A former Social Security employee can't believe how bad service is at his old agency these days. By the way, I was around in what he supposes were the "good old day" and service wasn't all that great even then. It's deteriorated tremendously since then and is just unbelievably bad now.
Jan 27, 2022
These Aren't "The Good Old Days" At Social Security
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8 comments:
Poor training and no accountability...I work in it daily and it's sickening.
In our office, since we have so few employees, they put the trainees on to answer the phones because they can't take claims. You can imagine the amount of incorrect information flowing out to the public.
To be honest, what SSA needs to do is to restore testing requirements for new hires from outside, and for internal promotions.
The old PACE and JFA exams were excellent for making sure that those who were hired off the street were capable of abstract reasoning, and had good reading comprehension.
For internal promotions, SSA had tests such as Social Security Claims Examiner (for Claims reps and Claims authorizers) and Organizations and Methods (O+M) for computer programmers
All of these tests were done away. Now there is no testing .
The result of this is a deterioration in the overall SSA workforce.
That will never happen given how starved the agency is for employees. Warm bodies are preferable to empty desks. It is what it is.
This blog is far too negative about Social Security, and Social Security employees. I believe that the vast majority of those who deal with Social Security are satisfied with the service they receive.
My unit gets numerous EMails from different attorneys and claimants. These Emails are sent to thank a specific employee in the unit for the excellent service provided. Our manager will then send the Email out to the unit, so that we can see that our good work is appreciated.
But from reading this blog one would get the wrong impression, a skewed view of reality. Because there are so many negative stories and links posted.
@1:47 Rep here, there are some amazing employees in the field offices and the Payment Centers. I hate to see the day when they leave. I think the blog is often equally negative about reps. There's a lot of good on both sides.
The biggest drawback is that the training of new hires is remotely by strictly video , very little OJT ( on the job training ) w/ a mentor readily available to assist . COVID and working remotely has complicated this. We have had about 8 in the past 2 years , 1 excellent (likely off to Border Patrol ..lol) , 2 or 3 others I would consider acceptable , 2 marginal and 2 hopeless. Being a competent CS is not easy . I have not mentioned those w/ 5-7 years experience who BACK in the DAY would never have cut it. The mantra for "Generalization" has not helped either. I would call it "Mediocritization (sic)" !!
@1020.That is how it has been for decades as far as new employees but the new ones now are worse. In the last 5 years, over half the new hires have not shown up to work at all, quit very early or been fired in their probation period. Of the ones that are still here, a couple look to be solid employees but the others struggle mightily. Between terrible training and a poor pool of applicants, the future is not promising. That's not to mention management that seems to believe overwhelming their senior employees is a good way to keep them from retiring.
Let them retire. Whats the worst that could happen? Things will move slow? There will be errors? Guess what, that already is happening.
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