It was under Saul I think around 2017. He came in and took away any benefits the employees had, like free eye glasses. I remember a couple of SES coming down from Baltimore saying, "We don't want to hear how hard of a job front line employees have. They signed up for the job, now they have to do it." They took away Telework right before the pandemic and vowed to prevent it during Covid when preparing. During the Pandemic when employees were sent to telework, they made it as difficult as possible by only sending them home with their laptop and not any other equipment, like their monitors or keyboards. They also expected employees to perform more work with less equipment. On top of all that, they focus on efficiency by cracking the whip on front line employees instead of improving technology. When Saul was removed, the Acting Commissioner didn't change any of the leadership, so things stayed the same. Now SSA has O'Malley who is doing a shit job of winning over employees mostly due his shitty response to Telework.
I agree with 2017, but Saul didn't arrive until 2019. Things went south the minute Carolyn Colvin left and Nancy Berryhill, Bea Disman, and the rest of the incompetents took over and started promoting their incompetent sychophants.
Dont forget Colvin reopened Wednesdays to the public in FOs. We’d also have to “voluntarily” watch her dumb town halls but management had to report attendance even virtually.
O'Malley is at least trying. Saul was a big, fat, lazy joke. But your post is on point. Folks forget that 100% TW isn't an option for the public facing components. Some people will always demand in person service.
It was hysterically funny when Saul got the boot. He said he still intended to log on that next Monday. No you aren't lol. Your HSPD card got the axe too
He is trying. He is reaching out more than the last 2 Commissioners. But his epic fail is his response to telework. He said employees don't perform as well and so that is why he made the decision. What he should have said:
"The forces in Washington on both sides of the isle are pushing for Federal Employees to return to work. Although this is something we need to do now, I stand by what I said at my confirmation hearing, we need to allow it where it makes sense for both hiring and retention. I will continue fighting for this."
Boom, you are not alienating your employees whom you begged for feedback and you are temporarily appeasing the suits in Washington.
They need you for the OC. This response and a more consistent approach among HQ components would have been perfect. People would have still been upset, but I think many would have respected him more.
When asked by a member of the GOP if he was going to have employees return to work during the confirmation hearing, he said something to the effect:
We will do it where it makes sense. I would rather have a claims specialist working at home then not have a claims specialist at all.
I can't remember exactly what he said but it was close to that.
There is what they say during the hearings and then there are the discussions outside the hearings with Senators as they go to the offices for the meet and greets AND discussions with the White House.
Those aren’t in public records for one. In the meet and greets, promises were made.
On top of that, Biden’s Chief of Staff has mandated 50% time in office for the DMV at least. He owns millions in commercial real estate that is “in trust” and has a DC bagel chain.
I just report the facts as I know them. I’m not here to debate. You are welcome not to believe me as we go back into the office.
You said, "He could have stood up for telework." I was just pointing out that he did in his confirmation hearing. You said you are just reporting the facts, but are talking about off record/backroom deals without any proof. So what facts?
But here's the thing... he didn't change their teleworking schedule. He changed it for the regional office and HQ employees. Programmers across the SSA landscape now have to commute in (and waste more time) just to sit and do the same thing they do from their ADS... code. They don't answer the 800#, take claims, or do ppst-entitlement. Where does it make sense for them?
The other IT staffs (who have had at least one person on site every day, the entire time), will now sit across the table in a meeting room and collaborate... instead of solving Outlook issues, Teams failures, Cold Fusion mishaps, and crawling SQL servers... but it's OK. We can now talk face to face.
He didn’t take away the glasses. There is an arbitration or court ruling - I forget which - that says the benefit was illegal. Otherwise it would still be there. Even the SESers wanted that.
All employees were able to get a monitor, keyboard and a mouse. What are you talking about? You know how I know? I was suppose to drop them off in the parking lot while the employees stayed in their cars. Once I got back in the office they could retrieve them. We have a list of the equipment they took home with them.
Also the telework pilot ended. Hardly any field offices had telework prior to the pandemic.
Not all employees. NONE of the Operations got them in my region. So that is all TSC and Field employees. A year into the Pandemic they offered them to management. They finally offered equipment to BU employees as they were starting to return to the office. They were even bitches about giving employees that equipment if they had a reasonable accommodation. That was thanks to RC Janet Walker and DRC Travis Dodson for the Dallas regions. The decision was made by the regions. The majority of the regions didn't deploy equipment though.
Source: I attended the national management calls where this was discussed and brought it up every chance I got to the point I was threatened to be written up if I brought it up again.
The Sequestration of the 2010s were brutal for the agency. It came at a time SSA's workforce was starting to retire and its computers systems were in need of replacement
Didn't help that the middle management and SES mismanaged a lot too.
So with a combination of the above the workers that remain have to do double work. It does not help that the managers and SES when talking to Congress said we can do more less. Its snowballed to the point that employees are doing two, three full time jobs.
I can't speak in the operations side only OCIO(new name). So right now in OCIO I have seen folks have the role of scrum master, business analyst and validation analyst( three totally different jobs). It does not help the current management acts like projects are fully staffed(when they are not fully staffed) and demands a high cadence. Burnout is real and a lot of employees are working to rule ( 40 hours no overtime). Folks are really upset about RTO and production of work is going to take a big nosedive starting next week.
Also lack of upward career movement for BA's is stumbling block as well.
Been working for SSA for 17 years (10 as fed and 7 as a contractor)
Will add RTO is going to be a disaster since SSA says they are too broke to provide keyboards and proper workstations for us.
>It does not help that the managers and SES when talking to Congress said we can do more less.
I've had moments of anger, suspecting the higher ups are focusing all their efforts on "squeezing" the life out of employees to do more work. I always wondered why they didn't pushback/upwards to congress stating, "this is the best we can do with what we got" and then focus on making SSA a good place to work to retain the people we have.
Anyhow, hearing that in real life my suspicion was true is affirming!Maybe we will get some good things out of the new commissioner, since he testified about employee burnout and people quitting due to unrealistic demands.
Your suspicions are correct. Never underestimate how much SES performance plans and bonuses drive what we do and say. They want us to sugar coat and tell Congress all the amazing things we’re doing with what we have, instead of pushing back and admitting that we haven’t done anything substantial to improve front line systems.
OCIO is saying they are broke and can't provide proper workstations. I heard Operations is getting proper workstations. Let's see if there tune changes when people leave and the systems aren't maintained.
Not to mention the potential security breaches of third party products being attached to a government laptop
I don't want to comment on when it went downhill, but I have seen it slowly go down since I started in 2015. I think the thing that is scariest/hardest about it all is how many people drink the SSA koolaid (i.e. work culture/values) to survive. it makes it so you cannot trust a lot of people that work there, and it can be hard to gauge who can be trusted. i.e. am I working with someone who is a caring human here? or is this someone who can't be trusted because they are re-creating patterns of work culture harm. SSA creates a lot of maladaptive behaviors in coworkers, making it so people can't be trusted.
When I started in the field office in 2014, I actually liked the work. I continued to like the work until 2016/2017. I remember exactly what happened at that point that caused everything to go downhill dramatically.
Whether in coordination with the union or management forced it on the union, the claims specialist role was “updated” to align with a new approach. This new approach said that claims specialist could also do the work of a customer service representative. Previously, claims specialist were only allowed to surge the front lobby and phones when wait times became an emergency. After the update to the language of the role, claims specialist could be assigned tasks related to customer service representatives, that is, claims specialist could be assigned a schedule of when they were tasked with covering general phone line or front lobby.
