Merit pay at the Vatican and practicing Correctitude

It’s been about a year since the Vatican announced it’s new merit pay system.  I have to admit, the initial announcement slipped by my radar.  But now that it’s been brought to my attention, I’m fascinated.  I took a look at this article, describing the changes.

“The system will take effect January 1.  But, characteristically for an institution that “thinks in centuries”, it will be introduced only gradually.”

 So, ten months have gone by.  They’ve probably started down the path, I assume.   I’m curious to know how that’s going, how they are handling the change.

Some of the things they are measuring:  Dedication, professionalism, productivity, politeness.  Politeness?   Uh oh, I know some people at my company that are going to be in trouble if that one catches on as a goal.

Other articles have, instead of politeness, listed this goal as “correctitude”.  Maybe “politeness” is just a bad translation from Italian ?  Whew, let’s go with that.  Then what exactly is correctitude, and do we need that in our workplace?  Well I found this:

Correctitude: Appropriate manners and behavior; propriety.

….which is probably sufficiently vague to serve as a good performance goal. (I’m kidding, Justin!).  

I’m still having trouble figuring out the proper behavior to achieve this goal.  But what about this:

Political correctitude: avoidance of expressions or actions that can be perceived to exclude or marginalize or insult people who are socially disadvantaged or discriminated against.

And a synonym to this is “political correctness”.  That’s more like it.  I think I have sufficiently translated this to English.

One small problem for me.  Earlier in this post I may have insulted or marginalized people who are socially disadvantaged in terms of not having the ‘politeness’ skill.  Which means I have demonstrated a lack of political correctitude.  I clearly have some work to do in this area.