DSHS is experiencing historic increases in applications for benefits. How is it affecting you?
We have significant concerns with workload. We're seeing employees asked to see too many clients, take too many calls, and in general just asked to do too much. Is management concerned about how much overtime this is going to cause?
What's the experience you're having at your worksite?
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11 comments:
The CSD Leadership Team rocks!!
The CRCSO is one of the pilot sites for the SDR and the intakes are drowning the staff. Recently, they had to pull from the Eligibility Review Team to meet the demand of client interviews. The overtime issues are wearing workers out and fewer and fewer are wanting to work it. Are other offices seeing a decline in the number of staff working OT?
This is for everyone in CRCSO and any other offices that have implemented SDR, tell us what you think, if you see a problem and have the solution tell us. We want it to be the best working enviroment possible. MAKE IT HAPPEN.
I am an FSS 3 in Region 6. We are working at a feverish pace doing scheduled appointments/interviews ever 1/2 hour. There are no break times (other than 1 hr lunch), no processing time, no time for return phone calls allowed. We are even being double booked with online appointments and told to work them in "in between". Any one else being forced to work like this?
Our WFPM are being booked appointments even while they are in scheduled case staffings and expected to somehow do both at the same time.
Cyne, thanks for your input, I know that there are problems like just reported are also happening in other offices/regions. Beside not having enough workers to handle the number number of applicants that are coming into the offices, are there any shortcut, proceedures that need to be dropped so that it will make the interview process shorter and more efficient?
I am a call manager in District 6. We are being told that we are to be taking an average of 45 calls per day, work the documents pertaining to the call (no matter where the call is coming from). We are also told that if a case is documented that an interview has taken place and the documents are in the ECR we are to finish the review. We are also to determine eligibility for Additional Requierments now, when this was a function that remained solely with WPS at one time. We need to review the case to make sure all actions are correct as well. Now we are being told that we need to do this and only be on the call (with the after call work) roughly 10 minutes. I am lucky if I can completed with an Interperter call inside of 10 minutes. Now our district 6 CSC General queue has 34 call managers taking calls as well as the batch team that takes calls with us on Mondays.
Batch is another issue all together. I worked overtime and we were processing documents from back in November and December 2009. What ever happened to have batch processed within 10 days?
We are in Region 1 and management has pulled in several workers to talk with them about "the numbers". Staff that can't keep up are being told that other workers have found a way so maybe they should go talk to them to find out how. Well we just learned that some of the "excellent" workers are skipping breaks, working through lunch, coming in early, staying late and even taking work home. Staff refuse to report the extra time out of fear. Everyone is under so much pressure they are doing what they feel will work to keep up because they don't want to lose their jobs. The problem is that they don't understand that they are showing management it can be done. We are falling further and further behind and management refuses to address the issue of what can be cut out. Leave time is an issue in some areas as there is not enough coverage. People are calling in sick and having to leave work early because they can't take anymore. It has been stated to some workers that if they don't cooperate with managements requests they could easily be the position that has to be eliminated if the FTE allotment for the office goes down. How much more can staff take?
I was working a call today, was on it for 18 minutes as I ended the call I get a meassge from one of our phone sups saying basically to wrap up the call. Now this was an Interpeter call and it was a difficult client to boot. After the call I went to my direct sup about the issue and was adviced to be "proactive" and let them know when I have an interpeter call. While working the documents I am told to remember that with after call work we are to under 10 mins per call on the average. I am also told that they are doing this to all call managers when they are taking to long on a call. I know for fact that this is not happening and it is coming across as they are selecting certain staff to "pick on". It is to the point that workers are so overwhelmed that we are ending up in tears and it should not be like this.
I work in the D6 call center, WCCC. When this started, (consolidation), and some of the expectations about case processing time limits were made known to us, I knew it was a bad idea. Before consolidation, when we had our own case loads, we were mostly within the 30 day req's for the program and case processing, and cases were mostly accurate. I stated at the time that any customer service model based solely on production would fail, and it is failing. With local case loads, you knew which cases were problem cases, and which weren't. Now they tell us we should be accepting client's statements to process cases. What I see, is that we're making mistakes, not on purpose, but because of stress to take the next call? It's obvious to me that this was done by people that didn't do the research necessary to come up with an effective plan to implement, it was done in haste to save money, and the opposite is true, we are hemorrhaging money, our tax $'s wasted, and we keep getting further behind, because we're not allowed to fill vacancies. It's time to change it back now so we can cut our losses from this bad idea.
i work in intake and for the last 6 weeks, we had "double logs". that is an interview every 15 minutes. or 24 appts a day. we were told we could pass off appts if we were getting behind. the problem was finding someone to pass the extra appt off to. today that ended in our office, we are going to the call center scenario. client calls us instead calling them. lets hope this is better, i was drowning before and really starting to hate my job. most of the office felt the same way.
I want to thank everyone for their comments and keep them coming. We are taking this to the management team (Babs Roberts, Marijo Olsen, etc) and they are listening to us. Changes are being made.
We are hearing about rogue supervisors who are not trained yet on the SDR process and are passing out bad information. Be sure to check the Sharepoint website for the current processes and procedures and you could discretely print them out and leave it on that sups desk
As for being threatened to be targeted for the "position being eliminated if they lose more FTE's"... they cannot lay off by position number, lay off's are by seniority (this excludes furloughs, two different beasts).
Please identify the offices and managers making these threats and they will be dealt with by upper management. It is not acceptable that staff is being threatened!
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