‘Tis the season for unexpected surprises. A gift on your doorstep, a holiday greeting in the mail – and the dreaded UI tax rate notice. Bet you didn’t get the same warm and fuzzy feeling with that last ‘gift’. Your UI tax rate increased. Your unemployment insurance costs are higher. Now what?

Watching costs climb year after year can cause you to accept defeat. While you can’t avoid paying this tax, you can avoid rising costs.

Take charge of your UI costs and break the cycle of rising tax rates with these tips:

Audit Your Claims and Protests
Review your claims from the previous year and analyze ones you should have protested, the protests you should have won and credits you did not receive. Use that information to improve your processes and gain the insight you need to win unemployment hearings.

Audit Your Employee Handbook
This handbook can be your best friend or your biggest headache. One of the most common reasons employers lose unemployment protests, and ultimately lose money, is because of the information in or missing from their employee handbook. Your employee handbook can be the key to controlling your UI costs. Ensure that your policies are in line with employment law and also with unemployment law in your state. Note that if you are a multi-state employer, you may need different versions of your handbook for each state.

Use UI Cost Management Software
Cost management software can reduce costs for businesses of any size; however, it becomes especially important when your business has more than 100 claims a year. Once your company reaches 500 claims or more, it is nearly impossible to manage effectively without software. Our Unemployment Tracker cloud-based claims tracking software will help you identify claims that should not be paid, effectively protest them, identify credits you have earned and catch costly errors.

Ready to control your UI tax rate hikes? Please let us know if you have any questions. We’re here to help. Contact us today.