[Senate Hearing 106-351]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office]
S. Hrg. 106-351
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT: STATE SUCCESS STORIES AS A MODEL FOR THE
FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
=======================================================================
HEARING
before the
OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT,
RESTRUCTURING AND THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA SUBCOMMITTEE
of the
COMMITTEE ON
GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
UNITED STATES SENATE
ONE HUNDRED SIXTH CONGRESS
FIRST SESSION
__________
JULY 29, 1999
__________
Printed for the use of the Committee on Governmental Affairs
U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE
61-666 cc WASHINGTON : 2000
_______________________________________________________________________
For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, Congressional Sales Office
U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC 20402
COMMITTEE ON GOVERNMENTAL AFFAIRS
FRED THOMPSON, Tennessee, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware JOSEPH I. LIEBERMAN, Connecticut
TED STEVENS, Alaska CARL LEVIN, Michigan
SUSAN M. COLLINS, Maine DANIEL K. AKAKA, Hawaii
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
PETE V. DOMENICI, New Mexico ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
THAD COCHRAN, Mississippi MAX CLELAND, Georgia
ARLEN SPECTER, Pennsylvania JOHN EDWARDS, North Carolina
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire
Hannah S. Sistare, Staff Director and Counsel
Joyce A. Rechtschaffen, Minority Staff Director and Counsel
Darla D. Cassell, Administrive Clerk
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SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT OF GOVERNMENT MANAGEMENT, RESTRUCTURING, AND
THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA
GEORGE V. VOINOVICH, Ohio, Chairman
WILLIAM V. ROTH, Jr., Delaware RICHARD J. DURBIN, Illinois
JUDD GREGG, New Hampshire ROBERT G. TORRICELLI, New Jersey
Kristine I. Simmons, Staff Director
Marianne Clifford Upton, Minority Staff Director and Chief Counsel
Julie L. Vincent, Chief Clerk
C O N T E N T S
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Opening statements:
Page
Senator Voinovich............................................ 1
WITNESSES
Thursday, July 29, 1999
Steve Wall, Executive Director, Ohio Office of Quality Services.. 4
Teresa Shotwell-Haddix, Union Quality Coordinator, Ohio
Department of Transportation................................... 6
Alphabetical List of Witnesses
Shotwell-Haddix, Teresa:
Testimony.................................................... 6
Combined prepared statement.................................. 15
Wall, Steve:
Testimony.................................................... 4
Combined prepared statement.................................. 15
APPENDIX
J. Christopher Mihm, Associate Director, Federal Management and
Workforce Issues, General Government Division, prepared
statement and responses to questions from Senator Voinovich
submitted by J. Christopher Mihm............................... 32
Deidre A. Lee, Acting Deputy Director for Management, Office of
Management and Budget, prepared statement and responses to
questions from Senator Voinovich submitted by Deidre A. Lee.... 51
TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT:
STATE SUCCESS STORIES AS A MODEL
FOR THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT
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THURSDAY, JULY 29, 1999
U.S. Senate,
Oversight of Government Management, Restructuring,
and the District of Columbia Subcommittee,
of the Committee on Governmental Affairs,
Washington, DC.
The Subcommittee met, pursuant to notice, at 10:20 a.m., in
room SD-342, Dirksen Senate Office Building, Hon. George V.
Voinovich, Chairman of the Subcommittee, presiding.
Present: Senators Voinovich and Durbin.
OPENING STATEMENT OF SENATOR VOINOVICH
Senator Voinovich. Good morning. The hearing will please
come to order.
As has been the tradition here, we ask our witnesses to be
sworn in. If you will stand: Do you swear that the testimony
you are about to give this Subcommittee is the truth, the whole
truth, and nothing but the truth?
Mr. Wall. I do.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. I do.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you very much.
I thought that for the record, because of the stacked vote
this morning and that we are not going to be able to have
people here from GAO and the Office of Management and Budget,
although we are going to have them in at another time, that I
would try to put this hearing into perspective for them and the
other Members of the Subcommittee in the hope that they might
have an opportunity to review the record.