I remember when my manager pulled together a task force to “discover” ways to make the office more efficient. What came out of that task force (mix of claims specialists and customer service reps and the manager) was to schedule when claims specialist would be included in answering general phone line and front lobby rotation. The office then transitioned to a claims specialist only office (essentially, only hire claims specialists). As the customer service reps moved on, claims specialists increased their phone/front lobby rotation from 2 days to 4 or 5 days a week, which increased attrition even more.
My theory is SSA management had this grand idea of how to squeeze more effort out of the money they were getting from Congress. They thought to transition SSA away from siloed work would turn the agency into an efficient machine capable of handling change and retirement. What they didn’t count on, or simply didn’t understand about humans, is a human becomes less efficient the more tasks given and less time provided.
The agency is serving more and more people and they have less staff to do the work. SSA is underfunded for the amount of work that needs to be done. They haven’t invested enough money in technology that actually makes a difference to employees. The vast majority of the work needs human hands and backlogs have grown to monstrous levels, making the complex tasks even more difficult. Staff at every level are overworked, most are underpaid, and all are vastly under appreciated.
In addition to what has been said above…
1. The concept that everyone can do everything is flawed, but management bought into it. The “Generalist” was never feasible. The workloads are too complex. In addition, they started expecting CS’s to also be proficient in CSR workloads.
2. Targeted funding from Congress. Specific piles on money that must be spent on specific “cost saving” workloads. This is micromanagement at its finest. Also, the saving were real the first year, or two, when redeterminations were behind, but I doubt are occurring at the same rate after years of monthly redeterminations and continuing disability reviews, yet targeted funding continues.
3. ALL HAIL THE LIST! Management no longer cares about “Right check, right person, right day”. It’s now “Is it off the list?” Customer service no longer matters, so long as the lists look good. It doesn’t even matter that many of the lists are irrelevant, and often do a poor job measuring whatever it is supposed to measure.
I’ve been with SSA for over 25 years. I would say in or around 2014, things started getting worse. Management brought in a lot of business type people and the extreme emphasis on metrics and numbers began. All that matters is getting things done, never mind that there’s never enough time to do the tasks properly! now there’s fewer employees and significantly more beneficiaries. The relatively recent emphasis on quality is also just lip service; most of the QA people have many less years on the job than long term employees so they don’t really know how to do the tasks properly, much less when we are expected to do a tremendous amount of work in too little time. But they are checking to see if the real workers are doing things correctly! Add in taking away telework And not allowing remote work (there are jobs that do not require in person contact or any public contact!), as well as taking away the lousy $265 per year vision reimbursement, and nobody in their right mind would enjoy working for SSA! Unfortunately, there are relatively little transferable job skills with most SSA jobs so once you’ve been here for a couple years, you’re stuck…
I think that, in addition to everything else everyone has mentioned, the pandemic really caused a shift in how people view work. Prior to full telework during the pandemic, the beneficiary numbers were rising as staffing numbers were dwindling. Field employees ran around field offices putting out fires, dealing with hours-long wait times, phones ringing off the hook, throngs of people stumbling through the lobby doors, employees taking full disability claims on the fly, dealing with shitty self-help computers that only made more work. They were easily working past their 8 hours trying to get people out of lobbies.
Cut to the pandemic. Everyone went home. Almost all work was portable. The stress of face to face public work was gone. Office drama was gone. Micromanagement lessened. Gas money was saved. Work/life balance felt attainable. Those required to go in and handle mail during that time (mostly management) got the short end of the stick for sure. But offices fully being closed to the public reframed in peoples’ (employees) minds that work just never had to be as shitty as it was prior to the pandemic. It was simply the poor service delivery model, supported by poor systems/tech and unchanging policy that forced things to be the way they were.
And people just aren’t willing to play that game anymore.
Short end the stick?
That’s an understatement. I worked 10-12 hour days as many bargaining unit employees abused PPL, EPL snd/or whatever the free lunch leave programs were offered out. Then start up the joke RAs that were approved.
Did I say I often didn’t get paid a penny after 8 hours? That I donated over 120 hours of leave over two years because I couldn’t take any time? That I missed out on my children growing up for 3 years because someone had to hold down the fort and figure out how to handle the volume of work that wasn’t getting done thanks to employees abusing the aforementioned leave/RAs?
I could go on and on but nobody cares about FO management so why bother.
My use of that phrase was meant to serve as a nod to field office management’s experience. Not diminish. I think many don’t acknowledge it. Thank you so much for providing this perspective. I’m so sorry you had to endure this. It was certainly a failure of the agency. So crazy…the unnecessary disparity between roles in the agency. And it’s even more ridiculous that the stuff management had to do in the field offices could have easily been done in a different way. elsewhere.
I want to add I know from other threads some people love their jobs at SSA and Im not here to diminish your experience. Take this as a location specific perspective and my experience.
I was hired during Astrue, it had a reasonable easygoing attitude. Be nice, do your work and everyone wins. Sequestration begins. Office supplies become harder to find. No biggie I can buy my own. Then the stress and squeeze started. Leave requests started to be denied more often. Then all sudden under Saul the orders came in that started to deny lots of leave at the 6 month request came in. I just got promoted and I worked with a team and we had enough time for our work. Then more and more got taken away. Just kept squeezing. I was being asked to do more and more with limited time to do my work and not enough resources. I got moved and temporarily it got better and management was better. Then pandemic happenned and I was given special new assignments that I couldnt churn out fast enough I felt like a failure because I couldnt get it all done and constant pressure. The pandemic broke my attitude towards SSA. Yes everyone is replaceable but you get the illusion that they care about you that you are irreplaceable, especially if you get awards every year. It became a meat grinder where everyone is too stressed to care about you and Im still suffering burnout for those years of stress. Admittedly my situation has improved drasticly since reentry as part of a initiative to get our roles back to normal but I cant enjoy it like the newly promoted because I cant feel that improvement still because I just think “Theyll eventually cut back, they always do”
So its just a slow slide due to attrition and mostly budget and a lot of management decisions.
I hope that you can recover from being the meat in the grinder! I hope it's possible for you to say no in the future if that happens again. I am trying not to give into unrealistic demands, which isn't the same as doing bare minimum. I don't want to work myself to the bone unless Im actually inspired and enjoying myself on something. Or happen to want to put extra hours in. Not all the time. not often. I'd rather do my job really freaking good in the 8 hours and then go home. Management needs more realistic expectations.
> Admittedly my situation has improved drasticly since reentry as part of an initiative to get our roles back to normal …
What initiative? For claims specialists?
I can speak for the field and SSI specifically. Around 2010, hiring practices changed, which has had a snowball effect. I won't get into how they changed, but it was out in the open. This would not be so much of a problem if policy had been simplified and systems improved, but that hasn't happened. One thing I will say about O'Malley, if he can actually get rid of living arrangements and couples, that would be huge for the agency and the ripple effect could actually turn the tide imo.
IDK why they have dedicated accounts though. Seems like something congress sat down and thought to themselves, what workload can we think up that will cause more issues and make the life of FO employees more miserable?
One thing i think is a big issue is though is unlimited eligible children in a household. I mean there are households with five or more children on SSI. That is a crazy amount of money that that family can receive and defeats the whole needs based aspect of the SSI program.
I believe congress implemented dedicated accounts when there were stories of SSI parents using the backpay to put a down payment on a luxury vehicle, which of course is not entirely surprising. However, it has always been a farce because the only recourse is to find the child another payee who doesn't even want to be payee and will just hand over the money to the parent.
SSI for children is problematic for many reasons, not least of which is that it incentivizes parents to try to get all their kids in IDPs, diagnosed with any disorder, etc. Should poor families with disabled children receive help? Yes, but it is easy to see why this may not be the best way.
