From Federal Times:
The results are in, and the Social Security Administration took last place among the best places to work in the federal government.
Each year, the nonprofit Partnership for Public Service analyzes job satisfaction among federal workers and ranks agencies against that by size. ...
The results for 2022 are also a harbinger of federal workforce attitudes and, perhaps, shifts. And this year, the results show a discouraging trend: Federal employee engagement and satisfaction fell for the second year in a row, and only four of the 17 large agencies improved their score from 2021, according to the survey. ...
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In fact, even if you compare it to all agencies, regardless of size, Social Security still comes in last. Attention must be paid.
28 comments:
Nothing will happen.
This is a testament to the poor leadership at central office. If you look at the data, it’s clear that employees have less concern with their immediate supervisor per the scores - 75% were fine. Senior leadership is an embarrassment. Our operations are in shambles and they have no plan. Morale is in the pits and the big push on morale they had this year has all but fizzled out as expected. Field staff is applying anywhere but at SSA. Large offices without management for years now. We can’t pay these folks enough to stay ……well done leaders! They’ll blame staffing numbers but the truth is that it’s their decisions have have made it unbearable.
SSA-OIG moved up a spot though. From dead last to 2nd to last.
Can't wait to see that be the bright spot in the next email blast we get from Kijakazi. She can't run an agency worth a damn, but her turd-polishing skills are on point.
She really does need to go. It's becoming dereliction of duty for the WH not to nominate somebody, anybody, with experience running a large/government organization.
Ding ding ding!!!!
This is sad but not surprising at all. I’m curious, what does everyone think is causing this?
Poor training of new hires?
Lack of hires?
Telework changes?
Poor leadership?
Poor work-life balance?
Poor pay?
If you work for SSA and don’t mind sharing what component I’m genuinely curious.
@12:03 There are many reasons but the biggest is that we don’t have the appropriate staffing levels to do the amount of work. The agency seems to only care about getting visitors out of the lobby and off the phones. We constantly take in new work but are not given time to clear the backlogs unless you work overtime. Not only do we lack staffing, the staff we have includes many employees who either don’t care or aren’t proficient enough in the job to do their share of the work timely so it gets pushed to the more efficient workers. It’s a repetitive cycle. Leadership sucks and don’t really understand what it’s like to work in the fo. My two cents on the problems.
The Acting Commissioner, and by “Acting” we are talking Razzie Award caliber. Kajakazi is nothing more than a politically appointed Social Justice Warrior. Her background is academia, not management. The thing she has run successfully at SSA, is running morale and efficiency into the ground. She has done nothing to address backlog, decisions, appeals, expanding digital service or Field Office operations.
Most of her communications to employees are about Diversity, Inclusion, Equitable Acquisition, and LGBTQ propaganda. Her biggest “accomplishments” have been mandating All Gender bathrooms in every SSA building, implementing a pronoun policy, and compelling managers to inform subordinates when an employee “transitions”. She’s so much about equality, but if you aren’t one of the Alphabet People, she has no concern about your working conditions or team spirit.
SSA was such a great place to work, now it is a joke amongst other agencies. So much people are longing for the days of Carolyn Colvin (and she was having dementia issues during her tenure). I would ask that God to save us, but it seems we have been forsaken.
I wish I could say this is hyperbole, but it is not. OC and ACOSS are only interested in equity issues and discussions with the "advocate community." Everything else is delegated down to the DCs who, in the absence of orders to the contrary, keep everything on autopilot. That's why nothing happens.
Fish rots from the head down... just sayin'
I did not appreciate being forced recently to watch a mandatory SSA online Gender Equity video. Introduced by the Acting Commissioner.
The training taught how we must not raise any questions about someone who is " transitioning."
Covered punishments we could be subject to (especially supervisors) if we don't totally accept this and behave in accordance with LGBTQ dictates.
In the meantime the backlogs get a little larger each minute that thousands of employees are in these classes.
The fish had to have a head to rot in the first place. There hasn't been a living head on the SSA fish in literal uncountable years now. If Kijakazi's SSA brain was gas, she wouldn't have enough to run a motorcycle around the rim of a cheerio. She may be a very intelligent person in her area, but she knows NOTHING about the agency she manages that isn't written in notes passed to her by her minions (i.e. the same minions that destroyed the agency under Saul).
What I dread coming out of this is Kijakazi and Grace Kim (with her own myriad bootlicker management minions) wasting more of my work time on their make-believe attempts at "employee engagement" to assuage their non-existent guilt.
As far as I am concerned, if management isn't going to make at least a minimal attempt to solve any of the piles and piles of problems the agency has (which, we know they are not going to do since they haven't actually made any such attempts whatsoever to do it up to now), just leave me the heck alone to suffer in silence. I've got actual important things to do during my day, and I can't afford to waste any time whatsoever on any more of their sanctimonious BS and attempts to prove a negative (i.e. that they "understand" and "care").
SSA has been trending down for years on this ranking - no one ever did anything about it. Now hitting rock bottom, it may not surprise anyone if they continue to do nothing. I used to work at SSA, left for promotion at another agency. I know several people who also left in the last few years. I know of two people who left as a gs12 and within a few years are gs15s at other agencies. Someone said it’s a staffing issue, but everyone I know who left didn’t leave for that reason - it was for better opportunities and SSA can sometimes remind you of an agency that relies heavily on the good ole boys network. In fact, the IRS has way more chronic staffing issues than SSA (have you tried contacting them recently?), which have been reported on for years- Congress finally acted with the IRA bill last summer. Yet still, with all their troubles the dept of treasury was in the top ten. You know why? They have a plethora of employee incentives - paid child care, unlimited $500 employee referral bonuses, etc. SSA also has a good amount of employees who are doing nothing - their Mgmt is challenged in that regard. Instead of trying to spread the work around, they rely on the worker-bees. I imagine both sets of employees would have a negative perception of their job because of this. Perhaps instead of asking about all the issues at SSA, someone should look into what the other agencies are doing right. The new acoss walked into a situation that was already going downhill, now if only someone could tell her that she isn’t helping much. For starters, if they are really interested in knowing what’s wrong, why don’t they actually conduct exit interviews with the folks who are leaving? I’m sure they would get good Intel - no strings attached.