Today the Subcommittee on Oversight of Government
Management, Restructuring, and the District of Columbia holds
its first in a series of management oversight hearings. But
before I describe today's meeting, I would like to take this
opportunity to describe why I am going to be holding these
hearings and what we hope to accomplish.
Common sense tells us that good management is the key to
productive workers and, in our case, successful government. I
am interested in improving the work environment and culture not
of political appointees who come and go every few years with
the change in administrations, but of the career civil servants
and middle managers who I believe do most of the heavy lifting
and receive little acclaim for their hard work. I call these
dedicated men and women ``the A Team.''
Through my work as Chairman of the Subcommittee, I am going
to do all I can to help create an environment where those
dedicated public servants can maximize the talents God has
given them so that their jobs will become more meaningful and
they will be better able to respond to the needs of their
customers, the citizens of the United States of America.
So in the coming months, during the fall and into the
second session of Congress, we will be examining Total Quality
Management and its implication at the Federal level: The
benefits of labor-management partnerships; career training for
Federal employees to maintain their skills and productivity;
and the effectiveness of incentive programs that encourage
employees to be innovative, take risks, and reward them for a
job well done; and, last, how the Results Act and its emphasis
on performance is affecting the day-to-day activities of
Federal employees.
Regarding that last point, I am particularly concerned that
the formulation of strategic and performance goals may be
wasted, paper-pushing exercises if it fails to include the
perspectives of line employees and middle managers who really
know the programs and know how to make government work better.
In other words, the Results Act sets goals, and the question
is: Are they achieving those goals? And I do not believe,
unless your people are involved, your A Team, in terms of
consensus management, and quality management, that you are
never going to achieve those goals.
During and after these hearings, we will determine if there
are additional legislative or administrative changes that can
enhance the work environment of Federal employees by empowering
employees and re-engineering work processes. I think that
probably sounds familiar to Teresa and Steve.
Having described the Subcommittee agenda, I would now turn
to this morning's hearing, which we titled ``Total Quality
Management: State Success Stories as a Model for the Federal
Government.'' I think that title does well in describing our
approach to this hearing.
To begin with, as a former governor and firm believer in
federalism, I know there is a great deal that the Federal
Government can learn from States, and today the Subcommittee
will be focusing on what the Federal Government can learn in
the area of management, specifically Total Quality Management,
or TQM. Representatives from the State of Ohio will share with
us their experiences in adopting and implementing a TQM program
which in Ohio we call Quality Services through Partnership, or
QStP, and the essential role that is played in the reinvention
of State Government.
We will also discuss how TQM is different from the
Government Performance and Results Act and how the two
complement each other. In the future, we will hear from the
General Accounting Office and the Office of Management and
Budget in terms of their perspective on Total Quality
Management and whether or not there are any Federal agencies
involved in the process.
Now, TQM means different things to different people. I
would not be surprised if each of the four witnesses before us
maybe had a different definition of TQM. Here is how I define
it: A system that focuses on internal and external customers;
establishes an environment which facilitates team building,
employee contribution and responsibility, risk taking, and
innovation; analyzes work processes and systems; and
institutionalizes a goal of continuous improvement.
For TQM to be successful, several important elements must
be present, including management-union partnerships--and I
would hope that the witnesses today emphasize how important
that is--effective employee training, modern personnel
policies, and an established system to measure program
outcomes.
The last point, of course, is a core characteristic of the
Results Act. I find it odd that although there is currently a
government-wide requirement for strategic planning and
performance-based goals, there is no government quality
management program to help achieve these goals. Even with the
best strategic plans, poor management practices will hinder
achievement of long-term goals. Conversely, even with effective
management on a day-to-day basis, without long-term objectives
little will be accomplished. And that is why I believe that we
must have in place at the Federal level both a strategic
framework, which is provided by the Results Act, and a Total
Quality Management framework, which will enable the government
to use the Results Act to its full potential.
