I think being productive doesn't necessarily mean being competent. A
person might be productive and produce a lot of slides but what would
the quality of those slides be? Sometimes techs sacrifice quality so
they can have quantity. Then I think there is no competency there. You
might have the quantity but later on a lot of those slides produced
would have to be recut as they're not up to par. So how would you rate
that? So competency for me is not the same as productivity. For me, it's
not right to time employees and watch them cut. It would make me so
nervous if someone were to watch me cut. Furthermore, there are easy
blocks to cut and difficult ones. Sometimes I get so unlucky to pick the
difficult ones to cut and that would of course take longer to cut. There
are those that are not embedded right (not pressed down), or those with
staples, or those with calcifications. But there are easy days too and
everything would be smooth sailing.
I don't think you can retrain anybody who's been a tech for 30 years.
There are fast cutters and slow cutters. No amount of re-training would
change them. I think attitude counts for a lot in the lab. I'd rather
have a person with the right attitude than a productive person with the
wrong attitude. I'm sorry to disagree with you and agree with your
manager and employees. I think you do expect too much of them. Just my
humble opinion...

Salve