Tax head a poor performer on “performance pay”

By Chris Slee

MELBOURNE -- John Landau, national head of the sales tax section of the Australian Taxation Office, recently outlined his plans for team-based “performance pay” at a series of workshops in Ballarat.

Under this scheme, future pay increases for members of a work team would be based on measures of team productivity.

Vague on details, under questioning Landau was unable to give any plausible explanation of how to measure the performance of most sales tax workers. For example, how would the productivity of phone inquiry workers be measured? By the number of queries answered, accuracy of answers, clarity of explanations?

The concept of performance pay was received with skepticism or outright hostility by most workshop participants. Nevertheless, Landau claimed it would be introduced regardless of the outcome of the next federal elections.

An indication of how the tax office plans to boost productivity was given by an “exercise in team decision-making” during the workshop. Small groups were given a hypothetical problem to discuss: assuming it is necessary for Sales Tax to “downsize” (cut the work force), what criteria would you use in deciding who to get rid of? This was presented as an example of worker participation in decision-making!

In reality it seems, “participation” at team level is merely intended to disguise the fact that the key decisions are taken at the top. The government has been steadily cutting the public service salary budget, leading inevitably to cuts in jobs and/or wages and/or conditions.

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