Noble Mission, Disheartening Reality - Benefits Outreach Specialist Benefits Data Trust Employee Review

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.