Why do you think it is your business to question a colleague's or claimant's personal choices regarding their bodies? Do you think your colleagues have a right to confront you about your personal life outside the office?
These "training sessions" are needed because of people like you, who appear to not recognize that "raising questions" about another's choices, which have no impact on you, creates a hostile work environment.
The vast majority of us know that someone else's personal business is exactly that, their business. Do your job. You aren't on the clock getting paid to voice your opinions on your colleagues' and claimants' life choices.
All of the above
Here is a little something to chew on, the best and brightest do not work for the worst places. Just sayin'
Same can be said for OHO leadership - sanctimonious BS and attempts to prove a negative... they they "understand" and "care"... oh, and please call us by our first name instead so we can further try to sell this good buddy (not) scenario...
The issue is that lots of time and money was spent to create this cartoon (literally cartoons) training. All for a very very small population. Meanwhile, we don’t have time or funding to get the real work done.
Training is typically directed towards those who least need it, at the expense of training those who do need it. And the agency incentivizes speed while disincentivizing accuracy or quality. So, those who can get by doing lousy work make it their modus operandi, passing the responsibility for their jobs onto other, usually less well-paid, employees. And laughably ridiculous production standards are never adjusted to account even for consistent increases in the volume and complexity of the work. Instead, the clueless executives presume that employees must just be slacking off when fewer cases are processed, leading them to take away or refuse to implement the flexibilities (i.e. telework and truly remote status) that make people want to stay around despite the hellish conditions.
As an attorney at SSA, I wouldn’t wish this job on my worst enemy. And people are catching on, as demonstrated by the fact that OAO couldn’t even get 200 applicants for a recent opening that would, in past years, have received over 1000 in mere hours.
What an ignorant and baffling thing to say. So, you’re hoping it won’t improve do that only the least competent people will be left behind to do the work?
Managers in social security are tired and are not able to steer the ship. The President should ask for the management team to step aside and appoint new leaders. The administration has lacked competent leaders for 20 years.
This is 8:31. I completely agree with that point, I just read 6:38's post as a complaint that he or she can no longer make judgemental statements on the clock about the trans community.
The ACOSS' need to include her credentials (Ph.D., M.S.W) in her email signature belies her insecurity in the position. I've yet to meet someone who uses their educational credentials in their correspondence that wasn't either insufferable, not good at their job and hoping to paper over it with impressive -seeming credentials, or both.
It’s funny to me so many complaints on all sides from everyone, and yet here we are. People complain about SSA but still work there, people complain about dealing with the agency but yet don’t practice a different area of law. Each of you all have a choice. It’s the public who doesn’t and that’s the sad part.
SSA culture, at least in the hearings and appeals components, is like a Shakespearean tragedy with people at all levels conniving, conspiring, and, when necessary, knifing each other in the back to get an advantage and be promoted. So this is no surprise - what's surprising is that it's the first year of such results given that the decay within the agency goes back years.
As long as acting commissioner Kijakazi allows me to continue to telework some days, , I'll attend as many mandatory gender, diversity, and sensitivity training classes as SSA wants me to.
The sessions are online videos with multiple choice questions every few minutes, to make sure we are watching and paying attention. The training is a break from the stress of casework and claimants.
At least she is not doing harm to the agency and claimants, with right wing dictates, like a certain ex-commissioner.
anon@5:18pm,
Some of us don't make the choice to leave because SOMEONE has to care, has to see that the public's business is taken care, despite the best efforts of management to obstruct that.
Unfortunately, it gets harder and harder over time because there are fewer and fewer competent people doing it. Personally, I could drop my retirement papers on my manager's desk Monday morning if I wanted to. They are already filled out (and have been for over 2 years). However, if I do that, my office essentially goes to hades because I am the only one that has educated myself in how to a lot of things in my office that members of the public often need done, things that my "colleagues" (I say that with a laugh, for several of them) aren't the least willing to take the time to learn. Instead, they just selectively torture members of the public until I find out about it and have to fix it.
Other employees (especially in field operations as a claims specialist) after 10 years or so in don't have a choice but to stay. The skills required for the job don't readily transfer to any other employer. And, the agency dumps so much trash on them every day that it taxes your memory and you loose your other skills just to keep track of them. Other agencies actually update their policy manuals; SSA management just outputs piles and piles and piles and piles of "emergency transmittals" changing policies and procedures, and then making it so you can never find them when you needed them. Then, they (seemingly) endlessly revise those transmittals. I've never seen the like in all my days.
Something that has not been mentioned yet & it's telling that this has not occurred is that the Agency's "Improving Morale Workplace Plan" requires them to share the FEVS results with employees. Agencies have been aware of their individual results for months. We are just seeing the official, tabulated rankings now.
With respect to SSA, spinning this as anything positive will be very difficult. Interestingly and not surprising, almost all of the executives met their objectives in last years plans. Grace Kim received a Presidental rank award for 2022. She'll receive a bonus equal to 20 to 35% of her base salary.
It does not matter how poorly employees and managers rate the Agency. Senior Leadership will act as they always have. They'll claim all of the problems will be solved by full funding (ie not my fault) & continue to receive awards for their ideas as they are implemented.
We should all accept that we're in a pyramid scheme because that's how it is.
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