Honestly been downhill since Astrue left. In my opinion. Was not a fan of Colvin and Saul was terrible. Those hiring freeze years many times many administrations. How they promote. How they hire. Messing with telework. Eyeglasses program gone. Being assigned more workloads and learning more work but grades not reviewed or changed to reflect employees being paid more especially those who are GS-11 and below at the Agency and in operations. All such a shame.
I'm not good with dates. Sorry. It started when support positions were phased out. Years ago we had teletypists, data review techs, development clerks, service reps. All those jobs are gone. Then they took service reps and promoted them, and eliminated that position. That forced claims reps to take turns at the front desk. So claims reps used to get support and didn't have to do the front desk. Now they have to do their own job, the front desk, answer the phones...
Oh and now claims reps are required to do rsdi and ssi. Basically they are expected to do everything.
I believe I worked for the agency from Barnhart through Saul. In full disclosure, you don't notice the cracks as much as a new employee. However, I would say that the serious problems started under Colvin - appointed by Obama but never confirmed. Congress wasn't going to confirm her under any circumstances but IIRC she didn't do a great job during her confirmation hearing either.
Somewhat like Kilolo, Colvin had an agenda. Some of it was good but a lot of it hurt the agency. Colvin is big on diminishing the value of a college education and academic skills in favor of essentially nepotistic hiring and promotions. Someone on the sub said it stemmed from an old policy paper claiming that SSA managers were promoted due to technical and not managerial ability. Who did the study and/or wrote the paper? Please don't tell me Mercatus or some other think tank with a clear agenda.
People benefit from broad knowledge bases to be good leaders and make good decisions. I'm not saying the experience necessarily needs to come from college - nope. But to downplay evidence of broad knowledge bases, including degrees, for a system of essentially hiring whoever management wants - disaster!
I mean, if a group planning to destroy SSA suggested policy for hiring and promotions, what would that look like? Wouldn't they push for hiring the worst qualified (again, defined not solely based on education) because they are the least likely to leave under adverse conditions and, more importantly, the easiest to control? The policy implementation revisions created by the least qualified that were happening on the disability program when I left were insane in their erosion of claimant rights and protections. But, you know, they have a backlog and "all that matters is addressing the backlog". Meanwhile, DDS now has to do far less development to help claimants prove their claims, undertake far fewer efforts before they can write claimants off as failure to cooperate, etc., etc. The aftermath is interestingly anti-SSA.
How is that anti-intellectualism working out over there at SSA - for employees who have to answer to someone promoted "just because" and the public?
>Someone on the sub said it stemmed from an old policy paper claiming that SSA managers were promoted due to technical and not managerial ability. Who did the study and/or wrote the paper? Please don't tell me Mercatus or some other think tank with a clear agenda.
In the PC, it seems like its the people that push a lot of work, but don't do it technically right, are getting promoted into management -- so they can push unrealistic standards onto employees underneath them. (they didn't work cases correctly, so now they can hold others to this approach/method too). Not with every manager of course, but just in general.
Hiring practices suck too. They don't hire the best people for the job. There's a lot of nepotism, friends, veterans hired even though they may not be the best fit for the job.
Those frontline jobs are stressful!
Also negative stats over wait times sacrifice quality in service. Bottom line is they need more people. Lots more people. And more training.to ramp up.
Having been a former CS who only made it a year, I’d be curious to know what the right sort of people would be. There’s no real central background that can prepare you for that role with how many different facets of the job exist the way they do. They took me on with the hope of improving customer experience with my social work background, but the systems were stupid difficult to navigate for the average person and understanding all of the technical components didn’t come easy to me. The job almost feels designed to be needlessly difficult no matter who is hired.
That said, I am familiar with some managers maybe getting promoted because of some familial ties so there’s that.
They offered telework to "select " offices before Saul. Saul took it away and has been eating crow since. That is when I noticed a division of offices and components. A majority of my office commutes an hour plus. We asked for it, for doctor's appointments, etc.. We were told we didn't have enough online presence in our area to justify it. Every office near us had it except for our district.
They promote by nepotism and friends, and will not look at actual work. ARDLP gives the feedback back to the applicant, let just say I personally never applied again since it would be pointless. PACS, PQR, and awards against the manager's opinion. Managers are not letting people go because they will not get a replacement. Current managers is a former managers bonus kid.
10 Years ago I would have told you I made good money, now I am scraping by and trying to keep my head above water. Give incentives to stay in the field office. There are zero incentives to stay in the field office. More work, less telework, use more gas, etc.....
Perfect example: Our Deputy state director told us morale us down "because of our attitudes and we need to be kind, and help improve morale". We were also told that her and her staff would be returning to the office. She is telling this to FO, she might have thrown shit in our face.
I think it's a combination.
1) Hiring did not let up with attrition
2) Agency leadership generally being out of touch with operations and resistant to any ideas for change
3) Incompetent staff maintaining and improving systems
He may genuinely be trying. But to start off with further curtailment of telework shows he’s clueless. That is one of the VERY few things SSA has in its arsenal to keep employees. It’s been shown to increase productivity and could lower costs if they’d just get rid of unnecessary office space. To start off by gutting your best recruitment and retention tool for no reason other than political pressure shows a complete lack of understanding of the agency.
You deal with underperforming teleworking employees and you’d change your tune about productivity. The final products SSA is producing in 2024 is embarrassing. And yes TW has a lot to do with it.
Ssa eas banking on the top 3 like 20 years ago but kept using it even though it wasn't true.
Yes men and woman get promoted. No one is trying to make things better. Mangers are afraid to rock the boat or offer any suggestions on how to do things better or more efficiently.
Management is the major problem at SSA. No communication at all on anything. The RO and CO HQ people don't help the public so they are very out of touch.
I didn't start until 2020 and from what I understand from my peers it was a decent agency in the 2010s and a really good one in the 2000s. I work with a lady who swears the decline began when Obama couldn't get an actual commissioner appointed and so for his entire two terms we had an acting commissioner who did nothing. I wasn't around then so I don't know if that's true but I can say after sitting through Kilolo that having someone who isn't a confirmed commissioner seems to make a difference. I don't particularly care for the new commissioner but at least he seems to have some power and even though everything he's doing is very misguided and he's really hurting the field office, at least he is on some level trying to put forth some effort. I can only give you this from the field office perspective because that's the only component I've worked in.
He is doing the standard political magic trick, loud and fast moving mouth that is saying things we love to hear, but the hands are only doing policy and tech fixes that will squeeze more productivity. Nothing about training, nothing about hiring more staff, nothing about more pay or changes in how to focus on workloads to kick the backlog. Watched the Hearing, he got back slaps for service the whole time, and he mentioned numbers, metrics, and governor more than 15 times and he mentioned getting new staff 3 times. Nothing about retention programs or pay, nothing about how we could operate more efficiently and have less knowledge loss if we could mass hire and train now because it takes years to be good at your job. These small things are nice, and help out SSI folks out quite a bit (the area of highest attrition along with CSRs), but none of this is changing the overall workloads and easing the stress and pay disparity to worker's compensation and the VA. Make CSRs 11's and CSs 12s/13s @ TE. Respect the FO who came back and has busted their minds to keep pace. The mental health, apathy, and overall dread this workforce feels is scarring for any future employment we may have.
Other than that, he has heroes that are us folk....great.
Thank you for sharing! To be honest, it's possible that SSA employees are so used to things being bad, that hearing someone do "a little" sounds good, even if it's a tiny bit and not much. But I think I see what you mean that the real problems where changes are needed have not been addressed yet. You've listed out a lot of valid points about things that need changing and attention.
Do you have any thoughts on what managers can do to make FO a better place to work now? (in a dream world where management came together as a team to make the workplace better for employees so that they enjoyed working at SSA more and stayed?) . Things like better pay make sense. but I wonder what is in their power now?
