Unemployment Insurance: Managing Key Issues in the Response to the Implications of the Coronavirus

Unfortunately, UI tax liabilities are only the most obvious risk created by employee separations and unemployment insurance claims.  Unemployment insurance claims often expose organizations to other potential liabilities: from wage and hour violations for misclassifying independent contractors to providing plaintiffs with discovery opportunities in other employment litigation settings.

Thus, effective management of an organization's unemployment insurance experience provides your organization with significant opportunities. From improving your organization’s talent management results and its hiring and on-boarding processes, effective UI management can enhance your organization’s performance management activities, establish sound discipline and termination procedures, and reduce its exposure to discrimination and wrongful discharge claims.Effective UI management activities will additionally help your organization assess human capital risks, measure supervisor and manager performance, more accurately allocate resources, and have a positive impact on the bottom line.

Thus, while UI tax liabilities are the most obvious risk created by employee separations and unemployment insurance claims activity, they increasingly expose your organization to other potential liabilities and increasingly become the starting point for more detailed employment compliance management issues. UI related activities now often represents the initial stages of an increasingly more intense analysis of your employment policy and practices and can result in significant liabilities.

• Gain an understanding of key unemployment insurance issues 
• Discuss the strategic issues of employment stabilization and employee separation management
• Learn to identify and assess the risks associated with the federal-state UI program 
• Discuss the financial implications of UI liabilities 
• Learn how sound HR management practices reduce an organization's exposure to UI liabilities and costs
• Identify and use UI Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

More than 40 million Americans have become unemployed and the number is still rising. This represents a catastrophic employment disruption and is a significant loss of employment talent. In response, more than 1 in 5 American workers have filed for unemployment insurance benefits…with many more are likely to do so.For employers, this represents significant potential liability. While 2020 state UI tax rates have already been set and are lower than they have been in a number of years, the depression level unemployment caused by the coronavirus, will cause unemployment tax rates and liabilities to increase drastically in 2021 and 2022.In this environment, employers should take the necessary steps to identify and manage future UI tax liabilities.Understanding the key elements of your unemployment insurance experience can provide your organization with important information about its financial and human resource management decision making process. 

• HR professionals
• Unemployment insurance staff
• Managers and supervisors
• CFOs
• Internal auditors
• Compliance officers
• Risk managers

Ronald L. Adler, president of Laurdan Associates Inc. has 42 years of HR consulting experience and has served as a consulting expert on work force, workplace, and HR management issues for The Wall Street Journal, HRMagazine, and other publications and newspapers across the country. Mr. Adler's research findings have been used by the Federal Reserve Board, the EEOC, the National Conference of State Legislatures, the National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB), insurers, and international organizations.

Mr. Adler is a frequent lecturer and author on HR management, employment practices, and UI issues. Mr. Adler is the author and editor of the Employment-Labor Law Audit (ELLA), the internationally recognized HR auditing and employment practices liability risk assessment process.

Mr. Adler is an adjunct professor at Villanova University where teaches a graduate level course in HR Auditing. Mr. Adler is also a certified instructor for The Chartered Property Casualty Underwriters (CPCU) Society on employment practices liability and HR auditing issues and has conducted continuing education courses for the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) on HR management and HR auditing topics. Additionally Mr. Adler has served as an adjunct instructor at the Baltimore City Community College on workplace diversity and sexual harassment.

Mr. Adler is an appointee to State of Maryland's Unemployment Insurance (UI) Oversight Committee and previously served as an appointee to the State's UI Funding Task Force, the UI Advisory Committee, and the state's Workforce Training Initiative. Mr. Adler has served as a moderator at the State of Maryland's Annual Human Relations Conference and at the state's Annual Small Business Conference.