User Experience Researcher & Service Designer
An Online Re-employment Program for the Unemployed
I led this project as the manager of the Claims and Re-employment program with the Department of Workforce Services.
The Problem
1. Company Costs: Re-employment counselors had to spend funds to travel to employment centers across the State of Utah to provide in-person counseling to unemployed claimants. We needed to save 2.1 million dollars of the Re-employment and Eligibility Assessment (RESEA) program grant.
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2. Barriers to Participation: Claimants would often cancel their appointments because they were unemployed and could not afford to spend money on gas or public transportation to meet with the counselors in person.
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3. Loss of Economic Purchasing Power: A new State law passed stating that failure for claimants to meet with a re-employment counselor would result in a denial of unemployment benefits.
The Solution
I called a meeting with my direct reports for an ideation session to develop solutions to the problems. A viable solution was to offer re-employment counseling sessions for claimants over video calls online.
Collaboration
To prototype offering counseling sessions online, the team worked with the following people and departments:
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1. The Chief of Benefits provided us permission to move forward with a research study to test the solution based on a proposal I wrote on how the State and our claimants would benefit from the change.
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2. The Department of Technology Manager provided us with legal permission to use Google Meets to test our idea. Google Meets was the only video application with the State of Utah that was encrypted so information shared on the platform was kept confidential and safe for claimants.
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4. Four re-employment counselors were selected to conduct the research for one month as experts in their field.
Challenges with Testing the Concept
Mt team spent one month setting up the parameters of the usability test such as creating rules and procedures for the potential new process. For example:
1. We had the counselors reach out to claimants selected for the re-employment program to set up a meeting over google meets and removed them from our automated program.
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2. We had to create a policy and procedure on how to use Google Meets so counselors and claimants could use the application comfortably and within our legal guidelines, such as not recording the session, etc.
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3. We wrote qualitative and quantitative questions for claimants and counselors to answer after each session so we could track what worked and what did not work.
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Implementation
For one month after the study, we presented the findings to get buy in for the new program from the Chief of Benefits, Director of Unemployment, Programming Services, and the rest of the re-employment counselors.
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Once approved, we worked with programming services to make gradual changes to our system so all re-employment counselors could conduct counseling online.
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We ordered new equipment for staff who did not have a laptop or headset so they could conduct online appointments.
We then conducted team training on the new processes and procedures as counselors received their new equipment.
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Findings
My team tested the concept for one month. The research study found that the claimants and counselors really enjoyed meeting online and it was effective. In person appointments would still need to remain an option for claimants who lacked access to technology.
"I was not feeling well and was happy that I could meet with the counselor online so I could keep my unemployment benefits." - unemployment claimant
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"The video appointments are filling up a gap in the way we do things helping those with busy lives without having to take an extra 1-2 hours to meet in person to keep their benefits." - re-employment counselor
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4 out of 97 participants in the study were unable to meet online due to lack of access to technology.
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48 hours of company time and money was saved not traveling to visit claimants in person.
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Impact
The new program doubled participation which prevented many claimants from being denied benefits.
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Shortly after this was implemented in September 2019, the pandemic started in March 2020. The Department of Workforce Services was able to scale the model we created to other government programs CHIP and Medicaid which were previously only offered in-person to continue to serve the public during the pandemic.