Paid Leave Oregon Bulletin

May 2024 Bulletin - 05/21/2024

May spotlight: Improving customer service

Most of the people who are applying for paid leave are coming to us at a difficult time in their life. We understand that it’s frustrating to wait any amount of time to receive benefits, and we recognize it has been difficult to reach us by phone.

We hear you, and we’re making changes to improve our customer service. We have already hired more staff to speed up claims processing, increasing the number of customer care staff by more than 20% since April.

It is our top priority to significantly reduce the number of you who are waiting for your benefits. To do this, we need to give our employees more time to work on claims.

What is changing?

To do this, we are making two changes – one permanent and one temporary – to our phone hours beginning in June. The changes will affect the Paid Leave phone lines as well as those for the Unemployment Insurance (UI) and Contributions and Recovery divisions.

Our current phone hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. However, depending on staffing, we keep answering calls that have been on hold until about 5:30 to 6 p.m. when the phone system fully shuts down.

Beginning Tuesday, June 4, our phone hours will be from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. The system will stop accepting new calls at 4 p.m., but we will continue to answer calls that have been on hold until the last shift ends.

Starting Monday, June 3, we will also close our phone lines every Monday so we can focus on processing claims, answering Frances Online messages, calling customers, and working on other customer requests. This is a temporary change until we can get caught up on our workload.

We understand this change will make it more difficult for you to contact us by phone, but it will help us address the most pressing issues for those of you who have been waiting the longest. We will track the effect the phone changes have on productivity, and we will share updates on our progress with you regularly.

The phone is just one way to contact us. Keep reading for other options that are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

New Paid Leave Contact Us web page

If you need to contact us, we have a new web page, paidleave.oregon.gov/contact-paid-leave-oregon. This new page has instructions for messaging us in Frances Online, even if you don’t have a Frances Online account.

If you need help with your benefits:

Send us a message through your Frances Online account, if you have one; or
Fill out our Contact Us form if you don’t have an account.

Need help in another language?

Although the Contact Us form is only available in English and Spanish, if you can ask for help in another language. Please follow these instructions:

On screen three of the form, in the “Category” dropdown menu, choose “Request for a reasonable ADA accommodation or language assistance.” That screen looks like this:

News and events

Come visit Paid Leave Oregon staff at an event close to you. Look for our table and come say hello. We are excited to meet you and answer your questions. Please check out the "News and events" web page for the full list.

Bend: Bend Pride, June 1, 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Virtual: Oregon BOLI and Paid Leave Oregon Present - Paid Leave Oregon, the Impact on Oregon Sick Time, Accrued Leave and OFLA – Webinar, June 10, from 10 a.m. to noon

John Day: Annual Grant County Health Fair, June 14, 7 a.m. to noon

Milwaukie: Juneteenth Celebration, June 15, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m.

Portland:

Family Fest 2.0 June 1, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

Rose Festival City Fair, June 7 and 8, from 4-8 p.m.

Community Resource Fair at Lloyd EcoDistrict, June 15, 11 a.m. to 2 p.m.

African Youth and Community Organization Annual Health Fair, June 22, from 1-5 p.m.