NGA Human Resources

When working for NGA it is not unlikely that you will be cross-trained to other departments, generally if you're being hired on for a phone agent position, then you are working in either the benefits department or the pension department. When you begin work you are stuck in a windowless classroom for 2-3 weeks, if you can make it through that then you are greeted to a very welcoming work environment with many of your co-workers and senior agents eager to assist you. 

Lets start with the good. Your senior agents are wonderful, they're very supportive whether it's the benefits senior agents or the pension senior agents. They are always going above and beyond to assist the floor agents and doing everything in their power. The work itself is challenging but very rewarding once it's learned. It's also rare to get an irate caller, though it will definitely happen just like in any call center. It's also a very social environment and very easy to make friends, everyone is eager to help one another from a floor agent perspective and it's very rare to run into any problems with other agents. Most everyone is working their hardest and will answer your questions without hesitation.

Mid-level management (Team Leads, not Senior Agents) is very hit or miss, most of the team leads are friendly but you end up with supervisors who don't care enough or care way too much and will micromanage you. The best way to avoid issues with either is to meet quality for the month - which is another issue entirely.

A pass for quality is 95%. This is outrageous.

Most of the criteria you need to hit is 15 points and is VERY easy to miss. This means that if you miss anything thing, you now have a meeting with your team lead about exactly what it is you missed and this can lead to a very stressful work environment as a new agent or even a seasoned agent. Another issue with quality is that you take about 20-30 calls per day and get about 2 monitors back per week, meaning that if you fail just one quality monitor your score for the entire month is down the drain. If this happens it also means you forfeit your quarterly bonus.

Sick time is very much frowned upon here. If you miss a day, they call this an "occurrence". If you take 2 days of sick time in a row, that's 2 occurrences. If you get too many "occurrences" then it can lead to a "CR", which is a measure of reprimanding you. If you go on a "CR", you cannot apply for any growth opportunities for a set amount of time. There are different levels to "CRs" as well, and they all stack. Meaning that if you go on a "CR-3" which lasts for 2 years, then after that 2 years you go to a "CR-2" which lasts for another 6 months, and then finally down to a "CR-1" which lasts for 3 months. This all adds up to almost 3 YEARS of not being able to move up through the company. Another outrageous system. Also, if you have more than 1 occurrence, you forfeit your quarterly bonus.

The recognition system is easily one of the best parts of the job, being able to recognize fellow coworkers by sending them an "eThankYou" is very much welcomed and goes towards your quarterly bonus. You need at least 2 kudos or 2 eThankYous to qualify for your quarterly bonus and as long as your friendly and kind, it is very easy to achieve this.

The salary is low and it is near impossible to get a raise. The only way to get a raise is to move into a senior agent position (that is valued at $1 more per hour than the floor agents, HA), or to move into an offline work position (same $1 more per hour). There are routes you can take but the effort that is required to get a raise compared to what the raise is - it's never worth it (generally it's 0.25 extra per hour). There are salaried positions in this job but they are few and far between, the benefit is if you can find yourself lucky enough to get hired for one you'll find yourself doing much less work than when you were even a floor agent! If you look around, sometimes you'll question what roles some people even play in that facility as they are constantly doing nothing. 


The hours depend on which department you are in, the benefits department has shifts from 9 to 5:30, 10 to 6:30, and 11 to 7:30. The pension department is 10 to 6:30.The facility is closed on Saturdays & Sundays, meaning you get every weekend off. If you book time off far enough in advance, you are usually able to get it off no issues.

With all that being said, this is still the best call center job that exists on such a large scale in Newfoundland & Labrador that I have personally encountered. The social environment and the assistance from the senior agents make this job much easier to cope with, though you will find yourself under a microscope from mid-level management.

There's a high turn over rate, which works against you, cause your team is always getting new people that need to be trained - and training at this site is really not done well. I see new employee's in training for weeks and then come to the floor without access to systems, and still not knowing how to utilize them or do the job. 

Benefits are good, vacation and sick time are provided. It's a Monday to Friday job with two shifts that are early morning and early evening. 