I believe that if the Federal Government were to adopt a
TQM program, it would do for the Federal Government what it has
done for Ohio. Federal workers would feel empowered. They would
experience greater employee satisfaction, and they would
deliver a better product to the Nation's taxpayers.
The improvements to which a quality management program in
conjunction with the Results Act could lead would go a long way
in restoring some of the confidence, the faith, and the trust
of the American people in Washington. I think that many of us
know, for some reason, people who work for government are kind
of held in low esteem. I have found from my experience that
people in government are some of the hardest-working people
that I have ever met, and with the proper environment they can
surpass anybody that I have seen in the private sector.
So today we are very fortunate to have two individuals that
have experienced a TQM program in the State of Ohio. They are
Steve Wall, who is the Executive Director of the Office of
Quality Services, and Teresa Shotwell-Haddix, who is the union
quality coordinator for the Ohio Department of Transportation.
We thank you both for coming here this morning. Again, I
apologize for the way things work around here.
Mr. Wall and Ms. Shotwell-Haddix will discuss Ohio's
Quality Services through Partnership program, how it was
implemented, where it has been successful, what mistakes were
made, what was learned from them, and we would like them to
emphasize why QStP has been so important to the reinvention of
State Government.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix, you might be interested to know that I
have been distributing copies, as I mentioned to you earlier,
of the Transcript newsletter from the Ohio Department of
Transportation to a lot of people here in Washington because I
really think that that newsletter is the best way for people to
comprehend what quality management is about. I sent it to the
presidents of the two top Federal labor unions, and we are
going to get it out to as many people as possible. Because when
you start talking about quality management, unless you have
some real examples of what it is about and how it works, I
think it is difficult to really comprehend what it can mean.
And that issue of Transcript, I can't tell you how excited I
was when I read it because I realized that, wow, this is
working and it is making a difference.
When you work on something a long time, it is nice to read
something and say, it is making a difference, it is happening,
because so often in government we get involved with these
things, and at the end you wonder whether or not they are
making any difference. And that is the difference also with
being in the Senate. You are so far removed from things that
you wonder if it ever really does make a difference. You are a
little closer on the State level.
So we are glad to have you here today. Steve, we will start
off with you, and I expect Senator Durbin will be coming in. He
is waiting to make the third vote. When he is finished, he is
going to come over, hopefully, and take over and then I will
vote and then come back. And hopefully he will have an
opportunity to get a sense of what TQM is about. So, Steve, we
are glad to have you here and look forward to hearing from you.
TESTIMONY OF STEVE WALL,\1\ EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, OHIO OFFICE OF
QUALITY SERVICES
Mr. Wall. Thank you, Senator. We certainly appreciate the
invitation. We have agreed that we will kick each other if we
accidentally refer to you as Governor Voinovich instead of
Senator Voinovich. That is a hard thing for us to do. But we
certainly bring greetings from everyone who appreciates all the
work you put into getting Quality Services through Partnership
started in Ohio.
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\1\ The prepared statement of Mr. Wall and Ms. Shotwell-Haddix
appears in the Appendix on page 15.
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Our mission goes very much with what you were saying. Our
mission is to bring out the best in State employees and to
deliver the best to customers, and that really is the two
things that you talked about. You also mentioned TQM and what
is in a name. In a way, it is almost a shame that there has to
be a name for it at all. We really want to talk about it as
much as possible. Simply, what are the world-class best
practices out there that allow you to serve your customers
better?
And I think we learned something from the manufacturers in
the private sector. One of the things they said that you have
to kind of think about a second is that any system you have is
perfectly designed to give you exactly what you are getting. It
sounds so simple. But if what you are getting is long lines and
complexity and busy signals and unhappy workers and
inefficiencies, you really need to take a look at fixing the
system, not fixing the blame. Too often I think that is what we
have done, is taken a look at who is responsible rather than
how can we make this work better.
