SSA Chief Sets Out to Cure Agency’s Ills : Worker relations: Low morale among Social Security employees sparks a mission to renew job satisfaction and restore public confidence.

Social Security Commissioner Gwendolyn King today announced plans to improve employee morale, provide better service to the public and “heal the wounds” created by massive staff cuts at the agency.

“I don’t believe we can guarantee the kind of public service we need to . . . unless we first take steps to ensure that our work force is energized and focused on our mission,” King said.

King, who assumed the top post at the Social Security Administration in August, acknowledged that surveys have shown many of the agency’s 65,000 employees feel “overworked and underpaid and under-appreciated.”

The agency’s work force was slashed by 20% over the last six years as part of a campaign to modernize and streamline operations. Surveys showed increasing numbers of supervisors felt SSA was doing a poor job of providing top-quality service to the public.

“When you combine cutbacks in the size of the agency with increased public demand for service, turmoil is likely to be the result,” King said. “I believe we have to get beyond that.”

King said she would propose a new “compact” to her employees in an afternoon speech to 14,000 workers in Social Security’s Baltimore-area offices. The address is to be beamed by satellite to other Social Security workers around the country.

King promised to resist further staff cuts, adjust uneven staffing levels that create shortages in some offices, communicate with employees in advance of major program changes, provide more equipment such as computer terminals and relax unreasonably demanding job performance standards.

Employees, meanwhile, will be asked to avoid internal strife, become proficient in new technologies, take a greater role in agency decisions and resolve to treat each member of the public “as a unique individual and not a case number or a file,” she said.