Unemployment agency awarded $2.4M federal grant for reforms that support Mich. employers

The Michigan Unemployment Insurance Agency (UIA) announced Tuesday that it was awarded a U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) Tiger Teams grant to redesign and simplify how it engages with employers and develop a step-by-step roadmap for accessing agency services.

The $2,387,516 equitable access and communications grant will fund an initiative by UIA, in partnership with the nonprofit Civilla, to identify agency modernization efforts that will improve the employer experience. The goal is to increase efficiencies, reduce wait times for callers, and streamline the collection of employer taxes. Taxes paid by businesses to the UIA go into the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund, from which jobless benefits are drawn to support qualified workers who lose their jobs through no fault of their own.

“This grant will help the UIA identify ways to work collaboratively with employers and break down barriers, which is one of the goals of the UIA Modernization Workgroup,” UIA Director Julia Dale said. “I want to thank the Department of Labor for supporting our equity initiatives and recognizing the momentum we are building in reimagining the agency.”

Michigan was one of the first 18 states to be added to the USDOL Tiger Teams program. Under the program, the Department of Labor provided multi-disciplinary experts to help UIA identify resources and processes to address system modernization, equity, timely payment of benefits, fraud, and case backlogs. Recommendations included technology updates, workflow adjustments, process improvements, and/or streamlining communication.

A similar Civilla-led effort is under way to improve workers’ interactions with the UIA with the goal of shortening the time it takes to apply for benefits, reducing errors when filing for unemployment benefits, and increasing timeliness of payments.

Detroit-based Civilla will work with UIA and employers to intimately understand the complexities and address any shortcomings in the way UIA serves Michigan’s business community. Civilla will apply human-centered design principles to create a clear roadmap based on employer needs that answers questions, clarifies instructions, and eliminates confusion.

“UIA staff is enthusiastically looking at everything we do through a user-focused lens,” Dale said. “That is helping us to make real progress in our effort to transform an agency that is coming out of the pandemic stronger than ever: many of our backlogs have been diminished, those who reach us by phone give us a 90 percent favorable customer service rating, and we have brought fraud cases against 115 individuals.”