A couple of the things that I think are important about
QStP is that we rely heavily on measurement. It is not about
guesswork. And I think sometimes in the public sector we almost
make the excuse that we cannot measure things because we don't
make widgets.
The fact is there are many things we can measure. There are
things that the customers want from us. We can measure how much
time it takes to respond to customers' needs. We can measures
the steps we have reduced, the errors we don't make any more,
the rework that is not costing us all kinds of money, how much
money we save, and our customer satisfaction.
One of the key things of this is to recognize, as you have
said many times, that the people who know the work best are the
people to do it. And if we are going to fix the system, we have
to have those people involved in it. And that is where teamwork
comes in, in that you have to fix the whole system and get all
the people involved to do that.
One of the key things is our union-management partnership
you referred to. We have had a lot of successes. To be brief,
we have saved over $100 million in your administration alone,
and that number is climbing. We have trained 54,000 State
employees; 91 percent of the current workforce has the basic
tools they need and skills they need to improve things. We have
a network of over 2,500 facilitators who are available to go to
other departments to help their process improvement teams move
forward.
It is kind of interesting to note that at this point we
have over 3,000 formal process improvement teams and thousands
of informal ones. And just from formal process improvement
teams, we have been implementing them at the rate of three a
day for 3 years now, and we have been implementing two and a
half solutions a day for 3 years now. So it is pretty amazing
how it has really grown and come together for us.
I think that Teri's position itself speaks a little bit
about our unique union-management partnership. We have a
statewide steering committee that is 50 percent union and 50
percent management, and they are part of the decision-making
process. We also have regional committees that have the same
make-up, and we work together. Teri is actually a union
employee who has been hired by the Department of Transportation
in their Office of Quality shop, so the union has made, I
think, a remarkable commitment to move the quality program
forward. So that is kind of an exciting possibility.
I want to give you in just a couple of minutes three quick
issues, and I will do that very fast. I already went through
most of the results, but I want to say that it isn't just the
results that you see on paper. It is frequently how this means
to people's lives, which is just amazing.
I think we have made some mistakes initially, and I want to
talk about those real quick, and then end up with the people
part of it.
When we began, we were all anxious to go, we were ready to
move forward, we got going, and a half-year later we turned
around and took a look at it and realized we hadn't involved
the union properly. We really had thought that partnership
meant let's get this going and tell them what we are going to
do and ask them to help versus let's work with them to figure
out how we make this work. And we had to stop and start over
again with the union involvement to really move forward.
I think another thing we did was we probably got too
excited about just getting everybody trained and didn't really
think about the fact that we had to have people using that
training once they got out of it. So we had all kinds of
activity going on, but not very many results.
Finally, I think one of the mistakes we made was that we
got top management support, and we got the union and rank-and-
file support, but we kind of neglected the mid-level managers
who you referred to as a very important part of the A Team.
I guess what is really exciting about this for me, though,
isn't so much the money that we save, but it really is the
effect on people's lives. It almost gets emotional at times
when you go to one of our efforts like Team Up Ohio, where we
had 5,000 people last year go through and see 250 teams and the
changes they made. And here was this convention center full of
excited State workers who couldn't wait to tell the story of
how they had served the public better and how much better their
jobs were.
Senator Voinovich. There were 5,000?
Mr. Wall. Yes, 5,000 people attended the last one.
I remember one lady who stood up and said that she has
hated her job for 25 years, but on Thursdays from 3:00 to 4:30
when her team meets and she gets to think and serve the
customers better and use these skills, she loves her job. And
her question was: Why can't it be like that 40 hours a week?
And I think that is a pretty good question, actually.
I think I will wrap it up with my favorite cartoon which
comes from the New Yorker Magazine. There are two dogs walking
down the road together, and one dog turns to the other and
says, ``It is always sit, stay, and heel. Never think,
innovate, and be yourself.'' And I really think that kind of
sums up for us what the benefits of QStP are.
Senator Voinovich. Thank you, Mr. Wall. Ms. Shotwell-
Haddix.
