… In a letter to Senate Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Susan Collins (R-Maine), Bisignano wrote that SSA is looking to fill 1,000 positions — a mix of telephone service representatives and field office workers. But that level of hiring won’t keep up with the agency’s rate of attrition.
According to [a union official], SSA expects attrition to shrink its headcount by 2,000 employees this year. Bisignano wrote in his letter to Collins that workforce attrition this year will be 50% lower than last year, and 30% lower than in 2024, “providing consistency for both staff and the public we serve.” …
It's been so long since SSA onboarded a new group that there's no process in place for doing it anymore.
ReplyDeleteI'm talking about day 1 type of stuff - there's a lot of moving parts, so you need to coordinate things like classrooms, equipment, and landlines, badging, security profiles, employee e-mail accounts and LAN access, having all of the appropriate speakers scheduled to deliver the orientation spiels. This takes multiple teams in coordination, and there had been a (relatively) seamless process in place to get this stuff all accomplished efficiently and quickly. This prevents new hires from sitting around for weeks twiddling their thumbs with no laptops or internet access, etc.
A lot of the people who did that stuff in the past have been reassigned or retired, or the entire unit has been disbanded or absorbed somewhere else. In the unlikely event of a large group of hires, it's going to be a disorganized scramble as people try to figure out whose job it is to even coordinate all of this (that team is gone).
Meanwhile, every week there's a few retirements, the occasional firing, and a steady trickle of job-hoppers bouncing out for a new gig.
And how many that are hired end up staying? SSA has a serious retention problem. Congress needs to ask- out of the new hires that you actually onboard, how many stay beyond the first year? How many stay beyond 2 years?
ReplyDeleteIf we hire 10,000 people, but 5,000 leave within the first 1-2 years, that looks a lot worse (and probably closer to accurate percentage wise) than just saying “we hired 10,000 people! Problem solved!”
This “game plan” will provide consistently bad service to the public we serve.
ReplyDelete“providing consistency for both staff and the public we serve.” …
Oh no! Thats a shame....we could have kept some of the 7,000 employees that left the agency last year after being harassed for 3 months ...
ReplyDeleteWill SSA offer a VERA this year?
ReplyDeleteLast year we lost 7,000 employees but according to COSS Math, 1/2 attrition of last year's loss is 2,000 employees. Math ain't mathin'.
ReplyDeleteMy personal guess is the number of employees leaving this calender year will come close to last year. All by design.
Our staff is so short we cannot even cross train some of our CRs let alone a new hire, and we are losing more this year!
ReplyDeleteFY22: 4,253 hires; 6,280 separations.
ReplyDeleteFY23: 8,406 hires; 5,020 separations.
FY24: 1,677 hires; 4,584 separations.
FY25: 370 hires; 7,503 separations.
FYTD26: 605 hires; 2,414 separations.
“You can’t just throw people at problems in this day and age. You’ve got to use technology,” Bisignano said in a hearing held by the Social Security and work and welfare subcommittees.
ReplyDeleteWhat a load of BS. Throwing people at problems is exactly what he did by putting insufficiently trained people in the phones, unable to help people. Yes, the agency is answering more calls. That’s because people have to call back or go to an office to find someone to help them.
That and him saying Senior staff is intact. Half of SES were forced out.
He believes his own lies.
He doesn't believe anything he verbally spews, because he doesn't care. It doesn't affect his world.
DeleteMore than 25 years of experience. Morale has never been lower. My co-workers are good people. They are doing the best they can to serve the public. More and more continues to be piled on.
ReplyDeleteDitto
DeleteAnd yet, no hires for the DDSs. I bet pendings and processing times are climbing, or will soon increase
ReplyDelete