The sweeping changes under ACCESS Florida completely redefine many of the jobs performed by DCF staff. Specific roles were specialized, new procedures were developed and new job functions were created. Moreover, the worker’s relationship with the client changed. In this section, we explore the potential impacts of ACCESS Florida changes on staff satisfaction, and then discuss what staff said about these issues. Unlike the previous sections, we do not discuss measures of staff satisfaction since no such measures are available.
Potential Effects of ACCESS Florida Changes
We suspect that eight of the ACCESS Florida changes could have important implications for staff satisfaction (Table VI.11). Of these, we suspect that – if they had any effect at all – one change would lead to increased satisfaction, six could lead to increases or decreases in satisfaction, and one would lead to decreases in satisfaction. Below, we describe the effects on staff satisfaction that might be expected given the nature and scope of ACCESS Florida changes, and then compare these potential effects with the actual reactions DCF staff reported in interviews for this study.
Table VI.11. Potential Effects of ACCESS Florida Changes on Staff Satisfaction
Factors That Could Increase Staff Satisfaction
Factors That Could Increase and/or Decrease Staff
Satisfaction Decrease Staff Satisfaction Factors That Could Reporting Changes Specialization of Functions
Community Partners Interview Procedures Relaxed Verification Recertification Procedures Web Application/Streaming Agency Downsizing Organizational Restructuring
Agency Downsizing. Agency downsizing is likely to reduce staff satisfaction overall. For the workers who retain their jobs, agency downsizing creates job insecurity and can lead to an increased workload as staff absorb others’ duties.
Specialization of Functions. The specialization and centralization of functions under ACCESS Florida has the capacity to increase satisfaction for some staff and decrease satisfaction for others. Some staff may enjoy the more streamlined job function and would be happy to give up some of the traditional caseworker functions. Specifically, staff may prefer having inquiries handled by the Customer Call Center and may prefer having data exchanges and alerts handled by the CMUs. Other staff may dislike the repetitiveness of the specialized functions, and may miss the interpersonal aspect of managing a caseload.
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Community Partners. The community partner network may or may not have an effect on the satisfaction of DCF staff, but it is likely to affect the satisfaction levels of staff at those partner organizations. Some staff may find serving as a community partner to be rewarding since the partnership helps advance the organization’s mission, while other staff may resent the increased workload associated with being a partner.
Policy/Procedural Changes
Interview Procedures. The abbreviated interviews and increased number of phone interviews may both increase and decrease staff satisfaction. On the one hand, staff may appreciate the more efficient intake process. On the other hand, staff may feel that they no longer have the tools needed to process an application accurately and/or that the abbreviated intake interview creates the need for additional follow-up work with the client when processing the case.
Relaxed Verification. Like the interview procedures, relaxed verification policies may increase staff satisfaction because they make the process more efficient, but they may also decrease staff satisfaction if staff feel they no longer have the tools to process a case accurately.
Recertification Procedures. The new recertification procedures may also increase staff satisfaction by making the process more efficient, but also decrease staff satisfaction if staff feel they no longer have the tools to process a case accurately.
Reporting Changes. New procedures for reporting changes are likely to increase the satisfaction of DCF staff in Customer Service Centers. Since clients now submit change information to Customer Call Centers, service center staff no longer need to process this information and can focus on other tasks.
Technology Changes
Web Application/Streaming. The web application and streaming software could increase or decrease staff satisfaction. Staff may prefer not keying in applicant information themselves. However, if web applications are completed less accurately than paper applications, staff may feel that the web applications create more work in processing a case. Moreover, staff are likely to be frustrated by problems experienced with the streaming software.
Staff Impressions
In general, staff responded positively to the changes under ACCESS Florida. They preferred the more efficient procedures for client intake and processing. However, staff also expressed frustration with key components of modernization. In particular, the increased workload that resulted from downsizing, combined with problems with streaming software, meant that staff felt overburdened under ACCESS Florida procedures.
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Staff at service centers appreciate reassignment of some former responsibilities. Reallocating certain tasks to the CMU and call centers has reduced the tasks that processing specialists used to handle as caseworkers, allowing them to concentrate exclusively on benefit determination. Despite the fact that clients manage to reach specialists by telephone from time to time (direct extension lines at Customer Service Centers are no longer published), the call centers handle the vast majority of inquiries from clients. Staff like the quieter work environment, which enables them to concentrate on their work without constant interruptions from a ringing telephone.
At the same time, overhauling the caseworker model has been a difficult adjustment for some staff. According to feedback from supervisors and intake/processing specialists, many former caseworkers miss the interaction with clients and find their job is less rewarding under ACCESS Florida. It may be especially difficult for those who derived much of their job satisfaction from helping clients. Processing specialists said their job now consists primarily of “paperwork.” This holds true for intake specialists as well, since they generally spend between 7-15 minutes with clients, sometimes on the phone instead of in person. Consequently, staff described what they do as “assembly line work;” one worker said she felt “like a machine in a factory.”