TERESA SHOTWELL-HADDIX, UNION QUALITY COORDINATOR, OHIO
DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Well, I just want to stress how
important it has been that the union has been an integral part
of the initiative in Ohio. It is very enlightening to me as I
go around the State and I see some of the things that are
happening.
One of the most important reasons that I believe that we
have been so successful is that we are actually asking people,
how is it that you would improve this process.
I was telling Steve yesterday--I would like to, rather than
keep going on about how we did this, I would like to give you a
perfect example of what I am talking about. I have been with
the Department of Transportation for about 15 years, and many
years ago, prior to the institution of QStP, I worked in a
county garage where we plowed snow in the wintertime. No one
had ever talked to the people that plowed snow about what are
the best ways to do this. And constantly you would get
decisions, well, we are going to use this ratio of salt and we
are going to use this kind of trucks, and nobody asked the
employees who were out there sometimes 16 hours a time plowing
snow what is the best way to do this.
I was telling Steve that we had a particularly bad storm
one time, and we were going by the new directive we had just
gotten a month before on how to plow snow. And we were losing
the roads. So after the supervisors left at midnight and we
were just left with our lead worker, we kind of improvised and
did it the way we knew would work. And within 3 to 4 hours, our
county, our roads were 10 times better than the neighboring
counties. And when they came in the next day, they wanted to
know why. They said, ``Because we did it the way we knew it
would work.''
Now, that doesn't happen anymore. They ask the employees,
they ask the highway workers: What is the best way to do this?
What kind of equipment do you need? And these are the things
that are actually causing us to provide so much better services
because people are using words like customer. It used to be--
well, we are doing it that way because my boss said that is the
way he wants me to do it. Now when you ask somebody why are you
doing it that way--because that is what our customer needs.
That is the best way to serve the taxpayers. And to me, that is
what it is all about.
Senator Voinovich. Teresa, could you tell me about how it
was organized in the Department of Transportation, the Quality
Service through Partnership? Have you been with it from the
beginning?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Yes, I have, and actually I am very
proud of what ODOT did. Like the other agencies, we have a
steering committee which is half management and half union. But
ODOT took it one step further. They wanted to actually have
somebody on board full-time that would--like a consultant, if
you will, on the union's perspective on how the initiative was
affecting the bargaining unit, and someone in the bargaining
unit who could talk to the union people about management's
initiative.
Senator Voinovich. I would like to recess because I have to
leave and go vote. Hopefully by that time Senator Durbin will
come back, and I would love to have him hear you talk about
this so he can get a little flavor of it. OK?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Great.
Senator Voinovich. We will recess the hearing for 10
minutes.
[Recess.]
Senator Voinovich. We will resume our hearing.
You were talking about union participation and getting QStP
started. Do you want to refresh my memory on what you had to
say?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. We were talking about how in ODOT what
we had done was they actually took it a step farther, and they
created the position of union quality coordinator, which I was
fortunate enough to be selected for that position, and my job
duties are to consult with the union and with management and
make sure that when management is discussing an issue that they
have the union perspective, how this will affect the bargaining
unit people.
And I go to the union and I talk about different things
because I am included in most of the upper-level meetings, and
I know what is going on, and it just gives the partnership a
real true--it isn't just we are going to say we are partners
just to say it and it sounds pretty. We truly are.
I go out in the districts, and I talk to people on teams.
If there is a problem, say, in the Cleveland area or the
Cincinnati area, they send me down there, and I sit down with
the union people and with the management people, and we make
sure that we maintain that partnership and that we are always
working together to make the best possible services that we
can. And you cannot just give that talk. You have to actually
do it because the people that--the front-line workers, they
aren't silly. They know that you can say, oh, yes, come be my
partner, come be my partner. But if you are rolling out your
initiatives and you are changing the processes and then you are
telling them--like Steve said earlier, you are telling them
what you decided to do, they are not going to buy that and they
are not going to participate in that very long.