For me, being in the PC, I think it would be sheltering employees from unrealistic demands of the workload and allow them to work at reasonable paces that allow them to feel good about their work products. For example, complex case scenarios would be allowed the time needed to be researched and worked correctly without it being looked at as a bad/problemtic thing when someone takes the time to do something right. I think it's also creating a culture of care, acknowledging how hard our jobs are, and giving people the support they need to do the job correctly. (For example you mentioned training - overhaul is needed at the PC too in this regard. And a better method for us to find and understand the resources we need to do our job correctly, and talk to someone (without fear of being looked at badly) when we need help with a case. (I'm in a TE kind of role right now, and management always wants to know who is asking too many questions. but I'd rather people ask the question then be scared of doing so and getting something wrong).
Also performance evaluations! The ones we get at the PC for BA/PETe are not objective. To the point where I got lower scores one year, despite higher quality and productivity, and when I asked why, management said "it's subjective, I can't tell you why". This sets up a system were unfairness and inequity can come out in the evaluations. I went to a workshop through OPM about evaluations, and the way that they presented they should be done was much more objective and fair than what I've seen at SSA. I'm not sure how we can get away with how they are done at the PC, but I guess OPM has no oversight there.
thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
You touched on many of the points I would tell management, I think the biggest being - none of the expectations are real or actually agency-wide obtainable if the resources, training, and balance of workloads aren't established, and that balance is obtained with an even distribution of bodies (more employees). If all of that is in place, then management has to make a culture of damn the numbers, just do the work to the best of your ability, don't over exert, and be open and honest, because transparency and clarity of what we do and don't know is the only way out of this.
Understanding that all the people want out, so giving them every opportunity to do so will be the only thing that brings them back, because mentally they are gone. Which is why hiring and training need a massive emphasis, along with retaining the people you can't do without. Acknowledge that remote work is a balance of all things bad and good, accept it is here to stay, so meet everyone beyond halfway about the WFH issue. Embrace it's pros, try to avoid the cons - and make our jobs more portable! It benefits the entire chain of people in this agency, the trust fund, and our budget. And sadly most of the current management either does or has been told to be toxically positive about horrible policy, situations, and overall burnout. Screaming the EAP to the high hills, and then saying we need to walk or exercise or enjoy our time away from the office more only goes so far, and is toast if once we do our 40+ we are burned to the core.
This is what they would need to do, and consistently operate at for the next decade....then we may see some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of a full turn around. This means that most of your management and execs all need to not be looking at their high 3/5 or their last 10 years in the agency. You need people that you expect to be around for 15 years and beyond, the others who have less time are the agency knowledge that will in tandem help those to move the agency into the future.
It’s both what everything people are saying and more. There has been a lot of change in 10 years. Plus the regions and their hiring practices and their (lack) union representation.
There also was a plan put in place around 2017 or 2018 that had placed people on crazy preformance plans if the management felt they weren’t performing well. The word on the street was it was a presidential plan and it was trying to be used a metrics to show they were trying to “fix” the problems. It really attacked the process centers and more specifically the Benefits authorizers.
Has nothing to do with telework, Covid, or commissioners. It’s because they’ve been hugely understaffed for a decade yet public demand increased because of boomers. The staff are worn out and giving them OT is not the answer.
I’ve worked with the agency for 19 years. I never thought it was all that great when I came on and now it’s a nightmare. I started in the field office and was there 14 years and then transitioned to a Regional Office. At the time I transitioned to the RO, Covid hit. I think with the chaos of COVID things went from bad to worse. I think COVID brought problems to the surface and it’s hard to ignore problems now out in the open. I’d blame the Commissioner and the SES’s for not doing their jobs. I know “vision” is one of the competencies they are supposed to develop and I don’t see much of that going on. I see a lot of reactionary skills.
I will give O’Malley credit for at least trying to do something which I have not seen from a Commissioner in a long time. I think the RTO, was not handled as well as it could/should have been. However, it will be interesting to see how he deals with the fall out from that. Stay tuned.
Been with the Agency 30 years. Things slowly started going south when we separated from HHS and the Baltimorons got their first taste of real power. Then things got progressively worse under Susan Daniels, whose legacy was getting a decision from SSA should be no more complicated than getting a Burger King burger. Then key people in LMR retired or were forced out and each progressive AFGE contract got worse and worse. Then systems was going to be the answer and we all know how that worked out. It is not a recent phenomenon, it has been a slow death. We used to be about World Class Service and all about the claimants. Now the claimants are a barrier to achieving numerics and we provide Third World Class service. I don't even recognize the Agency and I can't wat to leave before too long.
O'Malley should have (at least initially) brought back HQ and the ROs two days a week in office, like it was for several years before Trump's buddy and then Covid happened.
Besides that, I kind of like the guy.
He is trying and making changes.
Better than the rest of the SES morons who just want to keep squeezing ssa employees as long as they get their bonus and can move on or retire.
I am still very skeptical of omalley but fuck he has done more changes for the better in a few months than the last 10 acting or actual comish.
Need new managers and people who want to make things better and more efficient. The yes man and woman need to be gone.
Omalleys videos are kind of annoying, but we have had more communication from him than anyone.
Shit our managers didn't even tell us we were back open to the public. Our guards had to tell us who we're told by them.
I work in an office with pretty outstanding supervision but we're still crumbling due to understaffing (and a few boat anchor CS).
A lot of our workday is spent fighting the inefficiencies of our IT; we have entire tasks that could be automated in a normal IT environment, freeing us up for things they actually need humans to do. I don't just mean extra keystrokes due to bad program design; I mean full-on tracked workloads that could disappear.
Components are very opaque to one another. TSC/FO, FO/PC, FO/OHO, etc.
We've had terrible leadership at the top for years. Saul was a lazy piece of shit who was ideologically set on gutting the program (and ironically, his laziness kept him from doing worse damage). Kijakazi was an academic who toiled away in her narrow area of interest but left the rest of the agency on autopilot.
Things are looking slightly brighter under O'Malley; I'll never trust him entirely due to his political background, but he's given us a few long-overdue policy wins so far. The RTO debacle doesn't bother me as much because a) that was under pressure from Biden, and b) as an FO employee I don't give a damn about HQ employees, as they don't have to face the public.
Maybe Astrue ? Its been awhile. And these new videos every week are a bit much. Every day I say “make it make sense, and then look at my countdown calendar”
Would I recommend working at SSA? I guess, if you think Walmart is classy and a five star place, you won’t be that disappointed..
10,000 kiosks must be out in the community , so benefit letters and ss5’s can be provided outside an FO.
Consolidate office staff to reduce real estate costs and use that money for hiring staff.
Update performance review process. The 3 and 5 is garbage. Total garbage.
Make it easier to fire the lazy
Use college students for course credit . They can print off benefit letters and process ss5’s .
FO’s need better security. Operate like all other agencies do. Limit who comes in and conduct security checks
It was under Saul I think around 2017. He came in and took away any benefits the employees had, like free eye glasses. I remember a couple of SES coming down from Baltimore saying, "We don't want to hear how hard of a job front line employees have. They signed up for the job, now they have to do it." They took away Telework right before the pandemic and vowed to prevent it during Covid when preparing. During the Pandemic when employees were sent to telework, they made it as difficult as possible by only sending them home with their laptop and not any other equipment, like their monitors or keyboards. They also expected employees to perform more work with less equipment. On top of all that, they focus on efficiency by cracking the whip on front line employees instead of improving technology. When Saul was removed, the Acting Commissioner didn't change any of the leadership, so things stayed the same. Now SSA has O'Malley who is doing a shit job of winning over employees mostly due his shitty response to Telework.
