From Federal News Network:
The Social Security Administration wants to hire 4,000 new frontline workers to address a growing backlog of cases.
But with many employees citing unreasonable workloads and one of every eight SSA workers leaving the agency, the process of increasing staff is a steep hill to climb.
The fiscal 2023 budget request includes funding for workers in both disability determination services and frontline operations, not only to improve customer service, but also to ease the burdensome and mounting work that current SSA employees face. ...
Note that this says Social Security WANTS to hire 4,000 new employees. That would only happen in the NEXT fiscal year IF Social Security gets the entire appropriation requested by the Administration which is unlikely. In the CURRENT fiscal year Social Security's workforce is actually DECLINING.
They also announced yet another early out for this year. You have to wonder if the "leadership" of this agency has any idea at all what it's doing. They are complaining about being understaffed while taking measures to reduce the size of the workforce.
ReplyDeleteHeh you said leadership.
DeleteThe continuing early out solicitations is going to make agency staffing go from bad to worse. The executives are under the misguided belief (like some in these comments) that operations work is like running a register at Walmart - anyone can do it with a week's worth of training.
DeleteI can only think the objective is to offload higher paid career staff and replace with lower paid trainees. Let's treat that cut on the forehead with a tight tourniquet about the neck.
If it's like my office, half of those new hires will be gone within a year or two.
ReplyDeleteI was hired as a BA back in September. I've received a tentative offer at another agency and will be leaving as soon as that becomes a final offer. And I'm not the first person in my BA class to leave.
DeleteI suspect the purpose of the early outs is to motivate those who were going to leave in the next six months to leave now so they know how bad the situation is can hire replacements while they have hiring authorization.
ReplyDeleteWith unemployment at 3.5%, anyone who wants a job today can have one.
ReplyDeleteThe pay grade for new claims representatives is GS 5, starting at $31,083 before local cola adjustments ($40,883 for DC) According to recent statistics, the average striating salary for college graduates is now $55,000
So, good luck to SSA in hiring new college graduates for any of these positions.
@10:46
ReplyDeleteExactly. Normally the early outs need to be gone by September 30, but this time they need to be gone by July 30.
Sure we will get hires, but it take 2+ years for them to make a difference. I wish the Agency could hire based on anticipated losses, but not without proper funding could this happen. My office of 12 will lose 5 in the next 2 years.
ReplyDeleteThe early out offering makes little sense.They should have at least excluded Operations employees.
Those on the front lines, processing claims and post entitlement actions in the payment centers. Those conducting interviews and processing claims in the field offices. These employees should not be allowed to retire early, with SSA backlogs and wait times the way they are.
It takes years for new employees to become proficient in these technical and difficult jobs.
I am the only trained CS in my office. We have a couple of trainees that were recently hired. I can take the early out if offered in a couple of years and plan to do so.
ReplyDeleteIn my 20 years with the agency, I’ve never been more overwhelmed or more discouraged. It will be years before my office is even somewhat functional again. And that assuming the trainees are competent and stay on board. We’ve already had one quit.
@1:41:
ReplyDeleteDear God, No! You are desperately needed. Do not take the early out. We attorneys desperately need anyone who is competent.
Nobody is functional right now because the government management is geriatric and incapable of actual management. All we need is for you to do what you can do in your normal work day and go home. Please ignore any overwhelm you are feeling. Just realize that the demands given to you are delusional, ignore them, do your eight hours of work and go home, and get some sleep. Enjoy your weekend. Enjoy your days off. Think of the demands as psychotic symptoms of a failing system. They are just voices. Ignore them. They can't hurt you.
The trainees you will get will likely not be competent and stay on board. That's life in 2022 because of the current economic insanity. It is not your job to train people who can't do the job.
I think something seriously needs to go wrong at SSA before Congress starts paying attention. Our office already in a nightmare situation because the primary field office that most of our new claims get processed at is basically non-functional. They cannot seem to process atty forms correctly, and have stopped mailing out denial notices in many cases. Calling them is almost pointless, because you get a different answer on the same claim on the same day. They simply do not know what they are doing, including the FO managers.
