Desks at the Brown County Public Safety Communications Center. October 16, 2024. PC: Fox 11 Online
BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ-WLUK) — Hours of overtime are leading to low morale among Brown County Dispatch employees.
Dispatcher Kirk Parker said fluctuating schedules are unsustainable.
“The majority to stay later in the day than originally agreed upon, affecting home life, medical appointments, court custody arrangements, after school kids sporting events, childcare,” he said during public comment.
The dispatch center currently has 15 open positions — 12 dispatchers and three leadership positions.
This isn’t the first time Brown County Dispatch has faced a staffing shortage. In 2023, Brown County supervisors approved a pay increase to address 13 open positions.
Parker said this low staffing has led to frequent emergency overtime for staff.
“We’ve had 50 hours of emergency staffing, 552 hours of cover week deployment, at least 400 hours of inverses, which is where you’re forced in two hours early or you need to stay two hours late to your shift, plus 1,800 hours of volunteer overtime,” he explained.
The call center sees no shortage of activity, receiving around 313,000 calls last year, in which 202,000 of them required service.
Brown County Public Safety recently hired a consulting firm to streamline processes.
“They recommended a schedule change, and with any type of schedule change, especially to a schedule that we’ve had for years and years, that can create issues for our team members, and we understand that that could create issues,” said Director of Brown County Public Safety Communications Chancy Huntzinger.
The department is planning to make those schedule changes mid-year.
Parker said the current schedule needs to be changed for the current staffing level. He continued that implementing it after schedules have already been set may cause unnecessary troubles.
“We can embrace this, yet not be blindsided by changing everyone’s plans halfway through the year,” he said.
Comments