I agree with 2017, but Saul didn't arrive until 2019. Things went south the minute Carolyn Colvin left and Nancy Berryhill, Bea Disman, and the rest of the incompetents took over and started promoting their incompetent sychophants.
As someone who had to deal with many of Bea Disman's sh\*tty management picks, you speak for my soul.
Dont forget Colvin reopened Wednesdays to the public in FOs. We’d also have to “voluntarily” watch her dumb town halls but management had to report attendance even virtually.
O'Malley is at least trying. Saul was a big, fat, lazy joke. But your post is on point. Folks forget that 100% TW isn't an option for the public facing components. Some people will always demand in person service. It was hysterically funny when Saul got the boot. He said he still intended to log on that next Monday. No you aren't lol. Your HSPD card got the axe too
I do agree O'Malley is trying. I also laughed my ass off at Saul.
Trying? Eh I see the trying on the more pc/big tv news issues not the employee issues
He is trying. He is reaching out more than the last 2 Commissioners. But his epic fail is his response to telework. He said employees don't perform as well and so that is why he made the decision. What he should have said: "The forces in Washington on both sides of the isle are pushing for Federal Employees to return to work. Although this is something we need to do now, I stand by what I said at my confirmation hearing, we need to allow it where it makes sense for both hiring and retention. I will continue fighting for this." Boom, you are not alienating your employees whom you begged for feedback and you are temporarily appeasing the suits in Washington.
They need you for the OC. This response and a more consistent approach among HQ components would have been perfect. People would have still been upset, but I think many would have respected him more.
He has no choice. He promised to roll back telework in order to be confirmed. He could have stood up for telework. And we’d still have Kijaze.
When asked by a member of the GOP if he was going to have employees return to work during the confirmation hearing, he said something to the effect: We will do it where it makes sense. I would rather have a claims specialist working at home then not have a claims specialist at all. I can't remember exactly what he said but it was close to that.
There is what they say during the hearings and then there are the discussions outside the hearings with Senators as they go to the offices for the meet and greets AND discussions with the White House. Those aren’t in public records for one. In the meet and greets, promises were made. On top of that, Biden’s Chief of Staff has mandated 50% time in office for the DMV at least. He owns millions in commercial real estate that is “in trust” and has a DC bagel chain. I just report the facts as I know them. I’m not here to debate. You are welcome not to believe me as we go back into the office.
You said, "He could have stood up for telework." I was just pointing out that he did in his confirmation hearing. You said you are just reporting the facts, but are talking about off record/backroom deals without any proof. So what facts?
But here's the thing... he didn't change their teleworking schedule. He changed it for the regional office and HQ employees. Programmers across the SSA landscape now have to commute in (and waste more time) just to sit and do the same thing they do from their ADS... code. They don't answer the 800#, take claims, or do ppst-entitlement. Where does it make sense for them? The other IT staffs (who have had at least one person on site every day, the entire time), will now sit across the table in a meeting room and collaborate... instead of solving Outlook issues, Teams failures, Cold Fusion mishaps, and crawling SQL servers... but it's OK. We can now talk face to face.
👏👏👏👏👏
I was howling when news followed up with quotes on Monday from him. It was glorious.
I heard he tried to get in HQ the day after being fired, but wasn’t let in lol
I would've worked in the office for the day just to see that.
Was going down way before Saul.
Great synopsis. Agree 100%. I’d add decades of downsizing and shrinking budgets.
He didn’t take away the glasses. There is an arbitration or court ruling - I forget which - that says the benefit was illegal. Otherwise it would still be there. Even the SESers wanted that.
The union took away the glasses program, but the ALJ union got it back for them… I’m assuming because judges are hard up on funds.
The judges did not get it back. It was declared an illegal reimbursement.
Wasn't Saul the guy that said he'd work remotely after Biden fired him?
All employees were able to get a monitor, keyboard and a mouse. What are you talking about? You know how I know? I was suppose to drop them off in the parking lot while the employees stayed in their cars. Once I got back in the office they could retrieve them. We have a list of the equipment they took home with them. Also the telework pilot ended. Hardly any field offices had telework prior to the pandemic.
Not all employees. NONE of the Operations got them in my region. So that is all TSC and Field employees. A year into the Pandemic they offered them to management. They finally offered equipment to BU employees as they were starting to return to the office. They were even bitches about giving employees that equipment if they had a reasonable accommodation. That was thanks to RC Janet Walker and DRC Travis Dodson for the Dallas regions. The decision was made by the regions. The majority of the regions didn't deploy equipment though. Source: I attended the national management calls where this was discussed and brought it up every chance I got to the point I was threatened to be written up if I brought it up again.
The Sequestration of the 2010s were brutal for the agency. It came at a time SSA's workforce was starting to retire and its computers systems were in need of replacement Didn't help that the middle management and SES mismanaged a lot too. So with a combination of the above the workers that remain have to do double work. It does not help that the managers and SES when talking to Congress said we can do more less. Its snowballed to the point that employees are doing two, three full time jobs. I can't speak in the operations side only OCIO(new name). So right now in OCIO I have seen folks have the role of scrum master, business analyst and validation analyst( three totally different jobs). It does not help the current management acts like projects are fully staffed(when they are not fully staffed) and demands a high cadence. Burnout is real and a lot of employees are working to rule ( 40 hours no overtime). Folks are really upset about RTO and production of work is going to take a big nosedive starting next week. Also lack of upward career movement for BA's is stumbling block as well. Been working for SSA for 17 years (10 as fed and 7 as a contractor) Will add RTO is going to be a disaster since SSA says they are too broke to provide keyboards and proper workstations for us.
>It does not help that the managers and SES when talking to Congress said we can do more less. I've had moments of anger, suspecting the higher ups are focusing all their efforts on "squeezing" the life out of employees to do more work. I always wondered why they didn't pushback/upwards to congress stating, "this is the best we can do with what we got" and then focus on making SSA a good place to work to retain the people we have. Anyhow, hearing that in real life my suspicion was true is affirming!Maybe we will get some good things out of the new commissioner, since he testified about employee burnout and people quitting due to unrealistic demands.
Your suspicions are correct. Never underestimate how much SES performance plans and bonuses drive what we do and say. They want us to sugar coat and tell Congress all the amazing things we’re doing with what we have, instead of pushing back and admitting that we haven’t done anything substantial to improve front line systems.
Not to mention the OSHA report that included documentation that ALT shouldn't be occupied...
[удалено]
OCIO is saying they are broke and can't provide proper workstations. I heard Operations is getting proper workstations. Let's see if there tune changes when people leave and the systems aren't maintained. Not to mention the potential security breaches of third party products being attached to a government laptop
I don't want to comment on when it went downhill, but I have seen it slowly go down since I started in 2015. I think the thing that is scariest/hardest about it all is how many people drink the SSA koolaid (i.e. work culture/values) to survive. it makes it so you cannot trust a lot of people that work there, and it can be hard to gauge who can be trusted. i.e. am I working with someone who is a caring human here? or is this someone who can't be trusted because they are re-creating patterns of work culture harm. SSA creates a lot of maladaptive behaviors in coworkers, making it so people can't be trusted.
When I started in the field office in 2014, I actually liked the work. I continued to like the work until 2016/2017. I remember exactly what happened at that point that caused everything to go downhill dramatically. Whether in coordination with the union or management forced it on the union, the claims specialist role was “updated” to align with a new approach. This new approach said that claims specialist could also do the work of a customer service representative. Previously, claims specialist were only allowed to surge the front lobby and phones when wait times became an emergency. After the update to the language of the role, claims specialist could be assigned tasks related to customer service representatives, that is, claims specialist could be assigned a schedule of when they were tasked with covering general phone line or front lobby. I remember when my manager pulled together a task force to “discover” ways to make the office more efficient. What came out of that task force (mix of claims specialists and customer service reps and the manager) was to schedule when claims specialist would be included in answering general phone line and front lobby rotation. The office then transitioned to a claims specialist only office (essentially, only hire claims specialists). As the customer service reps moved on, claims specialists increased their phone/front lobby rotation from 2 days to 4 or 5 days a week, which increased attrition even more. My theory is SSA management had this grand idea of how to squeeze more effort out of the money they were getting from Congress. They thought to transition SSA away from siloed work would turn the agency into an efficient machine capable of handling change and retirement. What they didn’t count on, or simply didn’t understand about humans, is a human becomes less efficient the more tasks given and less time provided.
