Print on Departmental Letterhead
Date: January 29, 2010
To: NEW SUPERVISOR, CLASSIFICATION
From: CURRENT SUPERVISOR, CLASSIFICATION
Subject: Transition Memo
As you will be taking over the NAME Unit effective February 2nd, I want to share with you my observations of Joan’s performance over the past 12 months, list what I see to be her strengths, and cite areas where I feel she can make some improvements.
The job duties of a CLASSIFICATION working in the Unit include: INSERT DETAILS
Strengths:
Joan schedules appointments based on office guidelines and completes transfers in a timely manner. She works her cases well. She continuously enhances her knowledge of court orders and is better able to interpret orders and verify calculations. In addition, Joan sets up accounts appropriately and updates the NAME system with the correct information, including payments and summary details.
Joan demonstrated a great deal of adaptability both during training and post system conversion. She retains new system and procedure information well and is quickly able to apply her new knowledge. Joan keeps accurate training notes for herself, which she can easily reference.
Joan is skillful at multitasking and manages her days well, as demonstrated by her ability to maintain her daily casework, calls, and drop-ins.
She works well with her team and her clients. She is a team player and exhibits a willingness to assist with coverage including drop-ins. I have found that Joan is more apt to correspond with clients via mail rather than by telephone. I think that she can sometimes work more efficiently if she utilizes the telephone, fax, and email as appropriate in order to expedite the work, assist with her information gathering, and provide case status information to clients.
Areas for Improvement:
During the rating period of February 2009 to October 2009, Joan produced 200 Complaint Reports and received 20 case reports back for clerical errors, missing information and other procedural errors, for an overall error rate of 10%. This is a great improvement from the previous year. However, I think that there still is room for improvement, especially considering the expectation is for an error rate of no more than 7%. The types of errors I have seen include missing narratives, misspelled/incorrect names, a calculation that had different income information than was stated in the narrative, not indicating that the Complaint was a Supplemental, and naming the wrong party as the Respondent. Joan and I last met on December 15, 2009 to discuss her performance and areas for improvement.
The target goal for the unit is for each person to produce an average of 30 Complaints per month. Joan is meeting this goal by 76%. Only during 3 months did Joan meet this goal. In June 2008, Joan produced 33 Complaints, July 2008 she produced 32 and in September 2008 she produced 30. Otherwise, the number of Complaints produced ranged from 11 to 29 cases per months.
Joan also has a tendency to not take action when a task is due, but rather sets a new date for review without indicating in the case the purpose for the delay. On Case #1234, the progress notes were due in April 2009 and the notes were not completed until reviewed by other staff in July 2009. Similarly, on Case #9876, the amended Complaint was scheduled for review in August 2009 and no action was taken until it was reviewed by other staff in October 2009. On Case #2468, again, Joan created an entry for service in June 2008 but no action was taken for 3 months. On Case #1357, no notes were completed between the months of February 2009 and July 2009. On all of these cases, Joan closed the files while the progress notes remained incomplete.
Joan has had some difficulty in preparing her Complaints, specifically in regards to calculating income. On Case #1111, Joan prepared a Complaint attributing minimum wage earnings for the respondent rather than using actual earnings that were available and on Case #9999, Joan should have used the respondent’s W-2 earnings (including tips) in her calculations rather than pay stubs, which provided only her base pay and did not include her tips.
On a few occasions, Joan has processed a Complaint without the need to take action on a case. Joan should more thoroughly review each case prior to processing a Complaint. She should review cases at the onset to make the determination whether there is information and a need to proceed or to prepare the case for closure.
cc: Joan Smith, CLASSIFICATION
Supervisory File