SLAP-M: My response to Jay Vance

I'll be as brief as possible, but not more so. Note, first, that this is a response, not an argument.

As a former area manager, I read the article by Mr. Vance with great interest and for the most part I agree with his observations. He has provided a welcome opportunity for this discussion.

That being said, I would modify SLAP-M to SLAP-EM - the SLedgehammer APproach to Employee Management - because that's the aspect of management that we're talking about. The distinction is important because employee management is only one of many management functions in which you will find both dysfunction and incompetence in the transcription industry.

Indeed, I would suggest that incompetence in other areas of management may well CREATE an environment in which a SLAP-EM style of employee relations can arise and flourish WHETHER THE MANAGEMENT TEAM LIKES OR ASCRIBES TO IT OR NOT.

As a simple example, let's take financial incompetence, which encompasses everything that involves income, expenses and profit. Four of the most common casualties of poor financial management are employee selection, training, supervision and compensation.

In a company that's operating on margins that are too thin, for instance, there are a host of cost-cutting shortcuts that are not merely tempting; they are almost unavoidable. In such companies you will find supervisors who have not been thoughtfully selected or properly trained. Too few supervisors for the size of the work force, and unreasonable expectations of them. Absence of feedback loops, and inadequate supervision of supervisors, WHO MUST BE OVERSEEN WITH A DEGREE OF DILIGENCE EVEN GREATER THAN LINE WORKERS, because of their powerful, pervasive impact on the workforce!

1. Selects supervisors carefully. Mere time in grade, account familiarity and/or superior performance as an MT are not sufficient considerations in the selection of a supervisor. Necessary, yes. Sufficient, no. A supervisor must have qualities beyond these.

3. Provides a transition period of adjustment for both the supervisor and the team.

5. Imposes reasonable expectations on supervisors, and provides the feedback loops needed to ensure that those expectations are being met.

6. Supervises the supervisors assiduously, not merely in a negative sense, but with an eye to constant improvement in their ability to bring the best out of the people they lead.

7. Compensates them well. These people are probably the most critical element in your success.

The problem is, all of these things cost money, and when a company doesn't have the financial means to fund them, they are exactly the sort of business activities that are too easily underfunded or even eliminated entirely.

Earlier in my career, it was in just such a company that I was the supervisor of a team that at times reached over 60 in number, and was the only supervisor for this team 24 x 7. I made every effort to distinguish between issues that were team-wide and those that belonged to only one or a few, and to address them appropriately. I ASSUMED that people wanted to do well and wanted to earn a good living by producing at high levels, and it was my job to help them achieve these things. As such, I never fired off a "shape-up-or-ship-out" message to the team.

Lacking adequate information from the management team, I created my own spreadsheets for the purpose of achieving granularity when dealing with production and quality issues, but I'm quite sure other supervisors did not (and had never been trained how to do so).

I worked from 50 to 60 hours per week, varying my schedule from one day to the next in order to be available to my people on different shifts, for a salary that was less than what I'd have made transcribing the same amount of time. I attended innumerable management meetings (at least 3 a week) in which little of value was said and even less was accomplished.

Not one class in supervisory principles was ever offered to supervisors, even though many are available on an outsourced basis at reasonable rates. Fortunately, I'd been well trained outside the industry elsewhere, but I saw colleagues who floundered, often resorting to SLAP-EM and being the object of SLAP-EM themselves. You-know-what rolls downhill.

Another significant managerial failing is one that is as much a dysfunctional structural feature of our industry as a corporate managerial problem, and that is what I refer to as cost-shifting.

(I say "managerial failing" but it may be a special form of managerial short-sightedness in the guise of opportunism - i.e., the chance to pocket an extra bit of profit for themselves.)

The vast majority of the transcription workforce is paid on a production basis and work at home, both of which lend themselves to this phenomenon. If the dictation system fails or is taken out of service for maintenance, the cost of lost production during that period is shifted to the transcriptionist. If there is no work available, the same thing happens. If the transcriptionist's own equipment fails, the cost again falls to her.

And here are a couple of sneaky ones: The cost of handling personnel-related tasks (e.g. a payroll dispute or a scheduling issue) and team-related communications ranging from supervisor emails to quality feedback.

If the MT worked in the office on the clock, she would not be performing these job-related activities for free.

All of the things I mentioned above, and more, are properly expenses of the company which the MT winds up financing.

And cost-shifting can filter down to the MT all the way down from units like sales (incompetent line rates to "get the contract") and technical support. "Please give Tech Support a time when you're not on the schedule so we can upgrade your software" - not a few free hours "donated" there!

When a company is badly run, the incompetence rarely impacts only one area such as employee relations. It will pollute every functional unit and that, in turn, is what creates an environment in which poor employee relations (SLAP-EM) - among many other corporate evils - can thrive.

So, while I agree with Mr. Vance, I feel that SLAP-EM is probably not so much a philosophy that managers deliberately or maliciously adopt, but rather one that is thrust upon them by their own managerial failings across the board. It's as if their incompetence digs for them a hole into which they must inevitably fall...taking the rest of us with them.

There's much more I could say on this subject because we have deep problems in our industry, not a few of which transcription companies have created themselves, but it's time to step aside and invite others to join the discussion.

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SLAP-M: My response to Jay Vance - sm

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