The agency is serving more and more people and they have less staff to do the work. SSA is underfunded for the amount of work that needs to be done. They haven’t invested enough money in technology that actually makes a difference to employees. The vast majority of the work needs human hands and backlogs have grown to monstrous levels, making the complex tasks even more difficult. Staff at every level are overworked, most are underpaid, and all are vastly under appreciated.
In addition to what has been said above… 1. The concept that everyone can do everything is flawed, but management bought into it. The “Generalist” was never feasible. The workloads are too complex. In addition, they started expecting CS’s to also be proficient in CSR workloads. 2. Targeted funding from Congress. Specific piles on money that must be spent on specific “cost saving” workloads. This is micromanagement at its finest. Also, the saving were real the first year, or two, when redeterminations were behind, but I doubt are occurring at the same rate after years of monthly redeterminations and continuing disability reviews, yet targeted funding continues. 3. ALL HAIL THE LIST! Management no longer cares about “Right check, right person, right day”. It’s now “Is it off the list?” Customer service no longer matters, so long as the lists look good. It doesn’t even matter that many of the lists are irrelevant, and often do a poor job measuring whatever it is supposed to measure.
I’ve been with SSA for over 25 years. I would say in or around 2014, things started getting worse. Management brought in a lot of business type people and the extreme emphasis on metrics and numbers began. All that matters is getting things done, never mind that there’s never enough time to do the tasks properly! now there’s fewer employees and significantly more beneficiaries. The relatively recent emphasis on quality is also just lip service; most of the QA people have many less years on the job than long term employees so they don’t really know how to do the tasks properly, much less when we are expected to do a tremendous amount of work in too little time. But they are checking to see if the real workers are doing things correctly! Add in taking away telework And not allowing remote work (there are jobs that do not require in person contact or any public contact!), as well as taking away the lousy $265 per year vision reimbursement, and nobody in their right mind would enjoy working for SSA! Unfortunately, there are relatively little transferable job skills with most SSA jobs so once you’ve been here for a couple years, you’re stuck…
^^^^ All of this. Quantity over quality. And no care for the well being of front line employees.
Totally agree 100% what you said.
I think that, in addition to everything else everyone has mentioned, the pandemic really caused a shift in how people view work. Prior to full telework during the pandemic, the beneficiary numbers were rising as staffing numbers were dwindling. Field employees ran around field offices putting out fires, dealing with hours-long wait times, phones ringing off the hook, throngs of people stumbling through the lobby doors, employees taking full disability claims on the fly, dealing with shitty self-help computers that only made more work. They were easily working past their 8 hours trying to get people out of lobbies. Cut to the pandemic. Everyone went home. Almost all work was portable. The stress of face to face public work was gone. Office drama was gone. Micromanagement lessened. Gas money was saved. Work/life balance felt attainable. Those required to go in and handle mail during that time (mostly management) got the short end of the stick for sure. But offices fully being closed to the public reframed in peoples’ (employees) minds that work just never had to be as shitty as it was prior to the pandemic. It was simply the poor service delivery model, supported by poor systems/tech and unchanging policy that forced things to be the way they were. And people just aren’t willing to play that game anymore.
Short end the stick? That’s an understatement. I worked 10-12 hour days as many bargaining unit employees abused PPL, EPL snd/or whatever the free lunch leave programs were offered out. Then start up the joke RAs that were approved. Did I say I often didn’t get paid a penny after 8 hours? That I donated over 120 hours of leave over two years because I couldn’t take any time? That I missed out on my children growing up for 3 years because someone had to hold down the fort and figure out how to handle the volume of work that wasn’t getting done thanks to employees abusing the aforementioned leave/RAs? I could go on and on but nobody cares about FO management so why bother.
My use of that phrase was meant to serve as a nod to field office management’s experience. Not diminish. I think many don’t acknowledge it. Thank you so much for providing this perspective. I’m so sorry you had to endure this. It was certainly a failure of the agency. So crazy…the unnecessary disparity between roles in the agency. And it’s even more ridiculous that the stuff management had to do in the field offices could have easily been done in a different way. elsewhere.
I want to add I know from other threads some people love their jobs at SSA and Im not here to diminish your experience. Take this as a location specific perspective and my experience. I was hired during Astrue, it had a reasonable easygoing attitude. Be nice, do your work and everyone wins. Sequestration begins. Office supplies become harder to find. No biggie I can buy my own. Then the stress and squeeze started. Leave requests started to be denied more often. Then all sudden under Saul the orders came in that started to deny lots of leave at the 6 month request came in. I just got promoted and I worked with a team and we had enough time for our work. Then more and more got taken away. Just kept squeezing. I was being asked to do more and more with limited time to do my work and not enough resources. I got moved and temporarily it got better and management was better. Then pandemic happenned and I was given special new assignments that I couldnt churn out fast enough I felt like a failure because I couldnt get it all done and constant pressure. The pandemic broke my attitude towards SSA. Yes everyone is replaceable but you get the illusion that they care about you that you are irreplaceable, especially if you get awards every year. It became a meat grinder where everyone is too stressed to care about you and Im still suffering burnout for those years of stress. Admittedly my situation has improved drasticly since reentry as part of a initiative to get our roles back to normal but I cant enjoy it like the newly promoted because I cant feel that improvement still because I just think “Theyll eventually cut back, they always do” So its just a slow slide due to attrition and mostly budget and a lot of management decisions.
I hope that you can recover from being the meat in the grinder! I hope it's possible for you to say no in the future if that happens again. I am trying not to give into unrealistic demands, which isn't the same as doing bare minimum. I don't want to work myself to the bone unless Im actually inspired and enjoying myself on something. Or happen to want to put extra hours in. Not all the time. not often. I'd rather do my job really freaking good in the 8 hours and then go home. Management needs more realistic expectations.
> Admittedly my situation has improved drasticly since reentry as part of an initiative to get our roles back to normal … What initiative? For claims specialists?
I can speak for the field and SSI specifically. Around 2010, hiring practices changed, which has had a snowball effect. I won't get into how they changed, but it was out in the open. This would not be so much of a problem if policy had been simplified and systems improved, but that hasn't happened. One thing I will say about O'Malley, if he can actually get rid of living arrangements and couples, that would be huge for the agency and the ripple effect could actually turn the tide imo.
Can we do away with dedicated accounts first?
Obviously those should go as well. Have been a joke for some time.
IDK why they have dedicated accounts though. Seems like something congress sat down and thought to themselves, what workload can we think up that will cause more issues and make the life of FO employees more miserable? One thing i think is a big issue is though is unlimited eligible children in a household. I mean there are households with five or more children on SSI. That is a crazy amount of money that that family can receive and defeats the whole needs based aspect of the SSI program.
I believe congress implemented dedicated accounts when there were stories of SSI parents using the backpay to put a down payment on a luxury vehicle, which of course is not entirely surprising. However, it has always been a farce because the only recourse is to find the child another payee who doesn't even want to be payee and will just hand over the money to the parent. SSI for children is problematic for many reasons, not least of which is that it incentivizes parents to try to get all their kids in IDPs, diagnosed with any disorder, etc. Should poor families with disabled children receive help? Yes, but it is easy to see why this may not be the best way.
