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Social Security Administration Office of Disability Adjudication and Review Project Proposal MGMT591: Leadership and Organizational Behavior Professor: Thomas Donini By; Gadiel Melendez

MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

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Page 1: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

Social Security Administration

Office of Disability Adjudication and Review

Project Proposal

MGMT591: Leadership and Organizational Behavior

Professor: Thomas Donini

By; Gadiel Melendez

Page 2: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

“My paper is going to be about how to improve employee’s performances in the workplace”

Overview of the Organization

The proposed organization topic for my final paper is the Social Security Administration

(SSA) agency of the U.S. Federal Government. This agency is responsible for administering

social security cards, a social insurance programs that consists of benefits such as retirement,

survivors’, and disability benefits, which American people can qualify for through their tax

contribution to the Social Security.

I currently work for this agency in the Office of Disability Adjudication and Review

(ODAR), as a Senior Case Technician. I am responsible for providing technical and legal support

to the Administrative Law-Judges (ALJ) and other professional and technical positions that are

responsible for processing and making decisions on cases with regards to claimants’ entitlement

of benefits. I am responsible for developing and processing cases for review from the time they

are filed in the office until they are completed. In addition, I am responsible for independently

conducting various types of case development actions. My responsibilities also include the

processing of complex cases where I analyze and interpret the issues with regards to the

guidelines, procedures, policies, precedents, rulings, regulations, and the provisions of the law.

These are performed with the goal of examining medical and legal documentary evidence and

other supporting documents for the determination of how a case is to be process. The results of

the work I do and the ALJ’s decision is determined of on whether Social Security claimants may

be eligible and entitled to receive disability benefits under the Social Security Law.

A growing problem within the agency is the employees’ job performance and

productivity levels, which I believe negatively, affect not only the agency and the employees, but

mainly the claimants. In my opinion, about 35% of the employees are performing at a minimum

Page 3: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

or even less than the minimum amount of work required. Employees often spend too much time

chit-chatting among each other and also take longer breaks than allotted. In addition, they spend

too much time surfing the Internet and shopping in nearby mall.

The claimants are the ones who suffer the most from this poor performance. Since our

office is responsible for reviewing the cases of claimants who have been initially denied their

claims and have decided to appeal, it is the job of the ODAR’s employees to prepare these

claimants’ cases so that the judges can make a decisions and for the attorneys’ to review their

claimants cases online.

The ODAR employees are required to complete and prepare at least 30 cases per month,

in addition to other responsibilities. Unfortunately, many of these cases are incorrectly prepared,

which causes a problem for the Senior Case Technician assigned to the judge, as he or she is

responsible for correcting those cases and for obtaining medical evidence, school records, and/or

in some instances, records from correctional institutions for non-represented claimants.

In addition, the employees who are responsible for preparing those cases do not review

their work as they are often busy doing things unrelated to work. They also often neglect to

review and exhibit additional documents with regards to a case, which also prevents attorneys

from accessing documents online.

The employees’ inefficient use of their time and their lack of diligence with their work

cause the cases to frequently be incorrectly prepared, which causes claimants to wait longer for

the judge’s final decision. Missing an outstanding evidence/records and other information for

particular cases, needs to be obtained by the Senior Case Technician who may not be aware of

such facts until approximately a month prior to the hearing which can result in delays.

Page 4: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

The same problem occurs with some attorneys. If an attorney is unaware of the fact that

a case is ready for review, he or she will usually not request evidence until he or she receives

notice of the hearing, which is about 20 days prior to the hearing. However, by this time,

negligent attorneys would be unable to submit all of the necessary evidence because it takes 30

to 60 days for the medical facilities, schools, or correctional institutions to provide the requested

evidence. Some attorney’s supply the evidence themselves prior to the hearing but some are just

as irresponsible as some of the ODAR employees. In addition, an attorney’s compensation is

paid upon a granted favorable decision, as such; certain attorneys refuse to pay for claimant’s

records where their services may not be compensated due to possible unfavorable decision. In

these cases, most of the time, the same attorneys claim not to be able to retrieve evidence

themselves in spite of “their efforts”, therefore they request ODAR to obtain and pay for the

records, unless claimant can pay for it themselves.

Regardless of management asking the ODAR employees to keep track of such instances

in order to enable an investigation of the said anomalies, some of ODAR employees fail to do so

as they often slack around. In addition, certain employees are allowed to slack around because

of their connections. Also the influences of some employees get promoted to higher positions

even when they perform poorly and inefficiently. With that said, employee morale decreases,

which also leads to a lower productivity and unpleasant atmosphere among the employees and

the management.

Page 5: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

Preliminary Problem Statement

The agency has a collaborative and friendly culture where employees can easily approach

their managers and leaders at any time. SSA also provides its employees with great benefits

such as, multiple health insurance programs, flexible time, sick, annual, and family leaves

immediately available upon unscheduled time off, subsidized public transportation, student loans

forgiveness program, continuous training courses, job security, and many other benefits. In spite

of all the benefits offered these do not seem to have any effect on the level and quality of the

employees’ performance nor do they motivate the employees to perform in a higher standard.

These benefits and privileges are being often abused. However, management does not seem to

be doing anything to correct such behaviors and to implement some form of corrective actions to

make sure that everybody is performing their tasks as expected, mainly due to the strong

employee union.

The lack of the authority over the employees performances not only is leading to delays

in the processing of claimants’ benefits, but this also leads to financial losses on the part of the

SSA, which in turn are essentially the tax payer’s money. In addition, the unfair treatment by the

management and equal opportunity to all the employees leads to disgruntlement of staff.

To address these problems, this paper will investigate ways in which organizational

behavior can be improved and sustained through the proper implementation of a rewards system.

In the same regard, this paper will discuss how learning from TCO “A” can be applied to the

problem posed in this paper. In particular, TCO “A” focuses on the differences that people make

in an organization’s performance, as well as an assessment of how organizational behavior

concepts and theories can be used in achieving career success and improving an organization's

effectiveness.

Page 6: MGMT 591 Project Proposal Part 1 ODAR

Through the recommendations made in this paper, I hope to see employee’s

performances at the ODAR’s office will be improved through the proper implementation of a

rewards system, which in turn will lead to better services provided to claimants, cost savings for

the SSA, and increased employee morale.