QUESTION
Why did help sessions decrease, and is staffing being increased despite a headcount reduction?
3:25:42
·
110 sec
A decrease in help sessions is attributed to low staffing and unreported assistance types, with an increase in staffing underway.
- The decrease in help sessions was partly due to one of the lowest staffing periods the help center experienced.
- New procedural justice coordinators have been hired to address this issue.
- Rehman highlights that the data does not capture other forms of assistance like unscheduled support and text/email help.
- Efforts are being made to include these additional forms of support in future reports to provide a full view of the help center's activities.
Lincoln Restler
3:25:42
And then lastly, you we the payment marks showed a significant decrease in the help sessions conducted by oath in the 1st 4 months of the fiscal year.
3:25:52
Was this due to fewer available procedural justice coordinators, are there more folks being hired?
3:25:57
I guess not considering the 50 odd person headcount reduction that you're barreling toward, are you expecting those numbers to reverse or that trend to reverse?
Asim Rehman
3:26:06
So for the period that was reviewed for the PMMR and the reduction in the help sessions that are captured in that data.
3:26:13
There's 2 explanations.
3:26:14
The first is staffing.
3:26:15
During that period, we did have a law that for our help center was one of the lowest staffing periods that we've had.
3:26:22
It's gone up.
3:26:23
We have since then been able to hire new people into new procedural justice coordinators into our health session.
3:26:29
So that's the good news.
3:26:30
It's that we have a a a staff team now that's helping members of the public The second factor that really isn't clear from the data is that the PMMR captures something called help sessions.
3:26:43
A help session is when two people have a scheduled in person or telephone conversation, but our PJCs do other work.
3:26:52
They sit at the window to welcome people when they come into oath.
3:26:55
They answer their questions on the spot giving advice.
3:26:57
That's unscheduled.
3:26:58
They do they do email and text based assistance.
3:27:02
Those metrics for the in for the at things at the window and the text in the email, it's not captured in help session.
3:27:09
So when we looked at those months, we saw, oh, help sessions went down, but these other types of communications went up.
3:27:16
So when we realized that, we are now looking at ways for future porting to capture those other types of assistance because we want everyone to see the full view of what the help center is doing.
3:27:25
So that's a long way of saying some of it was staffing, but some of it I think is the data doesn't reflect other types of work they were doing during that time?