Our supervisor supervises 12 staff and also works with the JOBS program, is in charge of billing for different programs, conducts home visits, and case manages from time to time (along with other quarterly, monthly and weekly meetings and reports). He really does not have time to dedicate to issues in the office if he is to concentrate on doing the other part of his duties; therefore the need for either another staff to assist him or to take away some duties was visible. The stakeholders in this care were DHS and our agency.
The DHS supervisor, my supervisor and our regional director were all trying to figure out what to do about these issues. They all met many times in round table settings and evaluated what the need was and what feasible solutions were available. One of them (among many) was to keep me on as JOBS staff and work one day a week doing the same duties. Logical thinking was involved when making this decision. It was obvious that I was going to have more work than before therefore the executive director did not agree on this decision because doing this may cause me to get backlogged and not do my work my all. Even if it was only one day a week, I needed to concentrate on my new job and new caseload.
Another option was to hire a work experience. The reason for this is that work experiences do not work for money. They receive as pay work experience and they continue receiving the services already provided to them. The DHS supervisor, because of confidentiality issues, refused this decision. Statistical thinking was used in order to refuse this decision since he based his decision on the fact that we have not had success before when placing work experiences at our own offices.
As we can see the decision making process was not working very well, since the main force of influence in this case was the economic situation. The agencies were in need of another staff member in order to comply with the contracted issues, but the budget did not allow for a new hire.