Your team can be awesome. Honestly one of the best things about the job will be the people you work with. 

In the same breath, the worst thing about the job will be the people you work for. Managment is not good and this is in part a cause of the high turn over. Favoritism is often an issue people find with how management deals with enforcing rules - and with how employees are utilized. Promotions and offers on-site depend more on if you are friends with management. 

Managment is also not useful for support of the front line workers. Providing differing information, belittling employee's that seek out clarification and guidance in tasks, and often only advising on issues during quality and performance reviews, when you are up for a bonus or raise, that has never come up before. In some cases, rules that were not being enforced before (and for others) will be enforced on you.

The team Leaders are largely unsupportive, speak down to employees, do not understand how processes work, and expect employees to work all tickets in the same amount of time regardless of the issue's complexity.

Employee salaries are not reflective of the amount of work required. Quarterly bonuses are available but they are made very difficult to obtain due to ridiculous tardiness rules and having to achieve 99% accuracy in work. 
Processes for completing work are not properly explained, making it difficult to achieve consistency across tickets.

If you have two "unplanned" absences in a quarter, you are disqualified from receiving the quarterly bonus. Being sick, your car breaking down, having to leave work to go to the hospital, etc will get you disqualified from the bonus. This workplace punishes employees for medical and personal emergencies.

-Pros

-Great Benefits that start upon hire date
- Guaranteed 40 hours a week with weekends off
-Awesome co-workers
- High Referral Bonus for finding new staff members.


Cons:
-Inadequate Training ( You are not prepared for when you start taking inbound calls.
- Huge disconnect between management and phone agents 
- No monetary insensitive to be cross trained in other departments 
- Very Boring Job 
- Excessive Monitoring (Your bathroom breaks are even tracked to the second)
- The script you have to follow on the phone is very robotic 
-Negative workplace morale
- Emotionally draining job
- Having to work Canadian holidays because this location caters to an american client.
- Place remains open during snowstorms despite not being an essential service
- Little to no recognition for your achievements.
- Performance bonuses are difficult to obtain

-best part of the job is making employees lives easier 

- hardest part is providing bad or unwelcome news to clients (benefit loss/pay decrease/forms denied)

- the work atmosphere is great, a nice friendly environment by employees of the same level (excludes managers and higher up employees)

- a typical day at NGA consists of pre-shift clerical work(emails/research), shift work (on the phone/dealing with callers inquiries)  

- The management disregards the comfort of their employees for their own benefits. they often use their positions to intimidate employees they may not like.

In the recent years this company has gone down hill. I dont think its the entire company, I believe this is location specific. I used to be happy to come to work, felt appreciated and felt I made a difference. lately however in the past 1.5-2 years its become a struggle to be happy, to pay bills, to manage showing up. I sometimes feel it would be best to be dead compared to be here. I don't like feeling this way as I love the people I work with and speak to. Its the upper management and the micro managing that accomplishes the disdain felt by all in the office and myself included.

My last position consisted of working with former executives and executives of the GE.  My professionalism and keen eye for detail made this an enjoyable experience.  I enjoyed receiving compliments from executives working all over the world when I resolved a problem.  My typical day consisted or emails and inbound calls.  A lot of times I worked with corporate if I needed their assistance in resolving an issue.

While working at NGA the environment was very fast past. But the team leaders where supportive and help you achieve you quality. The over all company was stressfull and you received a lot of verbal abuse from USA pensioner on the phone daily. 

They training program when you start is thorough and covers the material .

- Monday through Friday job.
- Learned how to work in an office environment.
- Learned how to communicate better through telephone.
- Benefits are great.
- Salary is good for someone with no post-secondary education.
- The hardest part of the job is talking on the phone.
- It is a very fast pace work environment.
- Bonus program is offered (very high requirements)

Management have mostly been in their positions for 10-15 years. They do not know how to use software required and often pass work onto others to complete for them. They take credit for work other employees do. Bullying (from management) is an every day part of work (rude, snotty conversations made, singling people out as examples, disrespectful, etc), and bonus requirements are not consistent from manager to manager.

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