Benefits Data Trust Reviews

The organization has been growing at an unsustainable rate over the past year, then this past week they laid off an alarming amount of admin workers, many of whom had been promoted from the BOS role. As a high-performing BOS with professional growth on my mind, this is disheartening, to say the least. We have been assured that BOS are safe, as our funding for direct service is secure, but the admin layoffs have been a giant blow to organizational morale and any hopes of professional growth. In my view, the organization has cut corners in places that matter the most when it comes to directly serving our clients with competency and care. For example, training for new BOS was drastically shortened earlier in the year. New hires were pushed onto the phones too soon, making critical errors that stalled clients’ benefit applications. I can only imagine the sacrifices in quality that will occur in the near future due to the cutting of team leaders, quality specialists, and project coordinators. I will echo what others have said here about the micro-management of BOS. I once got a time management memo for swiping in 2 seconds late (after two other latenesses within a month, both under one minute late) which, as someone who puts a lot of heart and soul into the parts of the job that really matter, felt unnecessarily petty. I’ll also echo what others have said about the facade of “feedback culture.” There are lots of BOS and TLs with great ideas….but it often feels like those ideas get stuck at “yeah we’re just waiting to get the okay from management.” It is deflating. This organization was founded to make the public benefits system more efficient, yet here we are, drowning in inefficiency. Simple solutions stalling in the bureaucracy.

They want you not to be human. I worked here for longer than I should have, and was excellent at the actual function of the job itself. My problem with it is how much abuse they expect BOS to take from the clients while maintaining a 100% neutral response. Now, I don’t mean a few curses from the client. I had clients go on racist, homophobic, sexist rants, and more. Management expected us to take it without even blinking. If you show any emotion, you’re told you’re being judgemental/inappropriate and get marked down that you need improvement. I’ve had extensive experience in other call centers, and none of them worked like that. I repeatedly went to management with both proactive ways to both improve the overall office and to help us do our job better that required nothing out of them except listening and being respected as a person, only to be ignored. The staff often are miserable to each other, doing things they know will harm themselves or those around them. I can’t entirely blame them. The majority of BOS are on the same public benefits they help others apply for. Get any three staff together, they'll mostly talk about how much they hate the place and the things they do to cope. Every time I talk to friends who still work there, all I can think is how glad I am not to be there anymore. Even beyond all those problems, they inflate their numbers. They pressure callers to apply with vague and incorrect information, and they get money based on the raw number of applications. They don’t care if someone’s already enrolled or ineligible. Just apply them anyway, let the caseworkers sort it out. They’re draining the resources of the already strained system by ineffectively using the limited resources. They don't take advantage of ways the workflow could be optimized, like using the most skilled workers for the tasks they're best suited for or encouraging people to apply with the most accurate information they can reasonably easily get. Like, if the wife handles the finances, she should be the one calling. If your niece handles your affairs, she should call in. But don't dare suggest it, or they think it's call avoidance. They waste so much money with frivolous activities, including last year a "fundraiser" that tried to pressure employees to donate on their paltry hourly wage. Really out of touch, when so many of us with families there are barely scraping by.