ReplyDeleteIt almost makes it worse for us that this field office is extra incompetent. Most other FOs we have dealt with have gotten their act together by now--but this one just keeps getting worse. They find new ways to screw-up virtually every week. We are now routinely told we are not on record, despite receiving the attorney acknowledgment letter from the same office! Last week they told me an attorney who represented the claimant 3+ years ago/2 claims ago was the current attorney. Provided the date of our atty acknowledgment letter, explained we personally submitted the application and represented the client on the last claim too--and the worker could not seem less interested to investigate the case file.
5:42
ReplyDeleteDo you mind elaborating as to why your leaving? Maybe it goes without saying if your in the agency, but as an attorney rep, I appreciate insight from those within the agency.
Sorry about taking awhile to get back to you. The primary reason is simply that I hate the job. I dislike both math and coding, which are primarily what the job is about but which nobody mentioned at any point during the hiring process. I also find nearly half century old computer system we use for processibg everything--PCOM--extremely frustrating to work with. It makes everything needlessly complicated and far harder and more time consuming to process than it has any right to be. The bulk of the job has nothing to do with figuring out the issue with a case but rather figuring out whatever arcane coding PCOM demands in an order to process correctly.
DeleteNot 542 but I am leaving the agency as a claim specialist because I am old enough to retire and I'm tired of doing 12 hours work in 8 hours. Or perhaps I should say expected to do 12 hours work in 8 hours. I have eight or more hours of claim specialist work to do but several hours a day I have to either answer telephones or wait on the public comes in. Wow this may be helpful to them it's not helpful to the people that have filed claims and expect to be paid timely. I'm just tired of working where I continually get further and further behind with no hope in sight. The trainees that have been hired are either not very good or have quit. There is an occasional good training which gives me hope but it's maybe 25% of the people hired.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeletePC7 finally had 8 hours overtime scheduled for Sat 6/4/22 for several job positions.
After a couple of hours the paperless system started acting up and employees could not open or look at documents in paperless. Making it nearly impossible to get any work done, or cases moved.
IT was unable to fix, so at 11:00 AM overtime was cancelled for the rest of the day. Very little progress was made in the backlogs today..
The systems problems at SSA, seem to be getting worse rather than better.
Disability Examiners are leaving with or without opportunities lined up. Some have returned to the DDS for much less pay. Folks retiring. The daily question is, “who’s leaving next?”
ReplyDeleteWhere are all the smart-ass remarks about the retirement pools?
ReplyDeleteAt 8:42. I think everyone sees that threat is real. 1/8 employees in the field gone. 25% at the DDSs gone. Early out is on the table so more people will be gone. Those threats were real. What people didn’t realize is the real threat was retire or quit. And apparently it’s actually happening.
ReplyDelete@8:42, Those people who threatened to retire have left. My office is down 25% in 2 years. The Early Outs will briing us down 50% since Covid. We were already told we're not backfilling. The Agency knows what it's doing. It tells Congress and the public one thing and internally, does another.
ReplyDelete9:18
ReplyDeleteI was over 25 years of service and left because the agency has become a lovechild between a trainwreck and a dumpster fire. Quite a few who haven't left in operations yet are planning their exit strategy.
Executives manage solely to the metric, no matter the cost of stress to their managers. Their sole consideration is their performance review and the fat bonuses that come with it. This culture is destroying the morale of the agency.
The argument was that large numbers of people would leave if they had to come back after VOVID. It seems that large numbers are leaving but for various reasons that have nothing to do with COVID as being exposed to COVID was never a real fear for very many as per the lll run a few weeks ago where only 3% said that was an issue.
ReplyDeletePlease are leaving because the work is overbearing with a lack of staff and no time to complete the work needed. Morale is terrible generally and the work force that has reached retirement or early out retirement, is getting out because they are sick of working at a place where upper management expects them to do more with less.
And lets not talk about the crashing systems, phones not working, and the loss of the one saving grace, being able to work at home.
