Mississippi Department of Employment Security: Promoting Productivity

Smothers has mandated that all of MDES supervisors and managers complete performance management training in order to foster a sense of accountability and promote the idea that managing everyone’s performance efficiently is part of the organization’s culture. The training covers the importance of feedback, coaching, documentation and the benefits of writing effective, strategically based responsibilities and performance standards with which to rate employees. “If people are underperforming, that’s really not acceptable,” Smothers said. “We want to be able to motivate and keep the high-performers that we have, but we also want to be able to work with low-performers to diagnose the problem and get them to an acceptable level of performance. (Managers) are learning how to listen to what employees are saying to find out who the employees are right now and discuss what is the desired outcome to help the person get from where they are to where they want and need to be.”

MDES also is using Stephen Covey’s “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People” as a learning tool to initiate cultural change. Smothers said the book will help the organization acquire some universally important principles and change thoughts, behaviors, assumptions and habits. “All of those things are an iceberg,” Smothers explained. “Below you have all of these ideas and thoughts. Above the surface you have actual behavior, and cultures can be very strong. We’re going back to get training that deals with principles like, ‘As an individual, I’m free to choose,’ and ‘I’m responsible for the choices that I make.’ I want people in this culture to understand that to change the results that we’re getting as individuals and as professionals, we have to change our behaviors. And in order to change our behaviors, we have to change how we think or how we see things, our worldview of ourselves and our organization. We want to be able to create positive results for the people who work for MDES and also for the organization as a whole.”