The Terminator

Hi, I’m an employee of AT&T and the following is my opinion.

I was told recently by a member of management that the company wanted my opinion on MSOC.  Someone from Atlanta would be calling me and I was encouraged to be honest and cooperative.  I was stunned by the announcement since my opinion and beliefs can be read at any time from my earlier blogs.  Supposedly, they didn’t mind my blog and thought it was one of the better ones out there.  Needless to say, no one called me about anything.  After thinking about it for a while and willing to give that party the benefit of the doubt(as I know they would do for me), I decided to make sure that everyone understood my thoughts about it.

As I believe it today, MSOC, the system used to rate technicians on their job performance, is merely a job termination program.  I believe it can be structured, not only to target specific groups, but to target individual employees for removal from the company.  Older workers are especially susceptible to being unable to make the benchmarks set by the system.  Older workers typically cost more in salary and benefits than younger workers.   However, cutting older workers constitutes illegal age discrimination.

There is a leadership plan called a vitality curve or “rank and yank” by others.  It seems to have originated with Jack Welch and supposedly gets rid of the bottom 10% of any workforce, the underperformers.  The plan gained GE a 5-fold increase in revenue between 1981 and 2001.  Mr Welch admitted that the judgments were “not always precise”.  An understatement I’m sure!  MSOC seems to be structured in a similar fashion.

It is certainly a fact that everyone works harder to keep their job!  The problem I see with MSOC is that the system itself has so many flaws in applying it to telecommunication outside plant as to render it unusable.  I will say that it is very useful in the hands of unscrupulous managers who have personal differences with individual employees.  A little tweaking and anyone will fail their daily and monthly numbers.  Keep me on chronic troubles all month and I’ll fail repeats.  Keep me on service orders and throw in a few chronic troubles and I’ll fail also.  Keep whipping me about dispatch efficiency and I’ll fail quality.  Make me gold plate everything to satisfy quality, and I’ll fail efficiency.  The criteria for rating are fuzzy and subjective.  It paints rural technicians and those in the city in like manner, even though of the two, the rural ones have much longer time/task.  Adjust the time I’m allotted for a job, and guess what, I will fail.  Have the IT department to put roadblocks in the software we use or just don’t fix the problems in the system we have now, and we fail… The list goes on and on.

The rank and yank system is forced on management employees as well.  In fact, if they don’t participate in playing god by identifying employees for termination, they themselves are terminated.  So you see, it would be easier on them to use other criteria in choosing which employees are terminated.  Those of a different religion, sex, political party, ethnic background, or culture can be arranged to fail first, keeping the heat off friends.  Maybe they have blogs they don’t like or live in a better neighborhood.  Good people are being hurt by this and for what reason?  Yes, of course, its money.  We need more of it to keep Wall Street happy.  Also, if one company does something and makes more money, all the companies have to follow the same plan even though implementation is difficult and subjective and rife with problems.

I know that in the group I work with, it would be impossible for me to choose who to fail each year.  I see good technicians who have been doing their job properly for a long time.  They know how to accomplish their daily tasks but have to deal with a system that regardless of success will fail the bottom performers.

MSOC is a cruel and heartless system which doesn’t work well in the outside telecommunication industry.  If I did the same thing every day, I could understand the measurement system.  I’ve asked for explanations on the grading and the answers all sound like this, “its difficult to explain”.  “It works on an algorithm, and I can’t explain it”.  “Well, the mileage it subtracts isn’t mile for mile… but it’s right”.  Every job I go on is different.  Every customer requires different amounts of time to complete the task to their satisfaction.  I complete every task the way I’ve been told to and yet, it doesn’t matter to MSOC.

It is my plea that we could return to the days we worked as a team to accomplish our tasks.  Lets get rid of the brutal, merciless system we have in place that destroys morale and puts good people out on the street.  There are technicians who work through their breaks and lunch, against federal law, just to make the numbers.  Let’s stop that and get back to honesty and true customer service.

By the way, GE doesn’t use it any longer.