VIDEO: Shawnee County Emergency Services will add four new call-taker positions to help reduce the heavy workload on current staff members. Melanie Roberts, assistant director of the Shawnee County Sheriff’s Office Emergency Communications Division, says their dispatchers answer approximately 600 to 800 calls per day, 365 days a year, and because of a staffing shortage, they work 12-hour shifts.
With each call, they had to do “everything simultaneously:” talk to the caller, ask questions, while communicating with fire and law enforcement officers, and dispatching them to the scene. “It’s very hard on their minds, on their bodies,” Roberts said.
On Monday, Nov. 10, Shawnee County approved adding four new “call taker” positions. Their job is to answer calls, get information from the caller, such as name and address, and send the details to the County Dispatcher, who will dispatch first responders to the scene. Thus, reducing the workload.
“It’s going to allow both the call taker and the dispatcher to really focus on what we are supposed to be doing for them,” said Roberts. “The help that we are providing to the citizen at home, and our responders. You know, not having to split that focus. We are going to be able to 100% focus on the citizen and, you know, not have to, ‘Just a minute, you know, I have to page this out’ or ‘Just a minute, I have to answer this call.’ No, if they’re on the phone with that citizen, they’re going to be able to dedicate the time to the citizen, and if they are dispatching on the radio, they’re going to be able to dedicate that time to the radio, and so, it should help both sides.”
Emergency Communications created the idea after its contract with “Moetivations, Inc.” They received development training and operational solutions from traveling dispatchers. “One of the biggest things we learned from them was [that] they were able to get a lot of those phones off of our radio dispatchers, and it was a huge help,” Roberts said.
