Technical difficulties during telephone town hall

Last night the PSAC Prairie Region hosted a live and interactive telephone town hall. Nearly 4,000 members throughout Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba participated in the one-hour call to discuss important information about the attack on sick leave.

PSAC Prairies Regional Executive Vice-President Marianne Hladun, PSAC National President Robyn Benson and PSAC Research Officer Bonnie Bates answered questions from members live on the call.

Unfortunately, we experienced technical difficulties during the dial-out period, causing some members to receive the call 10-20 minutes late. Other members received the pre-recorded reminder call on Tuesday, but then never received the call to join the telephone town hall on Wednesday.

We understand how frustrating this can be for members who were interested and awaiting the call, and apologize to those who weren’t able to participate. This is an important issue to our membership, which is why we made every effort to promote the event, including a mail out to all members.

We’re looking into the cause of these issues with Stratcom, the telephone town hall service provider we have used in the past and that other regions used for their telephone town halls on sick leave this month.

For those who weren’t able to participate, we will post the recording of the event. We will also have answers to any questions we didn’t have time to answer on the call. Please check the Prairies website next week for all of this information and share it with friends and colleagues that may be interested.

Once again, we apologize for the inconvenience and disappointment this may have caused some members. While this technology certainly isn’t perfect, it is a great way to reach a large number of members at once, and we consistently receive positive feedback from those who are able to participate.

We will continue to work with our service provider to improve the service for future events and ensure maximum participation from members.