The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE), the labor union that represents most Social Security employees recently asked its members for suggestions on improving employee morale, recruitment and retention. Here's an excerpt from their report on what they heard back:
Problems and Suggestions:
Hire, Hire, Hire:
Problem:
The lack of adequate staffing was the most cited complaint from employees. The second most cited complaint was impossible expectations due to unmanageable workloads – which would also be connected to the lack of adequate staffing. If we had adequate staffing to distribute the workloads so that everyone would have a manageable workload – the expectations for processing workloads would be fair and stress, anxiety, animosity, depression, etc. would be reduced considerably. This would also have a major beneficial result on retention (not to mention increased productivity, reducing errors, improving customer service, etc.).
Suggested Solution 1:
Increase the amount of hiring for the front lines. Stop reducing staffing in order to justify budget allocations for computer programs that we do not need and do not want. Devote the resources necessary to the front lines where the work is being done – even if this means reducing the number of project managers, admin personal currently dedicated to compiling reports that do not change much from year to year, employees charged with creating training cartoons intended to train employees who are fully grown, etc. Make budgeting decisions that are smart. ...
I'm glad they mentioned those creepy training cartoons. Every time I see one I wonder how much taxpayer money was wasted making them.
ReplyDeleteOne of the things that most frustrates me about hiring is that we can't do forward hiring in anticipation of KNOWN losses. I have had numerous employees announce a specific date for retirement, but we could never get replacement hires before they retired. This is a problems since the entry level training takes 6-9 months and then the new hire has intensive on the job training. If we were able to have someone hired well be fore we lost the employee, then we would have a fairly seamless transition when the employee retires. Instead, we suffer the loss and then hope and pray we MIGHT get a replacement, often time many months after the employee leaves.
ReplyDeleteYes we need additional field office staff, but that won't solve the problems for a couple of years.
I cannot agree more with this report. PC are helpful, however they don't replace humans. I get calls from LDO employees at 6-7 at night because that's when they can get to their messages. I wish that as Claimant's reps we would be ask for an opinion on this matter.
ReplyDeleteHire at the front line. Field offices. There is way more to SSA than just paying representatives and giving them jobs as ALJs. Help out the actual people.
ReplyDeleteSounds simply about more funding. Read on this blog or somewhere that there were more SSA employees prior to the 1970s with less citizens.
ReplyDeleteThe SSA can state the Internet has reduced the need but that is just nonsense. They let the disability backlogs grow while not hiring enough employees. It is simple.
Always said the U.S. federal government can put humans on the moon. But they can't adjudicate disability claims in a timely manner? They could if they wanted.
@8:12 Id safely guess at least 6 million dollars a year. They spend over 5.2 million just on the salaries for those people. Are you talking about the new hire training or the in service stuff like the TTF heroes etc? Because those are two different pots of money which means even more.
ReplyDelete