I am the President of NTEU Chapter 1, representing all SBSE employees in
the State of Wisconsin. I feel compelled to reply to your message concerning
"Effective Utilization of Time". I believe the R/Os and R/As in Wisconsin
(and I am sure this is true around the country) want to do a good job that
includes effectively managing time. I receive quite a few complaints
from SBSE employees in Wisconsin concerning management practices that deter
employees from efficiently using their time. There has been a lot of
effort to reengineer work processes for employees. I have yet to hear
that management is looking within to see what can be done at the National,
Area, Territory and Group level to help employees effectively utilize time.
The message that is getting through to the troops is " The beatings will
continue until morale improves".
Listed below are examples of bad management practices that employees have
presented to me:
1) Posting promotions on the COL and never filling them. Employees
spend a lot of time preparing MPQs and other documents to apply for promotion
opportunities only to find that selections never get made. Territory
Managers are often unaware of postings until they hit the COL. It appears
there is some mysterious process in the National Office that generates listings
on the COL without consultation or input from local management.
2) Rescheduling and cancellation of training classes. This appears
to be a management problem at the Area level, at least in Area 7. Agents
are advised to clear their calendars in preparation for training classes.
They cancel taxpayer appointments only to find the class cancelled or rescheduled
at the last minute. This has happened with reengineering training,
Toolkit training, NRP training and numerous others. We have also experienced
the problem of classes being scheduled at the last minute and appointments
have to be cleared because notice was not given timely about a scheduled
training class.
3) Assignment of R/O cases by zip code. In the Milwaukee metropolitan
area there is a helter skelter approach to assigning cases. In the
past cases were assigned based on fairly contiguous geographic alignment
by zip code. The assignment of cases has degenerated to a point that
R/Os are assigned cases from one end of the metropolitan area to the other.
This causes a huge increase in travel time and dollars. It also makes
it much more difficult for R/Os to meet contact deadlines. Nothing
is being done at the Territory or group manager level to deal with this problem.
4) There continues to be problems with RGS software. The usual
response is a new version of RGS is coming and will solve all the problems.
The new RGS version gets issued and the old problems persist and new problems
are encountered. This was especially a problem for NRP cases since
the NRP software is not compatible with RGS. RGS problems are very
frustrating for Agents and add considerable clerical burden.
5) Many SBSE employees in Wisconsin feel their Group Manager is helpful
and available to resolve problems. However, some employees report problems
at the group level. The problems focus on the reluctance of certain
managers to appoint an Acting Manager when they are in meetings, or away
from the office on the clock, but not really available to assist, answer
questions or close cases. This causes issues to backlog in certain
groups and results in inefficient utilization of employee time.
6) The requirement to audit on site does not take into consideration
travel concerns. Agents may be required to drive an hour or two (or
more) to reach the audit site. Since credit hours for travel are not
allowed three or more hours of the eight hour workday may be spent traveling
back and forth to the audit site. If the Agent was able to pick up
the records at an initial meeting and take the records back to the office
he or she could spend subsequent full eight hour days auditing rather than
driving. Agents are generally told funds are not available for overnight
travel to an audit site.
7) The priority of NRP cases and all the time devoted to NRP during
the past year have left many groups with nothing but old cases to start.
Agents are now dealing with short statutes because there was poor planning
of the impact of NRP and how to manage the remaining inventory of non NRP
case work. In some cases Agents told their manager they would be in
desperate need of work once they closed out the last of their NRP cases.
Now the NRP cases are closed and the Agents have no cases to start.
8) There is much confusion over the change from Lexis to Westlaw for
electronic research. Employees have not been trained in Westlaw.
Many employees have been unable to get a password for Westlaw to begin online
training. Some are still using Lexis because it works, even though
they are not sure they are supposed to use it. Others are not using
Lexis because they think it is unavailable because of the conversion to Westlaw.
Employees are wasting a lot of time trying to figure out how to do required
research because of conflicting directions from management or no direction
at all.
These are the highlights, but certainly not an all inclusive list of management
practices presented to me by SBSE employees in Wisconsin that detract from
the effective utilization of time. Employees here are certainly willing
to do their part to help make the IRS a more efficient organization.
We can only hope that you will help us by improving management practices.
Joe Hynes
President, NTEU Chapter 1
P O BOX 2166
Milwaukee WI 53201