Staff were nearly unanimous in their support for the increased use of phone interviews and the policy of passive recertification for some cases. Across the state, staff expressed nearly unanimous support for the new flexibility to do interviews by phone. Staff said that phone interviews go more quickly than those conducted face-to-face because there is less distraction by children and other family members during the interview and there is reduced temptation for chatting. Staff also said that conducting interviews by phone means more uninterrupted work time for them and more freedom to schedule staff meetings and other appointments.
In general, staff felt that the passive recertification procedures save them time. However, some clients who fail to file their recertification paperwork within the required 10- day period must reapply and open a new case, which requires more staff time than a recertification. Staff did not estimate what fraction of the caseload eligible for recertification lets this 10-day window lapse.
Many staff criticized the downsizing as too drastic and premature. Workers at various organizational levels thought that too many positions were eliminated, especially intake and processing specialists. Some district-level positions in rural areas were cut entirely. Moreover, workers noted that revised staffing levels were based on the assumption that technological enhancements would be fully functional. New tools such as the document imaging system were intended to compensate for fewer workers, but several features were not in place or were suffering from technical problems before the reductions in force (RIFs) began.
With few exceptions, line staff feel overwhelmed with work. Intake specialists, processing specialists, CMU workers, and call agents feel overburdened with the amount of work under ACCESS Florida, resulting from a combination of RIFs, job vacancies, turnover, and the rising volume of new applications. Many staff described being unable to reasonably
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pace the flow of work and unable to ever feel caught up due to time standards, the number of applications, and ‘skeletal’ staff. Workers also did not anticipate the degree to which the volume of applications would increase due to clients’ abilities to apply on the Internet at any time. For example, one district administrator said that the DCF headquarters projected the Customer Service Centers would receive 75-125 applications a week, but they were managing 180-200 applications. Likewise, call center administrators did not anticipate the large volume of calls. Vacancies and constant turnover at the call centers (one administrator estimated about 20 percent turnover each month, which she said falls within call center industry ranges of 15 to 45 percent turnover) have made it difficult to manage the number of calls.
For the most part, supervisors and district administrators corroborated the intake and processing specialists’ perceptions of an overwhelming amount of work. Several supervisors worried that their offices were already operating at maximum capacity with the absolute minimum number of staff possible. They felt that the stress compounds with turnover, vacations, illness, and medical leaves. Indeed, the average monthly number of FSP households per DCF worker increased from 133 households in SFY 2005 to 151 households in SFY 2006, about a 14 percent increase.57 State staff at DCF report that work management
and staff stress are historical problems in Florida, and do not attribute staff frustration with the workload to ACCESS Florida, but rather suggest that the workload in the absence of efficiencies gained from modernization would have been impossible to handle.
Staff were frustrated by problems with streaming. While staff liked the web application in theory, the problems with streaming led to frustrations throughout the state. Staff felt that the modernization procedures and staffing levels were designed with the assumption that streaming would create significant efficiencies. The fact that streaming was problematic meant that staff felt additional pressure to perform efficiently to compensate.
Joining the network has made it easier for some partners to do their work. During interviews, partner staff frequently mentioned that they had already been providing many of the services that they perform as a member of the ACCESS Florida network, namely helping clients apply for food stamps and other assistance programs. The greatest procedural difference has been the web application, which many staff felt has been easier to complete than the paper application. In addition, some partners routinely used to drop off required documentation on behalf of clients at the nearest local service center. Now that paperwork can be faxed to the call center, and because the simplified verification procedures reduce the amount of required documentation overall, these partner staff no longer have to make extra trips to the local Customer Service Center.
Some partners noted that acting as an access point for DCF has generated an increase in demand for services from the general public. For example, a one-stop workforce center might attract an individual who comes to the one-stop only to fill out an ACCESS Florida
57 These include DCF staff who play a direct role in “touching” a case, including intake/processing specialists, interviewing clerks, other clerical staff, CMU staff, CCC staff, and corresponding supervisors. It also includes managerial staff, a very small portion of total DCF staff.
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application. However, one-stop staff can then link this person with employment and training services with its own on-site job counselors, if appropriate.
Summary
Among staff participating in interviews for this study, there was a shared sense that ACCESS Florida changes had improved the working environment. These changes were not without growing pains during the early implementation period that is the focus of this study, however, and staff recognized a need for ongoing improvements to software and processes. A recurring theme within staff feedback was the sense that staff reductions at a slower pace that better matched the emerging technology would have eased staff frustration during the initial implementation and that subsequent improvements in technology (such as streaming and document imaging) will help with workloads. State administrators and local level staff disagreed about whether the final target staffing level would be sufficient to handle the workload.