$ 4 million wasted

I know I am repeating myself, but enough is enough. I just lost four hours filling out my PAS. Four hours for a totally useless evaluation system.

It took me half a day to find the PAS site on the Internet, to figure out my password and to reboot my computer twice when it crashed because of PAS. On three occasions, everything that I had written disappeared and I was obliged to redo it from scratch – apparently, it happens.

If one multiplies this half-day by 8500 (the number of civil servants in the Secretariat), around 4250 days per annum are lost just filling out the PAS, the equivalent of 40 man/years or the full career of a staff member. And all this for what? If only the PAS could fire those who don’t work. But this is not the case!

In the Organization there are very few people who don’t do their jobs, but, like everywhere, they do exist. The one I want to tell you about has been here for ages. He knew some things when he arrived. Now he has lost all his knowledge except the ability to deal with his own outside business, which is quite healthy. One of his former chiefs tried to fire him because he found him working … for an outside company. After this incident, the courageous chief almost lost his post for discrimination.

Since that period, this colleague has not done a thing and he doesn’t even hide it. He has had quite good PAS because he has only four years to go before retiring. He has even refused an agreed separation, which is normal because where would he get a nicer office to do his personal business?

I will start taking the PAS seriously the day it will allow the organization to get rid of such people and not just play around with an absurd notation system. Until such a time, I will continue to say that it is a useless system that perpetuates situations like the one above and costs the organization around $ 4 million a year in wasted employee time.

Editor-in-Chief, Jean Michel Jakobowicz