Another county that doesn't have enough 911 dispatchers. 'My mom couldn't get ahold of 911' — San Diego County's dispatcher shortage
How do you spell staff turnover?
Hebert said delays in answering calls all come down to staffing. If the county’s call center was fully staffed, it should have 123 workers. Right now. only 97 of those positions are filled. And of those, more than a quarter can’t answer any calls yet because they’re still being trained. That means the county is running with just 58% of the people it needs to answer calls.
They claim they pay well, and that they have trouble finding people who can pass a background check. (They are law enforcement.) But I think if the pay was good compared to the stress, there would not be a chronic shortage of people in so many call centers around the country.
They have those 25 (or so?) people in training, and are hoping to start another class soon, but it takes 14 months to train them.
After I retired, I applied for part time work at the local airport. The first thing HR said was, "You know you will have to pass a drug test." He said 80% of the applicants get up and walk out at that point. Sad.
ReplyDeleteThat's an issue all over the place. 911 call centers seem designed to be bad places to work. They are overly regimented with the idea that if you only have a high school diploma you can't think. I read dozens of these stories a year, and about half of them mention that after they get training in a major metro area, they move to a place where the pay is better, or the cost of living is less, or both, and the places that pay better aren't chronically understaffed, so people don't burn out.
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