Social Security had a public relations problem last year when it was revealed that the agency had a training session at the Arizona Biltmore -- even though it was off-season, the thermometer probably said it was 115 degrees outside and the hotel rates were not much more than one would pay at a Motel 6. Social Security's Office of Inspector General (OIG) was asked to do a study on Social Security's training expenses in general. Here is a summary of what they found:
Although SSA’s cost systems were not set up to specifically track and accumulate training costs in one report or management information system, we reviewed the available financial data and estimated the Agency spent approximately $409 million on training-related activities in Fiscal Year (FY) 2009, representing about 3.8 percent of SSA’s $10.7 billion administrative budget. This amount does not include training costs incurred by the State disability determination services, which we estimated could be another $64 million. SSA incurred approximately $9.7 million in off-site conference costs in FY 2009, or about 2.4 percent of the estimated $409 million spent by the Agency on training in FY 2009 (and less than 0.1 percent of the Agency’s administrative budget). Beginning in FY 2010, off-site conferences became subject to centralized oversight to ensure such training closely adhered to the Agency’s training procurement policies.
5 comments:
that is a lot of money spent on onsite training comparatively speaking; maybe they brought in high priced speakers.
It's not a lot of money being spent on training when you consider that employee's salaries for the time they spend in training are probably included, and entry-level positions generally have weeks or months of initial training. I suspect SSA spent less on speakers for onsite training than they did for off-site conferences.
SSA does not typically bring paid speakers in for onsite training. FYI. Nancy Ortiz
Anonymous # 2 has it right.
SSA employees aren’t required to take personal time to attend training. They stay on the clock. Salaries and benefits are thus paid for the training periods. The OIG report indicates that the cost of paying an employee during training amounts to 82.3% of the total cost of training--$336.7 million. (See the chart on page 5.)
http://www.ssa.gov/oig/ADOBEPDF/A-05-10-10118.pdf
JOA
For new employees, I'd reckon the cost of training easily offsets the cost of having them keep working without training... either asking lots of questions or making mistakes.
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