You Can't Coach That

Monday, May 14, 2007

Allow me to set the scene. You have been doing a job for many years. You therefore have a wealth of experience which should be tapped into and utilised for the benefit of your employer and those that your employer serves. You have however become disillusioned with your profession and therefore your performance has diminished over time.

This may seem familiar to many people. You may have found yourself in this position or you may recognise this in people that you work with. I know I do.

The solution would appear to be self-evident. Such an employee would either leave their current employment voluntarily and move into an area where they are more suited, or their diminished performance would allow their employer to terminate their employment.

Enter the Queensland Education department. It has been announced today that they will repeat a 2002 program whereby a $50,000 grant will be made available to “under-performing” teachers to encourage them to leave the profession and move into different careers.  Surely any employee that is “under-performing” should be told in no uncertain terms that their performance must improve or their employment will be terminated. Terminated, as in gone, fired, don’t let the door hit you in the bum on the way out. Not “we know you haven’t been doing your job for the last 5 years so here’s 50 grand for doing such a poor job”.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, after all our politicians receive multi-million dollar superannuation payouts if they are in office for any significant length of time regardless of the level of their performance. There is a whole other story in that one - another day perhaps, one rant at a time.

Let me know what you think, am I being too harsh here?

I have previously written about teacher pay related matters:
Performance pay for teachers and
Teacher Salaries

“You can’t coach that”