I came to the office on April 1st and left. I won’t work for the agency that treats employees so poorly. Reducing telework was the final nail in the coffin. I am aware some of the commenters believe the employees who leave are replaced. The employees are not replaced and the backlog will grow and customer service will continue to deteriorate. If SSA creates a permanent telework program for all staff the institutional knowledge can still be saved
ReplyDeleteDistrict Manager here. So many of the comments above are beyond accurate that is unbelievable. The agency makes it impossible to hire anyone above a gs-5 (33k) a year. I’ve lost countless of decent hires to this alone. The hiring authorities we have make hiring good employees or college grads a thing of the past. We are patch working holes with what I suspect is easily 50% attrition of new hires. We have hires but are unable to fill them. Morale is at an all time low. Executives have no insight or solutions. It’s the worst it’s been in my 22 years
ReplyDeleteWork could get done more efficiently if you didn't have the FO personnel spending so much of their time issuing BEVE letters and replacement cards. I've seen one woman three times in the past two weeks needing letters, and same people who lose their cards or "don't know what they did with it", twice a year.
ReplyDeleteCompel this type of stuff, along with change of address, direct deposit, etc., either to be done online or at a self-service station. I'm sick of that needing to keep the offices open on a walk-in basis because of the poor, disabled, elderly, homeless. Most of the people who come in for these routine requests are able-bodied young people who have a secure housing situation. You're turning the FO personnel into data entry workers.
Of course, this "Acting" CoSS...and when I say acting, she'd get a Razzie, is more interested in IT Security than the people. As one person wrote on this blog a couple weeks ago, people don't leave because of bad computers, the leave because of bad (mis)managers. Well, this ACoSS is the worst of them all. She couldn't even lead a severely dehydrated thirsty horse to water.
I wouldn’t wish the CS job in a field office on my worst enemy.
ReplyDeleteAnd the GS 5 pay is ridiculous. That could be made almost anywhere now that places will pay $15.00 to do almost anything.
I’m eyeballing that early out in 3 years unless something drastically changes.
Why would any recent college graduate with anything at all to offer work for such a poorly run, inflexible agency?
8:28 CS is not GS-5. It's a quick career ladder to GS-11. Quite a difference. It's still a good job for college graduates due to the Federal benefits such as sick leave, annual leave, good health insurance, and good retirement benefits including pension (even with FERS)
ReplyDeleteThe CS starts at a GS 5. It then increases to a 7, then a 9 and finally an 11.
ReplyDeleteThe increases are normally automatic assuming you are proficient. Thank goodness they are currently holding back the automatic grade increases for poor performance in our office.
Given the current state of the agency and my particular office situation, it’s definitely not worth the stress.
Best job I ever quit. Glad I quit, and took the knowledge gained to do some good in the community. Worst job I ever had and my first job was mucking stables!
ReplyDeleteIt was a great job until about 12 years ago. Poor hires, mainly due to a very limited pool of just veterans, and additional work without the people to do it. In my years in the agency most new hires were decent with some being excellent. In the past decade, some have been good and some decent but quite a few were terrible. It's now common for new hires to quit before or in training and for them to be fired while they are on probation. That was extremely rare previously. Covid made it even worse but the quality of new workers has been declining for several years. My office may only be down 10% of employees but when a large percentage of workers are new and with a significant number of those leaving soon, there's not a lot of reason for optimism. The very good employees who can work the complicated cases are leaving or looking to leave with no replacement of their knowledge on the horizon. Some have told me I hope there is someone decent to process my claim when I retire.
ReplyDelete11:57 file online. Thats what they tell the public, just take your chances! They will handle it from home.
ReplyDeleteWorking from home or actually physically being in the office e doesn’t change how online claims are processed.You going to get the same quality of work either way.
ReplyDeleteAs a matter of fact, it doesn’t change the way any work is processed. It comes down to the employee assigned to do the work. Either they do it or they don’t.
We have plenty of people physically in the office that just don’t do their work daily.
Nice try though.
12:52 you have the right to be ignored in the order in which we choose.
ReplyDeleteGlad to know 12:52 that the bad service can be done remotely and isnt just saved for in office visits. Very reassuring for sure.
ReplyDelete