Charleston County says 9-1-1 consolidated call center seeing worst staffing shortage ever

CHARLESTON COUNTY, S.C. (WCBD) – Charleston County’s consolidated 9-1-1 call center says it is working through major staffing challenges while making sure service to residents doesn’t drop off. County officials say the number of openings in the call center is continuing to grow because of burnout.

Officials say the county’s call center currently has 43 openings, leaving the center with around 70 people to do the job normally meant for 120 staffers. The county says it aggressively working to fill the holes both in the short and long terms.

“No, this is a huge shortfall for us and it’s the biggest we’ve seen,” says Jim Lake, Director of the County’s 9-1-1 Consolidated Call Center.

With more openings than ever before, the center is being forced to operate at 58 percent of the normal employee capacity. Despite being shorthanded, the employees are tasked with answering and dispatching hundreds of calls for help each day.

“It’s created quite a dent so to speak in our staffing,” says Lake. “They are putting in hundreds of hours of additional overtime, some of that is forced overtime because we don’t have an option.”

To fill the holes, many of the current employees have been forced to work numerous hours of overtime. Since July of 2021, the county has spent $1.3 million on overtime hours alone. Lake says the extra hours are taking a toll.

“We’re losing people because we’re burning them out because we are working them so hard to cover the vacancies we do have,” says Lake.

Despite the growing number of openings in the call center, Charleston County says it’s been able to keep it’s accreditation for the call center while preventing impacts to service.

“Those hard working people who are answering the phones are doing a quality job at what they are doing, we’re still just short of the national standard,” says Lake.

To find a long-term solution, the county is working with local high schools to hire students to start in training positions with the hope of a finding fulltime employee after graduation. The county also heavily recruits on social media and at job fairs.

For Lake, he says he’ll lean on the employees he does have while working to fill the holes.

“People that we still have that are dedicated staffers,” says Lake. “We couldn’t do it with out them.”

Both Mount Pleasant and North Charleston’s Police Departments say they have not been impacted by the staffing challenges. The City of Charleston’s Police Department says they are working with the call center and have started using a computer to forward non-emergency calls directly to officers to avoid tying up phone lines.