We have made the point for years that Social Security is understaffed and has been so for over a decade. Social Security employees themselves confirmed this when they provided survey responses to The American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) on ways to improve employee morale, recruitment and retention at Social Security. By far, the most cited complaint of the employees was the agency’s lack of staffing. Below is a portion of the AFGE report, which examines the problem and the possible solutions. The most obvious solution is for Social Security to hire more employees, but budget constraints has made that difficult.
Problem:
The lack of adequate staffing was the most cited complaint from employees. The second most cited complaint was impossible expectations due to unmanageable workloads – which would also be connected to the lack of adequate staffing. If we had adequate staffing to distribute the workloads so that everyone would have a manageable workload – the expectations for processing workloads would be fair and stress, anxiety, animosity, depression, etc. would be reduced considerably. This would also have a major beneficial result on retention (not to mention increased productivity, reducing errors, improving customer service, etc.).
Suggested Solution 1:
Increase the amount of hiring for the front lines. Stop reducing staffing in order to justify budget allocations for computer programs that we do not need and do not want. Devote the resources necessary to the front lines where the work is being done – even if this means reducing the number of project managers, admin personal currently dedicated to compiling reports that do not change much from year to year, employees charged with creating training cartoons intended to train employees who are fully grown, etc. Make budgeting decisions that are smart.
Suggested Solution 2:
Hire employees we can retain. Expand the hiring pool beyond the VRA hiring authorities. I have absolutely nothing against veteran hires or our veteran employees. The problem is that you can’t keep drawing candidates from the same limited resource without experiencing diminishing returns. This job is not meant for everyone. And when you’ve pulled out of the pool, all of the candidates who would be a good fit, then you need to stop pulling from that pool until it can get restocked.
Suggested Solution 3:
Improve our training. VOD training might be cheaper than other training methods on paper, but that’s only when you just consider training costs. Once you factor in costs associated with issues like: retention, quality production, strain on office resources, employee satisfaction, etc., then VOD training isn’t a bargain. Do more people training (Live bodies at the same site).
Suggested Solution 4:
Hire employees as CSR’s and promote our current CSR’s into CS vacancies. There is no way that any off the street hire would have more knowledge of our program than any of our CSR’s. And, having a CSR background would make any hire a better CS. Hiring off the street applicants into CS positions – OVER – our current CSR’s destroys employee morale, and does not fill the position with the best person for the job. This would also help to streamline our training programs as students in the CS training classes would already understand SSA jargon, and have a good basic understanding of our programs.
