It looks like a sports ticker, but the electronic board hanging in a Downtown Brooklyn office building doesn’t display baseball scores. The numbers represent calls from Department of Education employees phoning in to a new, state-of-the-art human resources center.
Tracking incoming calls and the average length of time callers are put on hold is just one of the ways “HR Connect” is trying to make it easier for the Department of Education’s 130,000 employees to find the answers they need.
“As a school system, our goal is to have 1,400-plus great schools and the only way to achieve this goal is with good people,” HR Connect’s Executive Director, Joe Blundo, said. “And good people will want to teach in New York City if they know they will be taken care of as employees.”
HR Connect is modeled on the City’s 311 support center. It offers a 
single point of access for all human resources-related information.
Since opening in September, nearly 1,400 calls have come in each day, on average.
The most frequently asked questions are about payroll and benefits, though call-takers are trained to answer a wide variety of questions.
“Callers are surprised and impressed with the service they get,” call-taker Raymond Figueroa said. “For us, it can require a lot of investigating to get them the answers, which I really like.”
Even though it's still in its infancy, HR Connect is already becoming a national model. Officials from the Dallas and Chicago school districts have visited to create similar HR service centers in their cities.
DOE employees can reach HR Connect at 718-935-4000, Monday – Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.
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