KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Kansas Department of Labor call-taking staff is increasing to nearly 1,000 workers.
Gov. Laura Kelly announced Wednesday the department is bringing on 500 “surge” employees to help with the continued influx of calls from Kansans who need help with their unemployment claims.
The surge staff will be in addition to 450 people already working in claimant assistance. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, the department had only 20 people answering phones, Kelly said.
Kelly said that while the department has greatly increased its system’s capacity and staff, the additional staffing will help get Kansans the help they need in a more timely manner.
The call center is also extending and adding hours, Kelly said.
Starting this weekend, the KDOL call center will be open from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sunday. Weekday hours will be extended to 8 a.m. to 9 p.m. beginning Monday.
Callers are asked to phone in during less busy times.
The department’s busiest hours are generally 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 1 p.m. to 2 p.m. It typically sees the most calls on Monday and the fewest on Friday.
Callers are also asked not to use auto dialers to call in.
Kelly said that auto dialers will not work with KDOL’s phone system and won’t put callers in the queue.
The auto dialers do, however, clog the lines for other unemployment claimants trying to reach help.
Kelly said in one day, 54 callers were responsible for 43,000 calls using auto dialers.
KDOL gave a similar example: 20 callers dialed in 22,000 times using an automated system.
Of those, KDOL said not a single call went to a customer assistant due to the department’s technical restrictions.
They did keep other claimants from accessing the lines, though, as KDOL’s system is only equipped to bear a load of around 2,500 calls at a time, according to Kelly.
The KDOL system will also undergo a major server upgrade on March 12 and March 13.
Potential effects of the upgrade were not immediately clear. Earlier this year, KDOL had to shut down operations over a weekend to add security features to its unemployment system.
The upgrade is necessary to onboard the surge staff, KDOL said.
Kelly said the first wave of additional workers, around 75 people, start next week. The new employees will start and be trained on a rolling basis from there with a goal of deploying them on phone lines between mid-March and mid-April.
The surge staff will be trained in unemployment response, and some will be trained to more effectively handle complex cases.
They should be ready to work by the beginning of April, KDOL said.
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