Training Your Management Staff Will Save You Money On Protestable Unemployment Insurance Claims

How many of you have received an unemployment insurance claim in the mail or on your agency web page and then tried to respond but discovered that there is no documentation in the employee file to support a protest?  Or discovered that your disciplinary process was never followed and you cannot protest the claim – even though the employee should not be receiving unemployment?  Frustrating isn’t it. 

With high cost of unemployment to employers, you really can’t afford to pay claims where the claimant should not qualify, and more often than not, you do pay!  Most employers only win about half of the claims they protest and many employers don’t protest all of the UI claims they should because they think they can’t win.

What can be done to fix this problem?  Well, the list of areas that may need fixing can be quite lengthy, but one area that you should be looking at is management training.  Make sure your managers are trained in how to manage your staff properly and in how to properly follow employment law (and unemployment law). 

3 areas in which you should focus:

• The proper interpretation and use of your employer policies – your management staff should know and understand how to implement your policies and procedures.  Get out your employee handbook and ensure your managers are using it correctly (or are they even following those policies at all).
• The basics of Unemployment in the state(s) in which you operate – teach your managers why it is important that they follow the processes laid out in your UI Management program (if you do not have a UI Management program – then you can contact an expert to start one – the savings will surprise you).  One of the things that will surprise your managers most is when you let them know just how costly unemployment can be.
• How to properly complete an employee review/evaluation – many employers and managers get the evaluation process wrong and it can come back to haunt you in an unemployment protest.  For example, it can be hard to win a UI protest in which you are justifying a termination for safety violations when the last employee review shows a “meets expectations” or higher in the areas involving safety (the same goes for attendance, attitude, productivity, etc.)

There are numerous areas where you should focus your training efforts including:

• Disciplinary actions
• Employee Coaching
• Employee Reviews
• Interpreting handbook policies
• And more

Each of these topics affect your unemployment program success or failure – and whether you lower your UI costs.  Invest the time and money into training and you will see a solid return on that investment in many areas of your operations, including unemployment costs – you likely will find it was worth the effort!

For more information on this topic visit us on the web at www.unemploymenttracker.com.