Measure 4.3.1: Assessment of Fairness in Working Conditions

The procedure described in this measure offers a quick and inexpensive way to gather data about employees’ assessments of the court as a fair employer. This measure is unsuitable for courts that employ fewer than 10 nonjudicial employees. It is designed for courts that employ more than 30 nonjudicial employees.

• Employee and supervisor cooperation must be requested from a high level. Participation by a high percentage of the court’s employees in all or most units is essential for the measure to work. Someone lacking visible authority (a relatively unknown and unsupported court "planner" or "analyst," for example) can not successfully organize and carry out this measure without visible support from the top.

• It may prove difficult to schedule the groups in a way that is not overly disruptive to the court’s work priorities and preserves anonymity of responses yet still allows differential analysis of responses by the kind of work employees perform. Before deciding to undertake the measure, the steering committee should agree on what compromises they are willing to make and whether there is a way to balance those practical concerns to yield useful results. For example, are employees willing to come early, stay late, or use some of their lunch break? Is the court’s top management willing to have the court operate on a skeleton crew in some work units for 30 minutes a day? Would the court find the results useful if there is no way to discern whether patterns in responses are more typical of employees who do one kind of work rather than another kind (e.g., court reporters, records clerks, accounting personnel, probation officers)?

• Despite procedures in the demonstration sites that protected the anonymity of responses, there were indications that employees nevertheless doubted the promise of anonymity. The steps taken to assure confidentiality therefore must be visible and convincing to the employees. The skills of the person who will "proctor" the sessions should be considered. Can the person convincingly put employees at ease and make clear that the exercise is not a "test"? Will the planners use good judgment as they set up the procedure? Will the groups be so crowded in the room that they feel someone is looking over their shoulder when they write? Would it be easier to conduct the measure in the employee’s work area?

Planning/Preparation. Make an initial assessment of the total number of court employees and determine how to organize them into groups for administering the procedure. The plan for establishing the groups will vary for each court depending on court size and how work units and persons performing similar duties are organized. (Under any plan, however, management and supervisory personnel should be formed into a separate group.) Factors to consider in forming the groups include: (1) the effects on work flow when employees are away from their workstations, (2) desired minimum group size (generally no fewer than 10), and (3) the value of being able to analyze responses by organizational unit or job classification (e.g., document and records processing staff, courtroom and chambers personnel, probation department). Group size should be between 10 and 30 individuals. When the groups are formed, the goal is to balance efficiency (e.g., keeping the group size as close as possible to 30 or conducting the sessions in the employees’ work area) with the ability to preserve distinctions among types of positions or divisions of the court. Form 4.3.1, Illustrative Position Groupings and Schedule, shows how 1 court with 150 employees might have organized groups and a schedule for conducting this measure.

The person administering the procedure should have the ability to follow directions and to make groups of employees feel at ease with the procedure. Experience in field tests of this measure in trial courts has shown that employees have questions about why the procedure is being conducted and how confidentiality will be preserved. Employees are likely to feel more at ease if the person administering the procedure is not an employee of the court. Representatives of the county personnel office or volunteers from colleges and universities could be used.

The individuals overseeing the trial court performance evaluation should arrange for the selection and training of the person responsible for administering the procedure. A walkthrough of the procedure is advisable before it is administered to employees.

A supply of 3 x 5 index cards will be needed, approximately 10 for each employee. One or more rooms should be designated that are large enough to accommodate the group and close to the employees’ work area (e.g., courtrooms, conference rooms, or training rooms). The closer the room is to the employees’ workstations, the faster the procedure can be completed. To conduct the procedure, a schedule should be drawn up that permits groups of employees to be away from their workstations for no more than 30 minutes. Planning should take into account the possibility of minimal disruptions of court business. Groups should be scheduled at least 45 minutes apart to allow for transition time.

Data Collection. The procedure described here should be followed strictly. Employees assemble in the meeting room at the scheduled time for their group (or the proctor will go to them). The person administering the procedure explains the general purpose of the measure, which is to allow employees to evaluate and contribute to the improvement of fair working conditions in the court. He or she describes the procedure to the employees and explains that strictly following the procedure assumes anonymity of responses. Employees should be invited to ask questions about the mechanics of the procedure. Each employee is given a supply of ten 3 x 5 index cards.

After the purpose of the measure is explained, the employees are asked to write down on one of the cards one striking example of fairness in the court’s personnel practices. The employees should be instructed not to identify themselves on the cards in any way and are given no more than 2 minutes to complete their answers. If an employee has no comment to make in that time, it simply means that there is no important issue he or she wishes to report. Employees may turn in a blank card or none at all. If employees appear to be concerned about anonymity, the cards should be deposited directly by the employee into a box or envelope that is passed around the room before the next segment begins.

The procedure is then repeated with the proctor asking the employees to write down the one striking example of unfairness in the court’s personnel practices.

After the second set of cards has been collected in a separate box or envelope, employees are given 10 minutes to write down any other observations they wish to make about fairness in working conditions at the court. Each thought should be written down on a different card and collected in a third box or envelope. The employees may return to their workstations whenever they choose, before or at the end of the session.

For each group of employees, the three sets of cards are kept separate and labeled to facilitate analysis.

Data Analysis and Report Preparation. The three sets of cards are reviewed and analyzed by a person familiar with social research techniques and personnel issues. This individual may be a county personnel specialist, a personnel specialist employed by the State, or a research specialist at a nearby university or consulting firm. Analysis consists of grouping the comments into sets of similar observations or statements of concern and summarizing the frequency with which similar positive and negative observations occur for each employee group and for the court as a whole.

Experience in the demonstration sites suggests that researchers should avoid overanalyzing and cataloguing the responses. The analyst should identify the three to five themes occurring most frequently. Patterns, however, may vary with different groups. The analyst should look for themes that appear to run through all of the groups or that are reported by many members of the same group. The report the analyst prepares should be provided to the steering committee.

It is important that employees be informed of the evaluation’s general results and be advised of the steps the court plans to take to remedy any deficiencies that were identified. Doing so will signal integrity and openness in court personnel practices as well as increase confidence among employees that fair practices are a concern taken seriously by the court. Evaluation results and corrective plans could be shared at a courtwide staff meeting, at the beginning of a courtwide social gathering, or in a letter from the chief judge. A more personal approach is recommended over a letter. It may be difficult to draft a letter that is not overly guarded or vague, particularly if some of the results are sensitive.

Go to Form 4.3.1

Go to Standard 4.3

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