Little Rock officials are looking at several ways to address the poor retention rate at the city's emergency dispatch center.
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http://www.arkansas…">911 center staffing perennial problem
The 911 Communications Center has been understaffed for at least a decade. Currently, 13 out of its 67 positions are vacant.
The center averages two or three call-takers per shift when officials say as many as 10 are needed. That understaffing has led to backups in emergency call response times and has led to at least one court case.
In 2013, Dayong Yang sued after the death of his wife, Jinglei Yi. She had been driving with their 5-year-old son, Le Yang, when her SUV hit a patch of black ice, and the vehicle crashed into a pond.
The lawsuit alleged that the 911 center call-taker mishandled Yi's call for help and alerted an ambulance about the emergency but not police or fire rescue squads. Yi died shortly after the accident. Le Yang died of his injuries two years later.
The lawsuit alleged that Little Rock ignored communication center staffing problems and showed indifference in the hiring of that particular call-taker, who had previously been fired from an emergency-dispatch position in Benton.
While the job's pay and stress levels play a big part in the high turnover of the center's call-takers and dispatchers, the city also points to difficulty in getting applicants through the lengthy hiring process.
Changes have been made in how often applications are accepted and how new recruits are trained. Also, equipment has been updated and bonuses were given in 2016, but the vacancies continue.
The average time a 911 operator stays with the city is five years. Sixteen employees left the center last year, either on their own or after being fired.
City Manager Bruce Moore is hoping a recent change to a four-day workweek that will allow employees to get every other weekend off will help retain center employees. He also plans to announce Monday a new salary step-and-grade system.
But the hiring process remains lengthy, officials say, and there's still work to be done in figuring out how to keep the best applicants as they go through it.
Typically, the city has advertised once a year for call-takers. The job postings have been listed for six to eight weeks. Now, the city's Human Resources Department plans to list postings more often, but it has to coordinate them with when a training academy is scheduled to take place.
Each applicant goes through an initial job-specific test, then begins interviews and background checks before advancing to a training academy.
Last year, an April advertisement yielded 340 applicants. A month or more after the applications were received, the applicants were invited to the first test. Only 124 people from the applicant pool showed up.
Of those, 70 passed the test. Then, just 46 of them showed up for their structured interviews with call center personnel, and 32 of them passed those interviews.
After background, drug, alcohol and psychological checks, and a final interview, seven people made it into a training class.
Even if more applicants had made it through, the city doesn't have enough trainers to train more than seven or eight people at a time, said Kathleen Walker, employment services manager.
New hires undergo eight weeks of classroom training and then spend a few months of supervised call-taking at the center. That supervision requires a call-taker for every trainee.
A committee of city employees that was created to address the retention issue is trying to determine how to get more new hires into a class. One option under review is having retired call-takers return for a short period to help train recruits.
Assistant City Manager James Jones, who is on the committee, said many qualified applicants have taken other jobs by the time they are offered an interview for the city's spot.
The city posted a new advertisement on Jan. 24 for call-taker positions. The application period closed in mid-March, and 610 people had applied -- a sign that interest in the job is up from last year. Of those, 286 made it through the first round of testing.
"Starting in 2016, we've really spent a whole lot more time and energy and money in recruiting. We had our first ever career fair; we [had] another March 11," Walker said.
Training academies are something that the city started a few years back. Previously, 911 call-taker positions were advertised when there were vacancies, and new hires were trained one or two at a time, instead of in a group.
"We've had much more success hiring a group," Walker said, noting that some full-time trainer positions were added to facilitate the academies.
The city plans to hire its next set of call-takers and start another academy in July -- six months after the application period started.
The Police Department plans to take some pressure off the 911 call center by creating a unit to answer nonemergency police calls.
During a testing period, the unit cut in half the number of calls 911 operators would have otherwise handled, said Capt. Russell King, who oversees the division that includes the communications dispatch center.
The nonemergency unit is in the testing phase, and the department plans for it to be fully operational by early fall, department spokesman Lt. Steve McClanahan said.
If that unit pans out, Jones mentioned the possibility of putting top recruits into the nonemergency jobs while they wait out the long hiring process to become emergency call-takers.
"These are just options we are exploring," Jones said, stressing that no official recommendations have come out of the committee yet.
A Section on 03/19/2017