KANSAS CITY, Mo. — The Kansas Department of Labor this week announced several improvements within the department since bringing in specialists from Accenture.
KDOL has been working with the team the last three weeks since former Secretary Delia Garcia resigned.
In a news release, Gov. Laura Kelly addressed the issues and missteps from the department over the last few months.
"We’ve hit the reset button and are focusing on the future,” Kelly said. “Accenture is reviewing and providing recommendations to improve the stability of our systems to make sure they are readily available to support Kansans.”
Acting Labor Secretary Ryan Wright said one of the primary difficulties the department has faced is high volumes of calls that require highly trained representatives to address.
Wright said the department added call center representatives, bumping its total to about 100, who are trained to respond to claimants. KDOL is currently training two more classes of representatives who will be starting next week.
"Before the pandemic started, you have to understand the Department of Labor bases their funding and staffing needs based on the previous year's unemployment rates," Wright said. "We were at historic low rates so we were actually at 20 people on the phones answering questions from Kansans in need."
Wright also addressed the extreme difficulties the department has faced with implementing new unemployment programs in a short period of time.
"I've been told in a perfect world it would take two years to stand up a new system. We're having to stand up four new systems simultaneously," Wright said.
The department hired seven IT employees with experience in the programming language that KDOL's outdated system was built in.
KDOL also launched a new online virtual agent named Amelia to answer the department's frequently asked questions. Kelly said Amelia has had nearly 7,000 conversations and exchanged more than 23,000 messages with users as of Monday.
Fort Scott resident Jenni Wilcoxen said she was frustrated with responses from Amelia. Wilcoxen said she and her husband have not been able to find out why he hasn't received several weeks of payments after filing a week of severance pay from his former employer.
"I can't call and ask anybody that so we're just kind of hanging in limbo, really hoping we receive that as backpay," Wilcoxen said.
Wilcoxen said she feels the department is giving itself a pat on the back a little too quickly.
"We're living in a pandemic right now, and instead of just being able to focus on surviving that, and being very, very pregnant, and having a toddler and trying to protect our family, we have to worry about okay, if we don't get this money what does that look like for us," Wilcoxen said.
Wright said he wants to be clear that every Kansan who is owed money from the department will get it eventually.
"I realize that's difficult if you're trying to pay your rent or put food on your table and you don't have those benefits today, but if you're entitled to those monies you will receive them eventually," Wright said. "Things aren't as good as we hoped they would be, but our number one priority is to make sure that folks are getting paid and so whatever we have to do to bring the resources to bare to make that happen, we will."
