This is a warning to anyone looking to apply as or currently working as a W2 case manager for Forward Services Corp. They do not have their act together. They are not reputable. They are not interested in helping clients or employees. You will feel demoralized from working in an environment that was set up to fail from the beginning and you will be lead to believe that it is all your fault. Here is why that is not true and you should not beat yourself up:
FSC jumped at the chance to take over the W2 state contract without having any ability to follow through on making it successful. Full disclosure: while they are in over their heads, two very large problems not within their control are the political climate in Wisconsin and the Governor’s constant humiliation of people on welfare. Where is money being spent these days? Not on training or education or rehabilitation. Nope. It is being spent to expand the fraud departments and catch anyone by any means necessary. There is no real effort to solve problems and make a long lasting dent in welfare in Wisconsin. Unless you are the Governor and his cronies… and the dent you choose to make is to kick people off of welfare. It’s all about saving money that could go to the state’s billionaires and millionaires instead. Be aware that the political climate you are walking into is not one that gives a single iota about the client, their wellbeing, their long-term success, or their children’s future. You are not there to make their lives better.
Is that FSC’s fault? No, of course not. But because they are part of this system, they have to play by the rules within that system. This means, they have to fight for every single claim, and they have to do so by pushing people with little training or education, mental and physical health issues, AODA concerns, and families tied to strong generational poverty, into jobs that are not good for them, do not help them survive once benefits cease, do not help their families make ends meet, and do not set them up for successful futures. FSC is trying to survive this contract and in doing so, they have lost their values because of it. They have an impact code that is useless in the W2 program because they disregard it on a daily basis in order to keep the claims coming in. They are forced to be flexible on the W2 rules in order to meet quotas. It is a sad cycle that benefits no one, least of all the client and the employee. When the success of a contract means more than being honest and faithful and doing what is right by their own employees…. That contract has cost them way more than just money in the end.
FSC likes to tote their changes and updates to training in the W2 program. While they have made some headway in the last few years and learned from their mistakes, they continue to let certain Program Coordinators and Team Leads pressure their newly hired workers into ramming through the training program in order to take on very messy caseloads. In Dane County, there is a cycle that started with the beginning of the contract and continues several years later: hire new employees, pressure them to race through new worker training (regardless of their learning style, whether the system is functioning or not, and who has the capability to assist them through the process), then give them a caseload that needs serious cleanup from an experienced case manager… but none is available because they have left, wait a couple months and then start to blame the worker for not being 100% compliant or successful, ratchet up pressure on them as audits come in from all sides claiming they are not doing a good job, then move to put them on discipline notice or make their work lives miserable with nasty emails, until they final leave and it is time to hire new case managers once again. Breaking this cycle and creating an environment where employees feel successful, supported, and empowered is too much effort for a company stuck in reactionary mode because the contract is designed to fail from the beginning. Full disclosure: the training program was designed terribly by the state training department when FSC won the bid. They were handed a terrible product to begin with. No one new to CARES should be expected to navigate through the program at their own pace without classroom learning available. This sets the new employee up for failure from day one.
Another serious issue that FSC tries to make out to be their workers problem is that of their inability to move beyond the reactionary and into proactive planning when it comes to current and future projects. Several times they have thrown the expectation for a new client training program onto the local offices, including finding physical space, working out all the logistics, be handed a terrible training outline that has only the most basic information, conduct business without computers, phones, or space… there is a definite “cart before the horse” plan happening at FSC’s corporate office. When programs are not instantly successful, there is a strong tendency to place the blame on the local offices all the way to the front-line workers- case managers and account reps- as if they had been empowered all along with the right tools, leadership, and planning but chose instead to be lazy. So this must be their fault for not having the proper time management skills and it is time to search out new workers. Because of such a reactionary style of management, when FSC is audited by the state and serious issues are found, once again, the blame goes right to the inexperienced case manager. Never mind that all of them are told that it takes at least a year to a year and a half to understand the job they have. Never mind that the actual time it takes to be truly successful is much longer. Never mind that part of their training plan includes information from Beverly Ford, a case management subject leader, and in that they are told that as case managers, they are not responsible for “making the outcome happen” but in fact responsible for supporting the client to consider their reasons for making change happen and getting to that desired outcome. Make no mistake about it: FSC makes their W2 case managers squarely responsible for the outcomes of case management, each and every time.
FSC is struggling with a contract that other agencies recognized as a failure from the start. Rather than look at their own failures starting from the top down and make serious changes where it counts, the organization has a terrible tendency to start at the bottom with blame. Case Managers are to blame for being too lazy or unorganized. Account Reps are to blame for not getting enough employers involved or organizing successful events. Team Leads are to blame for not holding their subordinates accountable enough and creating successful outcomes through fear based management style techniques. Over the last few years, PTO usage in the company has been at critical levels, especially in the Madison office. Instead of determining why that is and how employees can be better supported and feel as though they have healthy work-life balances, they are threatened with disciplinary action or shamed when they need to take time off. No one at Corporate has enough sense to make a connection between PTO usage and job satisfaction. Case Managers are deeply unhappy, and because many of them come to the organization with a profoundly deep sense of service and concern for helping others, they internalize the nasty environment and treatment and think they are doing something wrong. Nothing could be further from the truth---- but hey, maybe the occasional donut or petty little “reward” will make them feel better?!? Case Managers are the reason for the culture of blame, the rotten management style in Madison that was promoted by the corporate office, and the inability of FSC to get its act together.
