Workplace Stress Project

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Workplace Stress:
Subtitle
Daniel Fields
Washington County Community College
HUS219: Community Mental Health
Prof Elizabeth Sullivan
Due: 15 December 2024
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While I am not currently working, a stressful thing in and of itself, I had been employed
for the previous six years for a non-profit organization that was hired by the State of Maine to
administer the job readiness component of the ASPIRE/TANF program. When I was hired in
2018 I was told that I would have an average caseload of 55-60 people that would be split
between two locations: Farmington, where I would support residents of Franklin county and
Skowhegan, where I would support Somerset county. On average, I would have five to six
scheduled meetings each day, handle any new applicants who had been approved by the
Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) conducting orientation and a basic intake
interview and work with drop ins and any spur of the moment questions that arose from the
participants on sight and over the phone. E-mail, too, though that was frowned upon by the
company. It made for quite a busy day. Then, after about three to four weeks the caseload went
up to about 75-80. During the pandemic my caseload was as high as 150 and averaged about 110,
with many of my cases scattered across York, Cumberland, Androscoggin, Oxford, Kennebec,
Somerset and Franklin counties. Virtually, of course.
There were sixteen Fedcap offices across the state, one in every location where there was
a DHHS office. In the beginning it was, essentially, sixteen different companies that just shared a
name as each office had their own ways of doing things, own policies and SOP (standard
operating procedures). One benefit of the pandemic is that the organization was forced to
integrate and work together in a way that they never had before and, in addition to standardizing
procedurally it would have made a significant amount of sense to come up with a much more
comprehensive mental health plan. With staff numbers dropping and a hiring freeze in place,
each of us were being asked to do more and do it faster, without sacrificing quality. We had
people’s lives and livelihood that we were responsible for. The mounting stress of being
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overworked, underpaid, isolated, and confused as each site was still trying to do the work in a
way that the other offices would know what we were doing and how to handle the cases going
forward. It made things very difficult with that feeling of always being on an island, especially in
a small office where it was only myself and one other employee for about two years before a
third person was hired and our supervisor also managed another office and was only available
virtually or on the phone; never in person, even after we returned to the office. When questions
arose the answers you got were always different depending on who you asked, more staff were
quitting, caseloads were rising, pressure was coming down from the State about people who were
not being served and watchdog group Maine Equal Justice filing a lawsuit on behalf of people
saying that the company had not been treating them fairly or engaging with them. Morale was in
the toilet.
When faced with these many concerns and the increasing pressure to perform with limited
resources it is easy to see that the mental health risks for the overworked staff could be hanging
by a thread. There were many virtual meetings and discussions about mental health and training
on how to recognize these pressures and changes in behavior, which proved to be a great starting
point for addressing needs. I also feel that it would have been important to conduct more face-to-
face evaluations with more of the corporate specialists. It may have meant more travel for some
of these executive staff, or any clinical specialists that were hired, but while we were functioning
as case managers and working with people who were often in crisis none of us were required to
be trained and the turnover was because of a lack of coping skills and mental health
fatigue/burnout in many cases. With more frequent meetings and assessments by staff who were
trained in mental health evaluations it could have helped to reduce the exodus that happened.
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Once identified, the needs of those employees who were feeling the pressure could have
had actions taken to address their concerns and stress, potentially saving the jobs of those who
were more strongly affected. Keeping these staff members onboard and working would have also
reduced the amount of undue stress on the staff who were picking up the slack for those who left.
More staff, even on top of those who could have been retained with a better maintenance
program, would have also been appreciated, though financially unlikely to happen. Being able to
spread the distribution of work more evenly and achieve the numbers that were provided at my
time of hire would have made a difference in the amount of focus that could have been given to a
client. At the time I left the company I was still carrying a caseload of about twice what I was
told I would have when I’d been hired six years prior. I had one of the highest caseloads in the
entire company and had clients in seven different counties. I know that I was in a more difficult
spot than many in this regard, but it was still a situation that could have been remedied, or at
least lessened with better management of the staff and the situation.
While I do feel that some of the things above could have been handled better, there were
other things that I feel were done well. The promotion and access to Employee Assistance
Programs, while underutilized, was always there. During our Zoom meetings it was always
mentioned that this was available, but I feel that the impersonal nature of a mass Zoom meeting,
without the human interaction, may have contributed to it being little used. That and something
about Yankee stubbornness, perhaps. I was fortunate that I had a rather tight-knit team that
looked out for each other; the benefits of a small office, but that camaraderie didn’t always exist
and it is something that you can’t force. Another positive that I will give them credit for was their
insistence on people using their paid time off (PTO) to their benefit. Whether it was ensuring that
everybody took their full allotment of vacation time to the understanding if somebody called in
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needing a mental health day, it was always encouraged and unlike other jobs I’ve worked at in
the past they did seem to care more about the person and less about the numbers. Working for a
larger company (TimeWarner Cable/Spectrum) before Fedcap they had some rather bizarre rules
about how you could use your PTO, especially your sick time, to the point that they would track
when you regularly called out and if you were calling out “too many Fridays regularly” you
could be disciplined for it. Even to the degree that if you missed the day before or the day after a
holiday they would withhold your holiday pay! I never saw any of that behavior from
management here.
Summarizing, I feel that, so long as there is enough staff to make sure that everybody has
a considerate number of cases they are managing, smaller offices tend to be less affected by
some of these stressful situations. I would also suggest that factors that cannot be taken for
granted (camaraderie among staff, flexibility of scheduling) will also go a long way towards
reducing stress in the workplace. It is also important to not allow people to ‘self-diagnose’ and
have a form of peer review system in place where you can be too close to a problem to see it
starting until it is too late. Lastly, considerate and proper treatment of staff by management will
lead to a happier and more healthy workforce if they are compensated well (and by well, I mean
fairly) for what they are doing and being given a reasonable, and not overwhelming, amount of
tasks to complete.

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Somerset and Franklin counties. Virtually, of course.

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