A note to the team from Commissioner Cami Feek

2023 ESD accomplishments  

 Administrative Services Division 

• Closed the 640 building in Lacey on time and under budget by about $200,000. This office closure will save the agency $1,633,111 annually.  
• Established an Administrative Policy team to streamline the process of initiating, developing and managing agency policies.   
• Stood up the Office of Organizational Risk to better manage risk to the agency. 
• Implemented ReadyOp alerts to alert employees to emergencies efficiently and timely.  

Customer Compliance Division 

• This division was introduced in September. It brings together various compliance-oriented workstreams focused on enhancing the customer experience. 
• The UI Employer Audit team completed 2,479 audits. 
• The Fraud team successfully prevented $989,847 in fraudulent Paid Leave funds and $523,784 in unemployment funds from being paid out. Additionally, the Imposter Detection team prevented $1.47 million from being paid to bad actors from January to October.  

Data Architecture, Transformation and Analytics Division 

• Developed the first Paid Family and Medical Leave Actuarial Annual Report. This work provides clear and expert analysis on the PFML financial condition and rate projections, as well as recommendations to improve the program over time.  
• Evaluated Washington’s RESEA program. Preliminary findings show the program is effective at helping claimants find work and shortening their time on UI. 
• Worked with the Bureau of Labor Statistics and with economists from Oregon and Idaho to evaluate cross-border labor flows. This effort will help us better understand worker movement between states and industries.  
• Deployed a customer-flow tracker in multiple WorkSource offices. It tracks the number of people who walk through the doors. It also gathers insight into the behaviors and needs of Washingtonians looking for employment services. 

Employment Connections Division 

• Valuable feedback led to a decision to sunset the Professional Pathways program.
• Received $10 million in a PROWD (Partners for Reentry Opportunities in Workforce Development) grant. The program will support people transitioning out of federal incarceration and facing reentry barriers.  
• WorkSource team members provided job search help to just under 90,000 people and organized dozens of job fairs throughout the state. 
• WorkSource Rainier in Seattle is piloting a new digital literacy workshop that supports Somali-speaking job seekers experiencing barriers to employment. 

Employment System Policy & Integrity 

• Closed out pandemic benefits, including creating policies allowing ESD to establish and waive pandemic-era overpayments. Worked with federal and state partners to close audit findings. 
• Distributed federal grants and monitored workforce programs that serve ESD’s job seeking customers. 
• Agricultural & Seasonal Workforce Services office continued its outreach and service to domestic and foreign guest farmworkers. 
• Leave & Care policy team continued building and refining the policy structure that underlies the Paid Leave and WA Cares programs. The team contributed its expertise to business requirements, standard operating procedures, website content, and correspondence.  

Equal Opportunity Office  

• Conducted in-person equal opportunity monitoring of each of the state’s 12 workforce development areas. 
• Worked to ensure staff and customers were heard if they felt they were treated unfairly and discriminated against. The EOO team processed 64 discrimination complaints, including 27 employee complaints and 37 customer complaints. 
• Hosted two conferences and three two-day trainings for EO officers across the state. 
• Partnered and supported the work of the EDI office and the Employee Engagement team, including PEAR; Doing the Work: Truth in Action, the ESD mentorship program; and the DJA program. 

Financial Services Division 

• Processed 1,588,902 benefit payments for a total of $1.34 billion. 
• On average, 99.83% of all properly completed vendor payment invoices were paid out within 30 days.  88.46% were paid in 15 days. Handled a 38% increase in requests for vendor payments.
• Working with the Office of the Attorney General, UI Treasury and Fraud Recovery recovered an additional $42 million of the $424 million recovered so far from the pandemic UI payments made to fraudsters. 
• Registered as a business in 18 states in support of 56 employees working out of state. 
• Successfully went live with WA Cares financial reporting. Total receipts for October 2023 were $322.6 million, enabling ESD to pay back a $64.3 millino loan from the general fund. 

Human Resources Division 

• Processed 224 ergonomic requests from staff. 
• Helped to reimburse 20 ESD employees for school tuition through the Tuition Reimbursement Program.  
• Welcomed 117 mentees and 102 mentors into our Mentorship program.  
• Included veteran’s preference protocol in our Washington General Service certification protocol. 
• Hosted the Governor’s Employer Awards. 
• Verified 1,365 COVID-19 boosters to award staff a booster incentive. 