People will support what they have ownership over, and I
have to tell you that in the Department of Transportation the
front-line workers actually feel like they have ownership over
their jobs, they have ownership in the results. So if a process
fails, they take it personally because you cannot blame it on
your manager any more. You can't say, well, yes, it is stupid
but that is because they decided how to do this. We used to
call Central Office ``the ivory tower.'' Those decisions were
made up there, and if it fails, it fails. If it fails now, it
is because we as front-line workers did not examine the process
or collect the right kind of data. So it is very personal if it
fails. So we want to do the best we possibly can, and I think
it is wonderful.
Mr. Wall. Teri has been very effective in a lot of those
roles, too. She really has the credibility of the union to talk
about this stuff. I was going to say that she actually put
together a Team Up DOT this fall. How many teams did you have?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. We had 70 teams. It was the first time
we have ever done this.
Mr. Wall. And the union basically organized Team Up DOT. It
was quite a deal. It was theirs and it was wonderful.
Senator Voinovich. So you had a separate Team Up Department
of Transportation where 70 groups came in to talk about what
they were doing in quality and how quality has improved their
operation?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Yes. It was wonderful.
Mr. Wall. Inside and outside the State Fair building.
Outside the State Fair building were the people who had parked
with pride their trucks that they had converted to do certain
things and a cone trailer where they found a safer way to put
cones on the highways to save time and money because the
storage was there, and just on and on and on. It was really
impressive.
Senator Voinovich. So what has happened is that you have
institutionalized it in the department. For the record, you
went through the training?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Oh, yes.
Senator Voinovich. And did you find it worthwhile?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Yes. I think the training was very
important, not just because of the information that we received
in the training, but because it was jointly conducted. It
wasn't--a lot of times--and I have to be careful how I say
this. We will have training as a government agency, as a State
agency, and they will train the managers. This is all about
this program, and then some time later they will bring the
bargaining unit people in and then they will give them
training.
Well, when that happens, you typically get the suspicion,
especially from the front-line worker, well, I wonder what it
was that they gave them in that training that they are not
going to tell us about and is there a hidden agenda here. And
everyone got the training together. It was jointly conducted,
and it made the whole process very open, and it lent itself to
the people actually buying into it and trusting what they were
being told because we are all doing this together. We are not
doing it separately.
Senator Voinovich. Unfortunately, I am going to have to
wrap this up in about 5 minutes. But a big-picture question is:
Where do you put Quality Services through Partnership? I have
met with the union presidents here and am looking at some way
of moving forward with quality management on the Federal level.
The issue is: Where do you put it? Part of our problem is the
Office of Management and Budget basically says they don't think
that is their responsibility.
Do you want to comment on that?
Mr. Wall. Sure. We had the same question in Ohio trying to
decide where we were going to put it, because we certainly did
not want to link it directly to the Governor's office because
we wanted this to be a way of doing business that transcended
administrations. We also didn't want to link it at the time
with the Department of Administrative Services because we
wanted to separate collective bargaining, which is a whole
different issue for union and management, from what we did.
As I recall, the Xerox people, who kind of mentored us,
said that what was critical was that it be in some kind of
internal consultant's capacity where they had direct reporting
to the CEO, which in our case was the Governor. And so we ended
up with kind of a dotted line off the Office of Budget and
Management for administrative purposes, but we made it a
relatively autonomous organization that did report to the
Governor.
But as you will recall, I was actually hired by both union
and managers, and so we also saw ourselves as representing the
partnership.
I am not really aware of what the Federal hierarchies are,
but embedding it within a bureaucracy is also a concern for
folks. The advice we followed was to use the internal
consultant role, and I think that has worked very effectively
for us. I am not sure how that applies in the Federal system.
Senator Voinovich. You have gone through a transition, and
how has that worked out?
Mr. Wall. Yes. That actually was a real concern for us,
obviously, and 2 years before the transition, as you know, we
put together a transition plan on what we needed to do. We had
three elements of it: Measuring, marketing, and then the group
of people that were still going to be there needed to take
ownership of it. And so we worked really hard to capture our
results, to have a good results book, as I have in front of
you, so people could see exactly what was going on, publicizing
it over the Web, marketing it very carefully. And then we made
sure that the private sector knew what we were doing and
supported it, that the unions had ownership of it and bought
it, and we worked really hard to get the mid-level managers to
get involved in the whole thing as well.
