PUBLIC SERVANTS

Pahiatua Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11070, 18 February 1929, Page 3

PUBLIC SERVANTS

A FEW QUESTIONS.

The Public Service Commissioner has set the State employees under his jurisdiction an extraordinary task for ihe current month. Departmental heads have, it is stated, received one of the most remarkable circulars ever issued from an official source. Its object is to classify all State employees, on paper, in the most meticulous manner. A large printed sheet is marked off into many spaces, in each of which there is to appear an opinion of the controlling officer regarding the personal qualities of the men under his direction. There is a large sheet for each employee. So that nothing can be left to the vocabulary of the reporting officer, the sheet already contains all the adjectives which could possibly be used in relation to the person whose qualities have to he set down, presumably as part of the elaborate classification system prevailing in the civil service.

“What supervision required?” is one of the questions. On the righthand side of this circular appears a long list of adjectives, one of which has to be underlined by the reporting officer as his own idoa of the word which best describes the victim. The words attached to this heading are: “Attentive, inattentive, indiscreet, earnest, easily distracted, does not pull full weight, lazy, energetic, energy mis-directed, good work under supervision, able to concentrate, watches the clock, good memory, poor memory.”

“Manner and address and temperament" is a heading which provides much scope for possibilities. One of the following must be underlined by the reporting officer as an indication of what American psychology experts would call the reaction to this test. The printed list assumes that the New Zealand publicservants could be classified, in a word, under one of the following designations: “Convincing, polished, courteous, irritates, overbearing, nervous, reserved, opinionative, offhand, temperament phlegmatic, impetuous, argumentive, confident, even, resentful, cheerful, uncouth.” As it is a law of the public service that employees who are “reported on” must see the nature of the report, these peculiar classification returns are being submitted to the individuals with the necessary adjectives underlined. The result in some cases has been to disclose an unsuspected turn for argument and a temptation on the part of the reporting officer to substitute for “courteous” an underlining of “irritates” or “resentful.”

The report sheets are supposed to he confidential, but they aroused so much resentment in the service that they have become the subject of general discussion, and a comparing of impressions, enabling some of the high lights of the production to become almost public property.