Update from ESD: Toolkit for Businesses to Help Employees

Tools, Templates and Information

Here is this week’s toolkit (week of 4/19) that has the following for you, your staff and, most importantly, your members:

·       Key actions/tools for your constituents – including phone numbers if needed

·       Emerging issues and mitigations

·      Top questions

·       Information for independent contractors and those who are self-employed

·       Proactive email content (the extra bonus here is the content from emails we sent to claimants with instructions and information on potential complexities in the application process)

·       Email response templates for various high-level scenarios

·       Suggested social media language with links for this week

·       Images to use in social media

·       Graphics that provide the key steps people can take to be prepared

·       A grid with various salaries and the potential weekly benefits amounts with the Federal CARES act addition of $600

You are welcome to use any or all of this as you see fit. Your amplification of our message around being prepared before people apply will be key to our ability to meet the demand, to keep calls into the call center down and to get people their money and benefits more quickly.

As a reminder, when people are approved, they get their money within 7-10 days (and as quickly as 24-48 hours with direct deposit).

What we’re doing to address the demand:

Some of the steps we’re taking/we’ve taken:

  • Hiring update. By the end of this week, we will have about 1,000 people providing some form of customer service. That includes current and new ESD staff, staff from across state government, contract staff and even ESD retirees who are rising to the call of public service yet again.

  • For independent contractors & self-employed workers. To determine an individual’s benefit, we must first verify their wage data. For those who have no wages in the system, primarily those who are self-employed or independent contractors, to get them their benefits as quickly as possible AND, at the same time, protect taxpayers from fraud, we will pay them right away a minimum weekly benefit amount ($235 for full-time workers) plus the $600 from the Federal CARES Act. When we have verified their wage documents, we will retroactively pay them any difference in their weekly benefit amount. We are training staff from across the agency, myself included, to conduct this wage verification so that we can quickly get people their full benefit amount.

  • Our updated website. We rolled out a new homepage and easy to use content to help people through this, otherwise, complex process. To date, we have had more than 250K downloads of our preparation guides!

Continued High Demand

·       Here is our latest unemployment numbers announcement. The big numbers here are the 585K total claims in the week ending April 11 and the $125M paid out to 250K Washingtonians in benefits in just that week (and $250M total since the start of the crisis).

·       While last week’s initial claims continued to decline w/w, we are now seeing the pent-up demand released.

·       Please note that the full official claims numbers for this week will not be announced until next Thursday April 30. We will, however, provide other scale metrics for you to gauge how we’re doing at meeting Washingtonians’ needs!

CHA Washington