Fortunately, when Governor Taft took over, he heard very,
very positive things from all those constituents, and he also
saw the results, and interestingly enough, when it came time
for him to do his education summit, he chose to have some of
the QStP facilitators facilitate that and saw the value in it
right away. And so I was sharing with you before, 2 weeks after
his inauguration, he came to one of our quality forums and
spent 2 hours there with us, saying QStP is here to stay and we
want to move forward.
The unions were very responsible for that, but being able
to have the time to actually show value I think is what made it
move forward.
Senator Voinovich. The issue is, on the Federal level,
where you put it.
Mr. Wall. Yes, I would like to give that some more thought
and talk to you about that.
Senator Voinovich. Maybe in several days we can talk about
that. One of the things that I think really is important here
is that the unions do get excited about it. As I said, I have
met with the presidents of both of the major unions, and they
seem to understand it. And there is a frustration right now, as
we had in State Government, that the A Team just isn't
participating. It is interesting that there is little money for
training. That is another thing that we are going to have
hearings on. Maybe you could just comment about how important
the money is that we put into the budget for training and
skills improvement for your union members.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Well, I think it is critically
important because, I mean, the training is kind of the
foundation for everything. But I have to tell you, as far as
training dollars go, even the union now--we have realized this
is something that is worth investing time and money in. The
union is now actually separate and apart from the money that we
have that we can get from the State. They are offering training
on quality and facilitating, and they are actually using part
of our union money to do this kind of training because it is
that important.
Senator Voinovich. My recollection was that in the last
collective bargaining bill or the one before it, there was a
lot of discussion about training and it was very important. I
think, wasn't it, that you gave up some of your wage increase
if the State would come in with----
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Yes, we gave up--it goes up each year
of the contract. It started out at a nickel an hour, the
Workforce Development Fund. It is hugely successful. I just
can't speak enough about it. As a matter of fact, just coming
up in September, they are taking money from Workforce
Development and we are having the second High Performance
Workplace Conference. And we bring in managers and union
leadership, and we talk about a lot of these issues, and we
have people coming in from all over the country to give us
their expert advice and share success stories. So the education
has just been very, very key.
Senator Voinovich. Approximately how much money is
available to each employee, do you know?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Oh, yes, I do, because I am very proud
of that. We just had a change. It started out we were allowed
$1,000 a year for an employee to take training outside of what
you can get on the State. Now every employee, every bargaining
unit employee, is entitled to get $2,500 a year to take any
type of college courses. We are offered $1,000 a year to take
career enhancement, anything that relates--like if you are in
an area where you have to maintain a certification--I don't
know if I am explaining it right--and you need continuing
education credits, you can take $1,000 for that, and then it is
$1,500 a year for any kind of computer training, and then on
top of that, they take money and do these massive things like
the High Performance Workplace Conference, or you can get a
grant in your agency. You can apply to Workforce Development.
Say we are going to do something with the High Performance
Workplace and we want to bring in someone to an agency to train
a specific amount of people, as long as the training is jointly
developed by the union and management, you can tap into
Workforce Development and get grants for $40,000 or $50,000 at
a time out of this fund.
Senator Voinovich. So there are three options, then. One is
$1,000 if you just want to enhance your skills for your job.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Right.
Senator Voinovich. And $1,500 is for computer training so
that you can get computer literate. And the last thing would be
if you are taking college courses, they will go up to $2,500
toward college credit courses.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Yes. So, conceivably, if you use all
three, you would get $4,800 a year, is what it maxes out. I
think one of them might have gone up to $1,300. And that is in
addition to what I just said, the other things that they do
jointly that they also take out of that same money.
Senator Voinovich. And that means a great deal, doesn't it?
