They can’t take it anymore and they let it be known. The operators of 112 are sounding the alarm: “we don’t cry in front of numbers, what we do is human“. Lack of staff, overload, tension because of new software in which they have not been sufficiently trained, new procedures which lead them to take calls from areas other than their own. They believe that they are always asks for more, but we don’t listen to them.
These operators are the ones who answer you when you call the fire department or the police. The 112… or the 101. They evoke a generalized fed up. This is the case of Thomas Deck, CSC delegate. He has been picking up the phone at the Hainaut plant for 3 years. At the other end of the line, people who need help: injuries, accidents, fires. Lives are at stake.
The job of operator at 112 (or 101 for the police) is already stressful, but it is even more so since the implementation of a so-called “overflow” (or “overflow”) system between the Walloon power stations . “Overflow is like a bowl of cornflakes, explains Thomas Deck. All calls come in and we may, at the Mons plant, pick up a call for Liège or vice versa […] We are not opposed to lending a hand to our colleagues, quite the contrary. But this weekend we have been overloaded with calls and if there are delays in handling calls, that’s serious! Imagine that the ambulance is fifteen minutes late for a call for a heart attack or anaphylactic shock after a wasp sting…“
Ambulance delays due to software
To this extra work, to this additional stress, iWe must add the arrival of a new software to which the agents consider themselves insufficiently trained. “We were asked to train ourselves in e-learning, and then we met an expert who taught us the basics in an hour maximum. Finally, experts answered our questions. And so we had to take the system in hand on the fly, without quite understanding what was going on, remembers our interlocutor. At times, we have to respond to requests from callers that are not easy to manage because we ourselves have to look in the software for the item to which the situation corresponds. And so I think the cart was put before the horse“Thomas Deck also points to a lack of harmonization from one plant to another.”If we want to work in a common way, the procedures must be harmonized between the plants“. He believes that “causes delays in ambulance departures“.
“We load the mule, without realizing that the problem is not the schedules, it is not the calls, it is the lack of staff (despite what the ministry says, that the theoretical framework is complete) . And it is especially the sticks that are put in the wheels by the use of this software
Loss of time, fatigue, tension accumulate. Thomas Deck estimates that at least 10 operators are missing in Mons alone. But that all the call centers are concerned: Liège, Arlon, Namur as well as the police station, 101.