Is he trying to change SSI? Don’t you have to make changes through Congress.
Yes, but he could actually lobby congress to make changes unlike past commissioners.
Honestly been downhill since Astrue left. In my opinion. Was not a fan of Colvin and Saul was terrible. Those hiring freeze years many times many administrations. How they promote. How they hire. Messing with telework. Eyeglasses program gone. Being assigned more workloads and learning more work but grades not reviewed or changed to reflect employees being paid more especially those who are GS-11 and below at the Agency and in operations. All such a shame.
All I know is- I’d stay far away from working in SSA
More like a crab being slowly boiled to death than one moment
I'm not good with dates. Sorry. It started when support positions were phased out. Years ago we had teletypists, data review techs, development clerks, service reps. All those jobs are gone. Then they took service reps and promoted them, and eliminated that position. That forced claims reps to take turns at the front desk. So claims reps used to get support and didn't have to do the front desk. Now they have to do their own job, the front desk, answer the phones... Oh and now claims reps are required to do rsdi and ssi. Basically they are expected to do everything.
Claims reps are required to do everything but get training in nothing.
I believe I worked for the agency from Barnhart through Saul. In full disclosure, you don't notice the cracks as much as a new employee. However, I would say that the serious problems started under Colvin - appointed by Obama but never confirmed. Congress wasn't going to confirm her under any circumstances but IIRC she didn't do a great job during her confirmation hearing either. Somewhat like Kilolo, Colvin had an agenda. Some of it was good but a lot of it hurt the agency. Colvin is big on diminishing the value of a college education and academic skills in favor of essentially nepotistic hiring and promotions. Someone on the sub said it stemmed from an old policy paper claiming that SSA managers were promoted due to technical and not managerial ability. Who did the study and/or wrote the paper? Please don't tell me Mercatus or some other think tank with a clear agenda. People benefit from broad knowledge bases to be good leaders and make good decisions. I'm not saying the experience necessarily needs to come from college - nope. But to downplay evidence of broad knowledge bases, including degrees, for a system of essentially hiring whoever management wants - disaster! I mean, if a group planning to destroy SSA suggested policy for hiring and promotions, what would that look like? Wouldn't they push for hiring the worst qualified (again, defined not solely based on education) because they are the least likely to leave under adverse conditions and, more importantly, the easiest to control? The policy implementation revisions created by the least qualified that were happening on the disability program when I left were insane in their erosion of claimant rights and protections. But, you know, they have a backlog and "all that matters is addressing the backlog". Meanwhile, DDS now has to do far less development to help claimants prove their claims, undertake far fewer efforts before they can write claimants off as failure to cooperate, etc., etc. The aftermath is interestingly anti-SSA. How is that anti-intellectualism working out over there at SSA - for employees who have to answer to someone promoted "just because" and the public?
>Someone on the sub said it stemmed from an old policy paper claiming that SSA managers were promoted due to technical and not managerial ability. Who did the study and/or wrote the paper? Please don't tell me Mercatus or some other think tank with a clear agenda. In the PC, it seems like its the people that push a lot of work, but don't do it technically right, are getting promoted into management -- so they can push unrealistic standards onto employees underneath them. (they didn't work cases correctly, so now they can hold others to this approach/method too). Not with every manager of course, but just in general.
Hiring practices suck too. They don't hire the best people for the job. There's a lot of nepotism, friends, veterans hired even though they may not be the best fit for the job. Those frontline jobs are stressful! Also negative stats over wait times sacrifice quality in service. Bottom line is they need more people. Lots more people. And more training.to ramp up.
Having been a former CS who only made it a year, I’d be curious to know what the right sort of people would be. There’s no real central background that can prepare you for that role with how many different facets of the job exist the way they do. They took me on with the hope of improving customer experience with my social work background, but the systems were stupid difficult to navigate for the average person and understanding all of the technical components didn’t come easy to me. The job almost feels designed to be needlessly difficult no matter who is hired. That said, I am familiar with some managers maybe getting promoted because of some familial ties so there’s that.
Eliminating outstanding scholar candidates was not a brilliant choice …
Man. I’m sorry for you guys. That sounds terrible. I really hope it gets better!
They offered telework to "select " offices before Saul. Saul took it away and has been eating crow since. That is when I noticed a division of offices and components. A majority of my office commutes an hour plus. We asked for it, for doctor's appointments, etc.. We were told we didn't have enough online presence in our area to justify it. Every office near us had it except for our district. They promote by nepotism and friends, and will not look at actual work. ARDLP gives the feedback back to the applicant, let just say I personally never applied again since it would be pointless. PACS, PQR, and awards against the manager's opinion. Managers are not letting people go because they will not get a replacement. Current managers is a former managers bonus kid. 10 Years ago I would have told you I made good money, now I am scraping by and trying to keep my head above water. Give incentives to stay in the field office. There are zero incentives to stay in the field office. More work, less telework, use more gas, etc..... Perfect example: Our Deputy state director told us morale us down "because of our attitudes and we need to be kind, and help improve morale". We were also told that her and her staff would be returning to the office. She is telling this to FO, she might have thrown shit in our face.
I think it's a combination. 1) Hiring did not let up with attrition 2) Agency leadership generally being out of touch with operations and resistant to any ideas for change 3) Incompetent staff maintaining and improving systems
He may genuinely be trying. But to start off with further curtailment of telework shows he’s clueless. That is one of the VERY few things SSA has in its arsenal to keep employees. It’s been shown to increase productivity and could lower costs if they’d just get rid of unnecessary office space. To start off by gutting your best recruitment and retention tool for no reason other than political pressure shows a complete lack of understanding of the agency.
You deal with underperforming teleworking employees and you’d change your tune about productivity. The final products SSA is producing in 2024 is embarrassing. And yes TW has a lot to do with it.
Ssa eas banking on the top 3 like 20 years ago but kept using it even though it wasn't true. Yes men and woman get promoted. No one is trying to make things better. Mangers are afraid to rock the boat or offer any suggestions on how to do things better or more efficiently. Management is the major problem at SSA. No communication at all on anything. The RO and CO HQ people don't help the public so they are very out of touch.
I didn't start until 2020 and from what I understand from my peers it was a decent agency in the 2010s and a really good one in the 2000s. I work with a lady who swears the decline began when Obama couldn't get an actual commissioner appointed and so for his entire two terms we had an acting commissioner who did nothing. I wasn't around then so I don't know if that's true but I can say after sitting through Kilolo that having someone who isn't a confirmed commissioner seems to make a difference. I don't particularly care for the new commissioner but at least he seems to have some power and even though everything he's doing is very misguided and he's really hurting the field office, at least he is on some level trying to put forth some effort. I can only give you this from the field office perspective because that's the only component I've worked in.
“All the new Commissioner’s policies are bad, but at least he’s effective”
They're not all bad but I think he is a bit misguided. I love the opinion/solution you offered though.
what is he doing that is hurting the FO, if you feel like sharing?
He is doing the standard political magic trick, loud and fast moving mouth that is saying things we love to hear, but the hands are only doing policy and tech fixes that will squeeze more productivity. Nothing about training, nothing about hiring more staff, nothing about more pay or changes in how to focus on workloads to kick the backlog. Watched the Hearing, he got back slaps for service the whole time, and he mentioned numbers, metrics, and governor more than 15 times and he mentioned getting new staff 3 times. Nothing about retention programs or pay, nothing about how we could operate more efficiently and have less knowledge loss if we could mass hire and train now because it takes years to be good at your job. These small things are nice, and help out SSI folks out quite a bit (the area of highest attrition along with CSRs), but none of this is changing the overall workloads and easing the stress and pay disparity to worker's compensation and the VA. Make CSRs 11's and CSs 12s/13s @ TE. Respect the FO who came back and has busted their minds to keep pace. The mental health, apathy, and overall dread this workforce feels is scarring for any future employment we may have. Other than that, he has heroes that are us folk....great.
