Years ago, I remember reading a comic that featured an exasperated teacher, who, finally beginning the day's lesson after two panels of getting her class in order, thought to herself how well she could teach if she didn't have to deal with the discipline. I think of that as I listen to my wife, a low level manager at one of NJ's state agencies, complain how much work she could get done and actually serve the public, if she didn't have to fill out tons of rather irrelevant reports, compile stats, that are worse than they should be because everyone has to stop what they are doing to do the stats, create mission statements and goals (how about "to serve the public"?) and attend marathon meetings that basically produce nothing.
I work for a public company. Our reports on our daily metrics (our day to day tasks), at least to our directs, take very little time as most of the details are automated. Basically I report to my director once every two weeks (outside of emergencies) tell him what's going on with me etc. These meetings generally take an hour. He repeats this with all of his direct reports (6 of us) and sums it up for the senior director where it moves up the chain. Also, every other week, we have 1 hour team meetings where we all get together and catch up etc. That's it: 2 hours of team business (I'm excluding meetings from other projects we are individually running). They are usually incredibly productive, mostly because we have so much other stuff going on we don't want to waste time in a meeting. My wife, on the other hand, has 3 hour meetings every other week that accomplish nothing, apparently, aside from killing time. Same for the reports she is forced to create, aside from showing every team in her office is behind, probably because they are too busy getting the stats together for this meeting.
Like my wife's office, my company provides training. However, ours is usually onsite, sometimes just on the computer, and takes a few hours. My wife's ... well she has been to more off site trainings and conferences this year than I have been in the last 4 or 5 years. Training is important, but there have got to be better ways to get more bang for the buck then sending employees offsite, paying fees to rent whatever venue needs to be rented while keeping employees away from their desks for longer periods than they should be. Worse, she admits she can't even implement what she has learned because she is too busy just trying to get the work done that needs to be done. By the way, her office maintains a fleet of cars, in dubious mechanical repair, that is supposed to escort people to the offsite events in lieu of just letting the workers drive themselves.
I write all this because I've just read another article on getting state employee expenses under control. The article noted all the benefits that could be trimmed. That may be all well and good, but there is also tons of waste that can be trimmed. Why are agencies still sending employees to off site conferences? Why do they still have fllets of cars? Why are they forcing employees to waste time doing reports and attending meetings? I know some of this is necessary but I would think management would take a hard look first to see what bureaucratic waste could be eliminated. Heck, maybe some of the management jobs can go bye bye without all the reports. My office, is pretty flat. It is contributor (all with college and post graduate degrees though), director, senior director etc. In my wife's office, you have many different grades of contributors then a bunch of managers until you finally get to a director level. If companies can get rid of the bloat, so can the state. Other states have already done it, so can NJ.
Of course, this waste has been around for many moons. I have a co-worker whose husband worked for the state decades ago. He worked in Trenton, but lived halfway between Cape May and Trenton. One day he was assigned to do work in Cape May. Instead of just allowing him to drive to Cape May and have the mileage reimbursed, he was forced to drive to Trenton, get a staff car, drive past his house and finally begin work in Cape May 2-3 hours later than he would've otherwise. Of course, he had to leave early to bring the car back to Trenton. Ultimately, what should have taken a day took about 3 days to complete. When I heard that story, and my wife's constant stories of all the time and energy wasted in her office I, as a taxpayer, got upset.
There is no reason, aside from the unions of course, that state government can't run as efficiently as public companies. However, I don't blame the unions; they're doing what they're supposed to do, get the best deal possible. It takes two to tangle and the unions had help from "management" (our elected officials). I would be more impressed if the legislators, instead of making noise about reducing benefits, sucked up their guts and told the unions that the party is over and it's time to become a lean, mean fighting machine. You want your nice benefits, then get to work. Get more efficient in your daily tasks and let newer employees get benefits more in line with the current work force (meaning less, which stinks but it's expensive providing these legacy benefits) or we will start laying off so many workers that the survivors will envy the fired.
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