Pressed mode on SOS Alarm results in long response times

Reduced lunch breaks, many hours of overtime – and staff who quit. Operators at SOS Alarm testify to an increasingly tough working environment – with long response times to the 112 number as a result.

– We see that people are not feeling well, says Marcus Andersson, club chairman for SOS Alarm, Unionen Stockholm.

In July, two notable operational disruptions at SOS Alarm meant that for several hours it was either very difficult or completely impossible to reach the emergency number 112 – but callers having to wait a long time on the phone to reach the service is far from a new problem.

According to the so-called alerting agreement, which was signed in its first form between SOS Alarm and the state in 1994, the average response time for 112 calls must be a maximum of 8 seconds – and no one who calls the emergency number must wait for an answer longer than 30 seconds. During the past summer, instead, the average response time was 30 seconds – and sometimes callers had to wait for several minutes.

Many resign

According to Marcus Andersson, club chairman of SOS Alarm at Unionen in Stockholm, an important reason for the problem is that many operators resign.

– Many quit because of the tough work environment with a lot of overtime and heavy work load. Among other things, the company has withdrawn breaks and in some cases even lunch breaks, and many are forced to work overtime. You simply try to maximize the work as far as possible, he says and continues:

– In addition, all kinds of training opportunities have been withdrawn, which means that skills development has disappeared, he says.

Marcus Andersson points out that many employees also testify that they are ordered in on days off and about broken 24-hour and weekly rest.

– We have tried to highlight the problem, but it is very difficult to prove that a person is mentally ill because of the job. The employer can always claim that it is also about private circumstances. But we see that people don’t feel well, which leads to them quitting – even if they like the tasks and the assignment itself, he says.

“High staff turnover”

SOS Alarm has also repeatedly been criticized by the Norwegian Agency for Community Safety and Preparedness (MSB) – which has supervisory responsibility for the company – for the long response times. According to Staffan Ekengren, head of communications at SOS Alarm, staff are now being recruited in order to deal with the problem.

– We have a high staff turnover and work very hard to recruit new employees. This year we will recruit 300 new operators, but it takes time to train and certify them, he says and continues:

– We feel secure that things are going in the right direction, but it is not something that will be solved in a couple of months.

Already in 2014, MSB directed criticism at SOS Alarm, as the response time had then doubled from 7.7 seconds in 2012 to 15.3 seconds two years later. In recent years, however, the problems have continued, and in September of this year the average response time landed at 22 seconds – almost three times as long as the 8 seconds regulated in the alert agreement.

According to Marcus Andersson, a new data system, where the operators must use a specific questionnaire when answering emergency calls – regardless of the reason for the call – has only exacerbated the problem.

– We have seen that the length of each individual call has doubled and sometimes even tripled in a situation where we already have short records of people. From the union’s side, we flagged that the company should advance the implementation instead of putting extra time into the schedule for people to be trained in the system. We had hoped that it would be taken up, but we did not expect it because of the size of the project, he says.

“Must get staff to stay”

In an anonymous report to the Inspectorate for Care and Care (IVO) from August this year, an employee at SOS Alarm writes that one reason for the long waiting times is the “horrible” working conditions that prevail at the company.

Staffan Ekengren points out that the company does not share the complainant’s opinion, but that they are aware that the working situation can be difficult.

– We know that we may not have been able to spend enough time solving the pressure that has prevailed in recent years – but hope to improve the situation with training, supervision and leadership, among other things, he says.

According to Marcus Andersson, however, the announced efforts from the company’s side have so far been conspicuous by their absence.

– From the employer’s side, they say that they acted forcefully – but we don’t see that. An example is when the employees were recently told that there was a list of measures to improve the working environment. But such a list does not seem to exist – and I am still asking for the measures, he says and continues:

– There is only one solution – to get the staff to stay. We can recruit as much as we want, but if people don’t stay, it makes no difference. The only thing that happens then is that we exchange people with experience for inexperienced staff.

Facts

SOS Alarm

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