Oireachtas Joint and Select Committees

Tuesday, 3 December 2019

Joint Oireachtas Committee on Finance, Public Expenditure and Reform, and Taoiseach

Matters relating to the Department of Public Expenditure and Reform: Discussion

Mr. Robert Watt:

This comes through when we talk to employees and colleagues about their frustrations. However, it varies from place to place. Mr. Cagney is on the coalface of this, but I would certainly hope that our organisation does not tolerate people swinging the lead. We would address that. I am not suggesting for a moment that there are no pockets of underperformance. Of course there are. It depends on the culture and the leadership of the particular organisation. That involves having hard conversations. There is an issue about people not being willing to have hard conversations. We try to have a culture where we will point it out when something is not working and try to find out what is going on. We try to engage and so does HR. There are many aspects of underperformance. Over the years we have noticed that underperformance can turn into a non-attendance issue, that is, repeated absences. Our Department has a process whereby an employee who does not come in on Monday is asked to account for what happened to HR. If we see a pattern, we try to deal with it because it can develop into a bad habit. Other aspects of underperformance can become apparent, so we try to deal with it. It is about leadership. I do not accept the view that we do not have the tools, which I occasionally hear from my colleagues. Perhaps we do not have all the tools, but we have tools to deal with these situations. It is about having frank conversations. It can be very difficult. In our environment, which is unionised, people make representations on behalf of employees so escalating something can get very difficult. Managers can find they are doing nothing but dealing with very difficult cases.