he would be able to assist them with suggestions in meeting their difficulties. With one group of employees in the commission's Washington office charged with the responsibility for coordinating all the work relating to the many field services it is believed there would be a material reduction in the time consumed in handling district business.

The second change has to do with the request being presented to Congress this year of appropriating on the commission's roll for the employees detailed to its district headquarters from other Federal establishments in the field. Since the organization of the district system of handling the business outside of Washington the district office personnel has been composed largely of employees detailed from the different Government offices. At first, when the classified service was small, there was but little of this work, and the provision in the civil-service act for these details to civil-service duty accomplished the purpose sought. But with the growth of the classified service it has been necessary to increase the number of such detailed employees until at present there are about 177 serving in the 12 district offices.

The district offices must accept as details employees sent them by the different Federal establishments, and it is natural, of course, for these establishments not to release their most efficient employees for such detail.

It is to be hoped that Congress will see that genuine economy will result from the increased efficiency made certain by providing for the district offices a force of employees on the commission's roll. It will be necessary, of course, to continue the part-time details as members of boards of examiners at the more than 3,000 points throughout the country where such local boards now exist, in order to give out information and application forms and to conduct examinations locally.

Respectfully submitted.

HERBERT A. FILER,

Chief Examiner.

APPENDIX.

XLI

« SebelumnyaLanjutkan »