Information Technology Services Division 

• Completed the IT Modernization project. 
• Completed many security improvements and audits. Includes closing more than 110,000 security incidents, resolving about 2,900 suspicious emails, and implementing new IT security training and Cybersecurity Month FAQ sessions. 
• UTAB development effort has resulted in waiving $44 million in pandemic-era overpayments for customers. 
• Welcomed Sam Kim as our new chief information officer! 

Leave & Care Division

• Launched three major components of the WA Cares program: four new exemption categories, self-employed elective coverage, and premiums and wage reporting. 
• Paid $1.3 billion in Paid Leave benefits to more than 174,000 Washingtonians. 
• Developed and deployed six major technology releases containing 86 features and 49 fixes. 
• Conducted over 75 presentations, outreach events, and webinars to employers, community-based organizations and partner agencies. 
• Successfully launched our first ever Leadership Academy. 

Pro-Equity Anti-Racism (PEAR) Team 

• Established the ESD PEAR Constitution, the PEAR Leadership team and three PEAR subcommittees. 
• PEAR Leadership team meets monthly to oversee team activities, prioritize initiatives, conduct strategic planning, foster collaboration with stakeholders, secure resources for subcommittee work, monitor progress, and communicate updates. 
• Established a process to compensate PEAR team community members for their contributions and involvement in the PEAR initiative. 
• Completed four out of five items on the PEAR Readiness checklist. 

Product, Planning & Performance Division 

• Completed 73 projects after implementing portfolios. We completed 31 projects in 2022.  
• Reduced the active project count from over 100 to 67. 
• Incorporated more Agile practices into our projects and launched the Agile Café. 
• Established a dual-language community of practice for team members across the agency who deliver service in non-English languages. 
• Launched ESD’s first accessibility policy and training, including IT training. 

Unemployment Insurance Customer Support  

• Stood up a new Overpayment operations team dedicated to helping claimants to complete pandemic-era waiver applications and adjudicating waiver requests. Working together, the project team and the operations team have brought in over 43,000 waiver applications; adjudicated 16,000; and waived, in total, $44 million in overpayments for 35,000 customers.  
• More than 2,400 employers were approved to participate in the SharedWork program and nearly 49,000 participants were approved for plans to avoid layoffs. This year, SharedWork celebrated its 40th anniversary! 
• Upgraded the claims center’s cloud-based phone system. 
• Work Opportunity Tax Credit unit updated its online filing system, well in advance of the deadline set by the U.S. Department of Labor.  

Executive Programs 

 Commissioner’s Review Office 

• Issued 4,700 decisions. 
• We currently have no backlog on any decisions. 
• Maintained a 91% success rate on appeals. 

Communications Office 

• Launched a project to modernize esd.wa.gov.   
• Sustained our higher-than-industry standard for open and click rates on the Employer Newsletter, which contributed to employers having the information they needed for the first quarter of WA Cares reporting.  
• Relaunched our social media channels and blog.  
• Completed an internal communications audit to inform the internal strategic communications plan for 2024.  
• Ran a campaign for the Employee Engagement Survey that led to ESD having the highest response rate among state agencies with 2,000 or more employees.  

Government Relations Office 

• Supported a successful 2023 legislative session. Efforts included passing a biennial budget, securing critical resources to respond to pandemic-era overpayments, and addressing the reduction in federal UI finding to support agency operations.  
• Provided greater visibility on newly established mandates and supported their integration into agency division plans. 
• Responded to a legislative directive to better understand the experience of apprentices using the UI system. 
• We’re now gearing up for another legislative session! 

Office of Equity, Diversity & Inclusion  

• Launched our sixth employee resource group at ESD. 
• Developed a new version of Speak Your Truth, now called “Doing the Work: Truth in Action” and brought three new equity specialists to the EDI Office. 
• Helped the ESD Mentorship program to check for equity in matching and outcomes. 
• Helped to create and pilot the Developmental Job Assignment program. 
• Supported inclusive hiring efforts with HR’s Talent Acquisition unit.