Report: Extra staff didn’t significantly increase Kansas unemployment calls answered
The Kansas Department of Labor (KDOL) did not significantly improve its ability to answer calls from unemployed residents during the COVID-19 pandemic despite hiring hundreds of contract workers to manage overwhelming demand, a Legislative audit found Monday.
The KDOL was flooded with an unprecedented number of unemployment claims as the pandemic took hold in Spring 2020. The department’s 1970s IT infrastructure buckled under the weight of massive federal relief programs, record joblessness, and sophisticated fraud operations.
The federal benefits programs are set to expire on Sept. 4.
A Legislative Post Audit of the agency’s pandemic performance, released Monday, confirmed that reported delays in payments to unemployed Kansans resulted from the combination of fraud, federal programs and high unemployment.
Additionally it found that, although KDOL contracted with Accenture to bring on hundreds of employees to handle the increased demand, there was no “significant” increase in calls answered.
According to invoices obtained by The Star, the department had paid Accenture more than $64 million by July for staffing and other services.
In April 2020, the audit found, roughly 12.5 million calls were made to the KDOL Staff answered about 70,000, or 1%.
The numbers fluctuated, with calls made steeply dropping after April 2020 to 650,000 by September and spiking to 8.6 million during a lag in federal program payments in February 2021.
The number of calls answered similarly fluctuated, staying between 49,000 and 56,000 through Spring and Fall 2020 before peaking at 69,000 answered in January 2021 and dropping back to 39,000 in February.
In April 2021, after Gov. Laura Kelly announced plans to double the call center staff using Accenture contractors, the department received 3.3 million calls and answered 56,000, roughly 1.7%.
“Not being able to talk to a customer service representative likely caused additional delays in claimants receiving unemployment benefits,” the report said.
Deputy Labor Secretary Peter Brady told lawmakers Monday that the staff added were doing a variety of support jobs, not just answering phones.
The number of people answering phones, he said, was around 200 or 250 in the fall of 2020 and peaked at 600 to 650 in Spring 2021. New contract staff brought on, Brady said, needed to be trained to handle the complex federal and state unemployment systems.
“Since they’re not fully trained customer service representatives the scope to which they can assist is limited,” Brady said.
Furthermore, the report attributed the insignificant increase in calls answered to additional time spent per call.
As the pandemic progressed, KDOL told auditors, the needs of claimants became more complicated and required more time.
Despite the explanations, some lawmakers expressed frustration at the results, pointing to them as evidence the department had mishandled the pandemic.
“We ramped up individuals, we ramped up phone lines and we didn’t see results,” said Rep. Caryn Tyson, a Parker Republican.
The audit also amended the Legislative Post Audit group’s estimate of how much money the department paid in bogus claims to fraudsters, increasing the figure from around $600 million to around $700 million.
In its response, the KDOL argued that about $306 million should not be counted as it could have been legitimate claims incorrectly flagged as fraudulent.
A bill passed by the Legislature in May providing funding to modernize the department’s IT system requires another audit to be performed by an independent contractor.