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. It is a benefit that people are very
excited about and it means a lot to the individuals.
Senator Voinovich. One other thing, and I will finish on
this note. I would like the answer to this question. So often
we hear people say, ah, you don't want to spend the money on
training your people because you will train them and then they
will leave you. I would like you to respond to that, if you
would.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. Well, I have to tell you that--there
are two ways that we look at that. When you train people, you
want the best possible workforce that you have. But the other
thing is--and this isn't something that--how can I explain it?
We have people--obviously, with downsizing, we are doing more
with less. And we have actually made it possible through
education whereas the jobs change and they evolve, the people
have the education to where they can go up within the
department as opposed to we no longer need this set of workers
and so I am sorry, but we are going to have to lay you off.
Because of the education available, we have already got people
in the workforce that can move into these changing positions as
opposed to bringing somebody else in and having to train them
and letting this group of people go. So it actually is very--it
is the opposite. It is increasing the job security and your
sense of belonging to the department.
Senator Voinovich. I really thank you for your testimony
today, and as I said, it is going to be a while before we get
through with this. Perhaps down the road, maybe I could----
Mr. Wall. If we can help in any way, please call on us.
Senator Voinovich. I could get back with you, and I would
like very much if we could maybe get Federal union
representation to come to Ohio and spend a day or two with you
guys to see how you feel about it, because I really think if we
are going to get this done on the Federal level, it is going to
take our Federal unions saying this is something that we really
want and get them involved in the process. We have got 17
months left of this administration, and then we don't know what
is coming. I doubt if anything will get done now, but hopefully
if we do enough work and enough preparation, no matter who gets
elected president the next time, maybe we would be in a
position where we could lay something out for whoever it is and
try and get them to buy into it. Because I know from being
Governor that if the boss is not involved, it doesn't get done.
And I think that one of the neatest things that I did as
Governor was to get to know the union leaders in Ohio. I took
my 3-day training with the union leaders. It is great when you
are in the same room together and you get a chance to get to
know each other and there is real commitment and openness.
I think that what you folks have done with quality in Ohio
may be the greatest legacy that I have had anything to do with
in State Government, because it has really ignited our
workforce. You just testified to what is happening, and it is
continuing. It is not one of these deals where you get
management in to look at things, decide you have got to do
eight things, and then it is over with. But this is continuing,
teams are being built, programs are being improved, and the
thing that is exciting is that it is coming from you guys. The
unions are the ones that are coming forward and saying we have
got an idea.
We had a golf course that the private sector had botched
up, and the union came in and said we think we can do a better
job than they did. Before you give it to another private
outfit, give us a shot at it. They got it, and they have turned
it around.
Mr. Wall. It made $210,000 more for the State coffers than
the private company paid for doing it as well. So it is reverse
privatization that paid off.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. I have to tell you I was really
concerned when our administration changed in Ohio what was
going to happen. And I was so grateful that things were so in
place when we got the new Governor that it was very difficult
for them not to continue with this.
But I have to tell you at this point, with the union
employees, they are so empowered and feeling so--they own those
jobs, and they are so proud of them. I think anybody that would
come into the State of Ohio today and try to take that
ownership back from those people would have one heck of a fight
on their hands.
Senator Voinovich. Well, as one private sector person told
me from Cincinnati who instituted quality about 10 years ago,
he said that the genie is out of the box.
Ms. Shotwell-Haddix. That is exactly right.
Mr. Wall. Can't put it back in.
Senator Voinovich. Well, listen, thank you so much for
coming today, I want you to know that I appreciate your time,
and we are going to do what we can to see if we can't get this
on the Federal level. Thank you.
We will include in the record the statements of Mr. Mihm of
GAO and Ms. Lee of the Office of Management and Budget.\1\
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\1\ The prepared statements of Mr. Mihm and Ms. Lee with responses
to questions appears in the Appendix on pages 32 and 51 respectively.
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[Whereupon, at 11:15 a.m., the Subcommittee was adjourned.]
A P P E N D I X
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