Oregon Employment Department announces shortened call center hours to focus on clearing backlog of issues
Officials said moving the employees tasked to answering the calls to focusing on responding to people who have been waiting six months or more on their claims will help in the long run.
PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — The Oregon Employment Department is launching a new strategy next month for addressing their mounting backlog of cases for people having problems processing their unemployment insurance or paid leave claims: cutting back on call center hours.
Anecdotally, a surge of reports from Oregonians who contacted KOIN 6 News with complaints about a lack of progress on their claims seemed to coincide with OED consolidating their U.I. system into a newer site, Frances Online. However, OED claimed the issue comes from a lack of funding for the department and that the problem with staff shortages to blame for the backlog predates the Frances Online re-launch that happened in early March.
Regardless of the source of the issue, it’s acknowledged across the board that OED is struggling with a backlog right now. In fact, they said they have 13,500 issues that need to be addressed — with some customers having multiple issues associated with them.
In order to get through this backlog, particularly the ones that haven’t been resolved in a long time, OED announced it would be truncating its call center hours.
Officials said moving the employees tasked to answering the calls to focusing on responding to people who have been waiting six months or more on their claims will help in the long run.
Current phone hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, depending on staffing, employees keep answering calls on hold until about 5:30 to 6 p.m. when the phone system fully shuts down.
Beginning June 4, phone hours will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The system will stop accepting new calls at 4 p.m., but staff will continue to answer calls that are on hold until the last shift ends, officials said.
In addition, OED plans to temporarily close their call center on Mondays until they have addressed the backlog.
"We understand this change will make it more difficult for some people to reach us by phone in the short term, but it will help us quickly address the most pressing issue for people who have been waiting the longest,” said OED Director David Gerstenfeld. “Part of this is counterintuitive because we know that people feel that urgency to talk to someone to get their issues resolved.”
The backlog issue has gotten so intense that state leaders are calling on Oregon Governor Tina Kotek to step in. In response to KOIN 6 News’ inquiry, the governor’s office responded via email, saying, "The governor has similar concerns and is angry when Oregonians cannot receive payments when they need them."