by: John Phillips

As reported by National Public Radio, while Major Hasan was at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (before being transferred to Fort Hood), he received a noticeable number of poor or questionable performance reviews. A few related to the conflict between his faith and the military, but most related to simply not doing his job.

He wouldn’t answer the phone when he was on call. He was late to work. He was frequently distracted from the job he was supposed to be doing. He was warned about his performance. Some superiors thought he should be dismissed.

If an employer isn’t going to use performance reviews to take needed action against an employee whose performance is sub-par, then there’s no use in having performance reviews. Unfortunately, many employers do what the military did with Hasan. They don’t pay enough attention to performance reviews. They keep employees with poor performance reviews. They even promote them.

The Fort Hood tragedy is a reminder that this sort of inattention to performance will catch up with an employer sooner or later. It won’t occur in the deadly way it did at Fort Hood, but it will occur in a way that ultimately harms the employer.

And one more thing. Being in a protected class doesn’t mean that an employee can get away with poor performance. All employees, protected or not, should be held to the same performance standards.