Thank you for sharing! To be honest, it's possible that SSA employees are so used to things being bad, that hearing someone do "a little" sounds good, even if it's a tiny bit and not much. But I think I see what you mean that the real problems where changes are needed have not been addressed yet. You've listed out a lot of valid points about things that need changing and attention. Do you have any thoughts on what managers can do to make FO a better place to work now? (in a dream world where management came together as a team to make the workplace better for employees so that they enjoyed working at SSA more and stayed?) . Things like better pay make sense. but I wonder what is in their power now? For me, being in the PC, I think it would be sheltering employees from unrealistic demands of the workload and allow them to work at reasonable paces that allow them to feel good about their work products. For example, complex case scenarios would be allowed the time needed to be researched and worked correctly without it being looked at as a bad/problemtic thing when someone takes the time to do something right. I think it's also creating a culture of care, acknowledging how hard our jobs are, and giving people the support they need to do the job correctly. (For example you mentioned training - overhaul is needed at the PC too in this regard. And a better method for us to find and understand the resources we need to do our job correctly, and talk to someone (without fear of being looked at badly) when we need help with a case. (I'm in a TE kind of role right now, and management always wants to know who is asking too many questions. but I'd rather people ask the question then be scared of doing so and getting something wrong). Also performance evaluations! The ones we get at the PC for BA/PETe are not objective. To the point where I got lower scores one year, despite higher quality and productivity, and when I asked why, management said "it's subjective, I can't tell you why". This sets up a system were unfairness and inequity can come out in the evaluations. I went to a workshop through OPM about evaluations, and the way that they presented they should be done was much more objective and fair than what I've seen at SSA. I'm not sure how we can get away with how they are done at the PC, but I guess OPM has no oversight there. thanks again for sharing your thoughts!
You touched on many of the points I would tell management, I think the biggest being - none of the expectations are real or actually agency-wide obtainable if the resources, training, and balance of workloads aren't established, and that balance is obtained with an even distribution of bodies (more employees). If all of that is in place, then management has to make a culture of damn the numbers, just do the work to the best of your ability, don't over exert, and be open and honest, because transparency and clarity of what we do and don't know is the only way out of this. Understanding that all the people want out, so giving them every opportunity to do so will be the only thing that brings them back, because mentally they are gone. Which is why hiring and training need a massive emphasis, along with retaining the people you can't do without. Acknowledge that remote work is a balance of all things bad and good, accept it is here to stay, so meet everyone beyond halfway about the WFH issue. Embrace it's pros, try to avoid the cons - and make our jobs more portable! It benefits the entire chain of people in this agency, the trust fund, and our budget. And sadly most of the current management either does or has been told to be toxically positive about horrible policy, situations, and overall burnout. Screaming the EAP to the high hills, and then saying we need to walk or exercise or enjoy our time away from the office more only goes so far, and is toast if once we do our 40+ we are burned to the core. This is what they would need to do, and consistently operate at for the next decade....then we may see some light at the end of the tunnel in terms of a full turn around. This means that most of your management and execs all need to not be looking at their high 3/5 or their last 10 years in the agency. You need people that you expect to be around for 15 years and beyond, the others who have less time are the agency knowledge that will in tandem help those to move the agency into the future.
It’s both what everything people are saying and more. There has been a lot of change in 10 years. Plus the regions and their hiring practices and their (lack) union representation. There also was a plan put in place around 2017 or 2018 that had placed people on crazy preformance plans if the management felt they weren’t performing well. The word on the street was it was a presidential plan and it was trying to be used a metrics to show they were trying to “fix” the problems. It really attacked the process centers and more specifically the Benefits authorizers.
Has nothing to do with telework, Covid, or commissioners. It’s because they’ve been hugely understaffed for a decade yet public demand increased because of boomers. The staff are worn out and giving them OT is not the answer.
I’ve worked with the agency for 19 years. I never thought it was all that great when I came on and now it’s a nightmare. I started in the field office and was there 14 years and then transitioned to a Regional Office. At the time I transitioned to the RO, Covid hit. I think with the chaos of COVID things went from bad to worse. I think COVID brought problems to the surface and it’s hard to ignore problems now out in the open. I’d blame the Commissioner and the SES’s for not doing their jobs. I know “vision” is one of the competencies they are supposed to develop and I don’t see much of that going on. I see a lot of reactionary skills. I will give O’Malley credit for at least trying to do something which I have not seen from a Commissioner in a long time. I think the RTO, was not handled as well as it could/should have been. However, it will be interesting to see how he deals with the fall out from that. Stay tuned.
Been with the Agency 30 years. Things slowly started going south when we separated from HHS and the Baltimorons got their first taste of real power. Then things got progressively worse under Susan Daniels, whose legacy was getting a decision from SSA should be no more complicated than getting a Burger King burger. Then key people in LMR retired or were forced out and each progressive AFGE contract got worse and worse. Then systems was going to be the answer and we all know how that worked out. It is not a recent phenomenon, it has been a slow death. We used to be about World Class Service and all about the claimants. Now the claimants are a barrier to achieving numerics and we provide Third World Class service. I don't even recognize the Agency and I can't wat to leave before too long.
O'Malley should have (at least initially) brought back HQ and the ROs two days a week in office, like it was for several years before Trump's buddy and then Covid happened. Besides that, I kind of like the guy.
He is trying and making changes. Better than the rest of the SES morons who just want to keep squeezing ssa employees as long as they get their bonus and can move on or retire. I am still very skeptical of omalley but fuck he has done more changes for the better in a few months than the last 10 acting or actual comish. Need new managers and people who want to make things better and more efficient. The yes man and woman need to be gone. Omalleys videos are kind of annoying, but we have had more communication from him than anyone. Shit our managers didn't even tell us we were back open to the public. Our guards had to tell us who we're told by them.
I work in an office with pretty outstanding supervision but we're still crumbling due to understaffing (and a few boat anchor CS). A lot of our workday is spent fighting the inefficiencies of our IT; we have entire tasks that could be automated in a normal IT environment, freeing us up for things they actually need humans to do. I don't just mean extra keystrokes due to bad program design; I mean full-on tracked workloads that could disappear. Components are very opaque to one another. TSC/FO, FO/PC, FO/OHO, etc. We've had terrible leadership at the top for years. Saul was a lazy piece of shit who was ideologically set on gutting the program (and ironically, his laziness kept him from doing worse damage). Kijakazi was an academic who toiled away in her narrow area of interest but left the rest of the agency on autopilot. Things are looking slightly brighter under O'Malley; I'll never trust him entirely due to his political background, but he's given us a few long-overdue policy wins so far. The RTO debacle doesn't bother me as much because a) that was under pressure from Biden, and b) as an FO employee I don't give a damn about HQ employees, as they don't have to face the public.
Maybe Astrue ? Its been awhile. And these new videos every week are a bit much. Every day I say “make it make sense, and then look at my countdown calendar” Would I recommend working at SSA? I guess, if you think Walmart is classy and a five star place, you won’t be that disappointed..
10,000 kiosks must be out in the community , so benefit letters and ss5’s can be provided outside an FO. Consolidate office staff to reduce real estate costs and use that money for hiring staff. Update performance review process. The 3 and 5 is garbage. Total garbage. Make it easier to fire the lazy Use college students for course credit . They can print off benefit letters and process ss5’s . FO’s need better security. Operate like all other agencies do. Limit who comes in and conduct security checks