When someone calls 911, they expect a highly trained professional to answer, but emergency call center workers are part of an “industry under immense pressure” because of understaffing and a host of other issues, a survey released this week found.
Call centers are struggling with “surging call volumes, complex compounded emergencies, outdated technologies, and insufficient support,” according to the industry survey released by the National Emergency Number Association, a nonprofit professional organization, and Carbyne, a software company that serves emergency call centers. The survey polled nearly 850 emergency services workers, including dispatchers, call takers and administrators in May.
Brian Fontes, CEO of the National Emergency Number Association, said although some of the issues highlighted in the survey were exacerbated by the pandemic, the industry has faced these problems for a long time. He said he hopes the study will prompt a better understanding of 911 professionals and the Congressional action needed to address them.
“What I’m trying to say is that, ‘Wait a minute, my life is going to be put into the hands of somebody who is not trained? Or trained thoroughly or properly?’ I would ask the question, ‘Why? Where were your priorities?’ to the city leaders, the county, state, federal,” Fontes told USA TODAY.
911 employees report struggling with burnout
The survey found the primary issue call centers are facing is understaffing, which leads to burnout and staff churn. Fontes said a big issue is that older, more seasoned employees are leaving the profession at a higher rate than younger professionals can be hired.
More than 80% of centers said they were understaffed and had trouble recruiting and retaining employees primarily because of the low wages and high-stress environment.
“The stress of the job is compounded in large part by the fact that not all centers are staffed appropriately,” Fontes said. “So those that are employed may have to work extra hours, they may have to take more calls, and therefore compounding the stress that the 911 professional would have ordinarily in the job.”
More than 80% of respondents said their centers are inundated with high call volumes multiple days per week. Delays caused by an influx of calls during emergencies can have deadly consequences.
When strong storms slammed into the St. Louis region this month, the county’s 911 system was “completely overwhelmed,” according to Doug Moore, a spokesman for Democratic County Executive Sam Page. It took one mother 45 minutes to reach emergency services after a tree fell on a home in Jennings. Her 5-year-old son Robert Lawrence was still alive when she first began to call, but he later died, according to a family spokesperson.
911 survey respondents need more training
Less than half of respondents said they felt adequately prepared to handle any incident.
Though the country is dealing with historically elevated levels of gun violence, nearly 40% of respondents felt unprepared to deal with an active shooter situation. And while many cities have created programs to send mental health professionals instead of police to some emergency calls in recent years, a quarter of respondents said they lacked training for mental health calls.
Fontes said training requirements across the country are a “a patchwork quilt,” but NENA has worked with the National 911 Program Office to establish training standards he said should be adopted nationwide.
Many 911 call centers experience outages, misdials
The survey also found emergency response centers are dealing with a number of technological challenges.
More than half said their centers regularly experience outages on either their phone or computer systems or both. The 911 center in Oakland, California, experienced two outages earlier this month that forced operators to manually handle 911 calls and delayed response times.
Fewer than half of respondents said they can get accurate location information from mobile callers.
About 53% of workers also said they experience high volumes of misdials, many of which NENA officials said come from features on phones, tablets and other devices that are meant to detect accidents or provide a shortcut for connecting to emergency services.
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New tech and legislation could improve conditions
Carbyne CEO Amir Elichai said the first priorities for addressing the issues raised in the survey would be increasing salaries and improving the working conditions for call center staff. For example, though more than 90% of 911 employers offer wellness support services, just 18% of call takers take advantage of them, which suggests “a need for more proactive approaches to wellness/mental health,” according to the survey.
Elichai said the centers should also adopt new technology that could help overcome staffing challenges, such as a call triage feature on Carbyne’s call-handling platform, which he said gives agencies the ability to divert calls to an AI bot when the system is overloaded. He said his company is also trying to develop technology that would simplify the workflow for call takers.
Fontes said his organization is encouraging Congress to fund the transition to Next Generation 911, a framework of existing technologies and standards NENA has helped developed for more than 15 years. Fontes said this hasn’t yet happened due to a lack of understanding of the problems facing 911 call centers.
Fontes said Next Generation 911 would integrate with other public safety systems and allow people to send data, photos, videos, and more precise location information to 911 centers.
One way the profession could make itself more attractive to younger workers, according to Fontes, is by reclassifying 911 employees as “protected service workers.” He said the group has been advocating for Congress to change the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ classification of 911 professionals from office or clerical workers to protected service workers, just like fire, police and EMS workers.
This would allow workers to be included in benefits programs offered to other emergency responders. The new classification would be more appropriate because 911 workers don’t just answer calls, they often help triage prior to EMTs arriving to the scene, Fontes said.
911 workers are not secretaries, he said. “If you’ve ever been in a 911 center you know that is so far from the truth.”
Contributing: The Associated Press
