No more grades, stricter appraisal norms for Kerala Govt employees hereafter

Thiruvananthapuram: Stricter norms will be used to evaluate performance of government employees in Kerala henceforth.

The government employees will stand to lose promotion if they misbehave with the public or cause deliberate delay in the movement of files or keep away from the seat while on duty. They will also be taken to task if they delay the granting of government funds for public works.

Once the new system comes, the government can deny promotion to those who lack efficiency in work. The behavioural aspect of the employees towards the public will be made part of the service rules.

All these reforms are contained in the circular issued by State Chief Secretary VP Joy, detailing the procedures to be adopted for preparing the Annual Confidential Report of the government employees.

The suggestions of the Administrative Reforms Committee (ARC) in this regard were accepted by the State Government.

20-Point criteria

The performance of the government servants will be evaluated hereafter on the basis of a 20-point criteria. They include factors like the importance given to the public issues, efficiency to solve issues and face challenges, team work, leadership quality, communication skills, decision-making power, analytical power, timely handling of issues, ability to withstand pressure, planning skills, skills to achieve target, motivation given to other employees, training, and the ability to take decisions in the interest of the public.

Based on these criteria, marks in the range of 1 to 10 will be given to each government employee by the superior officer.

The superior officer has to give a report online by evaluating the performance of the subordinate employee during the period from January 1 to December 31.

There are provisions to evaluate the sincerity and honesty of employees. In the event of any disciplinary action against the employee, it has to be mentioned in the report.

The details of the evaluation done should be intimated to the employees in written form. The employees will be given an opportunity to express dissent to the report if they desire. If the dissent note of the employee is rejected by the superior officer, the matter can be taken to the referral board.

The referral board will take a call on matters like the awarding of final marks. The decision of the referral board will be final.

Flaws of present grading system

The existing system of awarding grades A, B, C,D and E will be replaced by a mark system. The ARC has pointed out many shortcomings in the grading system.

Now, there is no provision to review the workload and professional standards of an employee.

The present grading system also suffers from issues such as partiality of superior officers towards subordinates, lack of mechanism to properly review efficiency of employees, lack of steps aiming at increasing productivity of the staff and absence of provisions for recording reason for giving higher grades to an employee by the superior officer.

Marks and performance evaluation

1, 2 - Bad

3, 4 - Below Average

5 - Average

6, 7, 8 - Good

9, 10 - Excellent

The reasons should be specifically noted in the evaluation report while granting marks such as 1, 2, 9 and 10. If the mark received is below 5, training will be given to the employees in order to better their performance next time.

The evaluation by the superior officer will be based on the performance of the employee for a continuous three-year period. Right now, when the promotion is given, the confidential reports of an employee for the previous three years are taken into account.

The Chief Secretary has pointed out that the preparation of the confidential report has become a futile exercise these days with mere filling up of columns in the required form. The quality of the service rendered or the efficiency displayed by the government servant in his work are not reflected in the preparation of the confidential report.