The National Council of Social Security Management Associations (NCSSMA), an organization of Social Security management personnel, has released its March 2012 newsletter. Hiring is mostly frozen at Social Security. Inevitably, this causes problems since attrition is uneven. Some field offices have no employees leaving but some small offices have several employees leaving. The newsletter has an article on this problem. Some badly affected offices receive help from other components of the agency but others receive no help and struggle. One particularly interesting point is that new telephone systems in field offices allow managers to see just how bad phone service has been in their offices and to allot additional resources. This has improved field office telephone service but at a cost to other workloads. Field office managers also complain that they are forced into more production work such as answering the telephone and working at the reception window. This leaves them inadequate time for management duties and forces them into overtime to try to keep up.
Poor them, overtime at their pay?!
ReplyDeleteSupervisors do not get time and a half. Many of them make the same on "overtime" as their regular hourly wage. And the money isn't the point anyway, everyone should have the right to a life outside the office - even supervisors.
ReplyDeleteOGC is hiring. Typical for recent years. Front line service is being decimated, and SSA gets more attorneys & HQ types.
ReplyDeleteWhat a disgrace.
How many new CRs, SRs, or TSRs could you hire intead of GS-12 & 13attorneys?
The salary of a GS-12/13 attorney would pay for two CRs, SRs, TSRs
ReplyDeleteIf those front line managers stopped by HQ and saw the average "work" day of a GS-15 they would literally all have heart attacks.
ReplyDeleteIn our regional hearing office, SSA employees have taken over the hearing recording duties from the independent contractors. This adds to work load.
ReplyDeleteMany supervisors were promoted based on promises made by management. These individuals don't know their jobs and have no clue how to supervise. They claim to be doing additional work but I just don't see it. Most managers in our area do not call numbers and when they answer the phones they are running around the office trying to get answers. The heart and soul of offices around the nation are the claims representatives. They have to process their workloads but they also have to call numbers. The easy solution is to reduce the number in management as soon as possible. This agency has many useless supervisors and managers that should be claims representatives.
ReplyDeleteIt is funny how much work management alleges to be doing. I am wondering how management has time to sleep.
ReplyDeleteSay, if an office manager loses enough employees, can his or her job be down graded as not supervising enough people?
ReplyDeleteThis is news? It's been the case for a long time--and why I along with a lot of other managers took an early out. Nice to see SSA is still rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.
ReplyDeleteDidn't the Titanic sink due to captain error?
ReplyDeleteyou're kidding, right? service is better than it's ever been. accuracy is up. productivity is way up. like any other well run business, ssa is proving that it is full of talent and that the technology investments this commissioner has made are paying off big time.
ReplyDeleteNo, I am not kidding. The waiting times in SSA offices have increased due to the lack of employees calling numbers. More overtime is being used due to the lack of production. It is laughable how management is still giving themselves all the credit in keeping this agency going. Morale couldn't be worse and retirements have gone up due to the increased stress. What management needs to do is more work and actually earn their paychecks. We all need to produce a better product for the public.
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