Frustrated Employees
From the
Federal Times:
The latest governmentwide employee satisfaction survey indicates that
budget cuts, a continuing pay freeze and relentless attacks on federal
employees are sapping morale and hampering some agencies’ performance,
federal managers and experts say.
At some agencies, the falloff in satisfaction was particularly
severe. At the Social Security Administration, 66.5 percent of
respondents this year had a positive view of their organization, down
sharply from 72.3 percent the previous year.
The results “confirm
that you are dedicated hard-working employees who understand how your
daily contributions affect our agency’s mission,” Reginald Wells, the
agency’s chief human capital officer, said in an email to the SSA
workforce.
“However, your responses also show that recent
challenges such as increasing workloads, pay and hiring freezes and
budget cuts, have affected your satisfaction with your jobs,” Wells
added.
The Social Security Administration is in the third year of a partial hiring freeze, during which time its workload has grown.
In
fiscal 2012, the agency lost more than 1,600 employees, and more
reductions are in store under current funding levels, according to a
recent inspector general’s report. As a result, the agency expects
customer service on its toll-free 800 number “will deteriorate
significantly because it will not have a sufficient number of employees
to answer calls,” the report said. To save money, SSA officials last
month began closing field offices to the public 30 minutes earlier; and
starting in January, the agency’s approximately 1,230 offices will shut
down to the public at noon on Wednesdays.
Steve Clifton, president of the National Council of Social Security
Management Associations, which represents managers in SSA field offices
and teleservice centers, said his members are less frustrated by the
2½-year pay freeze than they are by their day-to-day challenge of
tackling a growing workload with less staff and budget resources.
8 comments:
the most frustrating thing about working at the SSA is the mangement. There are SO MANY levels of management. I have worked here for 3 years and honestly can't tell you what my manager does to fill an 8-hour day. And there are at least 5 levels of "management" above that person, each with staff and "analysts".
Instead of a pyramid, the org structure at the SSA is more like a rectangle. If they truly wanted to save money and increase service managers would be fired and worker bees would be hired.
What do you think an authorized representative satisfaction survey would find? . Exactly.
So who cares about what SSA employees think.
I have no idea what "an authorized representative satisfaction survey would find". Also, I don't care what it would find.
Of course it is unimportant what SSA employees think. Unless, of course, you're inclined to take offense at long waits to deal with demoralized person who has an impossible work load.
"Demoralized person with an impossible workload". Yep, that's a perfect decription of an SSA CR.
Yep...a demoralized over-compensated, over-benefitted, and, at least a third of the time, over-their-head person....
So, SSA employees are overpaid, overbenefitted and over their heads. Even if they were underpaid, underbenefitted and under their heads [whatever that means], they would still not be able to perform an impossible workload.
Mr. Wells missed an extremely important point concerning the origin of our frustrations; that is that because of the constant harassment to move 'em, move 'em, move 'em we are producing less and less quality. I used to see too many corners rounded off, now I see unacceptably deficinet files which have been moved quickly.
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