Sign Vermont Work Order Now

Document type sign work order vermont now

today so appreciate you all joining us as i said uh we have darcy hamlin with our unemployment insurance division uh with us darcy uh will be talking through all the different resources that are available through the department of labor so without further ado to get you to who you actually want to hear from uh darcy why don't you uh take things away um and kind of go over uh today's agenda okay thank you kyle so um i think i'm looking at the who's here and i think i see some familiar names so um initially this was developed to meet initially with people who are used to doing our seasonal uh mass cleaning process so i do expect that we will have some new people who haven't done this before but um it's um kind of i want to start with the basics because once somebody files an unemployment claim the first thing that's going to happen on your end as an employer is that we're going to start mailing you forms and our forms lots of people tell me that our forms are confusing they seem repetitive we're not quite sure what we have to return and what we don't have to return so um kyle's going to go through our forms display those for you so we can go and talk about what the form is whether you need to return it and what information it's trying to give to you so kyle why don't we start with the b10s okay b10s yep let me just zoom out here okay so um the b10s is a form that i think most people who deal with unemployment in your employer is used to seeing this form is telling the employer that they are potentially chargeable for the unemployment claim the top section of the form on the front has information regarding who the claimant is as well as the claimant's weekly benefit amount and the total wages that were paid by both you and any other employers that are chargeable on the claim vermont is what is referred to as a proportional charging state and all that means is that when we are determining chargeability and how we're charging back employer experience ratings we are looking at what percentage percentage of all of the wages used in a defined period of time that we refer to as a base period and what percentage of those wages you paid and that determines your charge percentage for example if the total base period wages are 10 000 and you paid ten percent of those wages your account would receive ten percent of the charges against your experience rating the bottom half of the form and this is the with the long form that we send you it's eight and a half by fourteen and the bottom half of the form is a request for separation and payment information and this is information that the department needs to gather in order to determine whether the claimant is eligible to receive benefits immediately or whether there is information that requires us to investigate their eligibility it's really important to us that all of the questions answered on the form are answered as the questions are written we've actually written these questions in order to obtain the information that we need so that we can adjudicate any eligibility issues with the least amount of need to contact you for more information one of the most common areas where we see errors being made is the end date of employment that we're looking for is actually the last physical day the claimant worked if the termination date was a later date or the date you remove them from payroll that's information that's good for you to have but it's not information that we necessarily need to have and then the rest of it if you were also looking particularly if there was deductible income that was paid to an individual at or due to the separation from employment we need to be able to allocate that money based on that claimant's normal work week so we're going to ask you about that work week and we know that in some industries it's a little hard because the employer schedules varying based upon their need instead of a set work schedule so we would be looking for you to be able to give us what was the average over the last year how many hours a day did the individual work how many days per week did the individual work that way we can again have information so that we can allocate that money properly against the claim and determine the claimant start date for payments if the separation is not due to lack of work then on the back side of this form we're going to ask you for more information about why they did separate i encourage everyone at this point to give us as much detail as possible feel free to attach additional pages and if the individual was discharged any documentation that you want to attach to that copies of warnings payroll records attendance records anything that you feel helps you to make your case that this individual was discharged for work-related misconduct feel free to attach it up front you don't have to wait for a claims adjudicator to contact you to ask for it section e on this form is really important for individuals who have more than one employer and you may have receive a form for someone who is still working for you part-time and in this situation it would be because their other employment potentially they lost another job or they were reduced in hours from another job and information that you provide to us in as much detail as possible in section e helps us determine whether your account should be charged or not for any portion of this claim and then finally is section f where we're going to ask you to sign the form and print your name and give us information on how we can contact you if we need additional information i think that's it on that form the very top of that form on the back side is we're going to show back to you the wages that you reported to us on your quarterly report so it's a way for you to verify the information and correct it if it's been entered incorrectly kyle can we go back to the front page of this form sure thing yeah i think you just have to scroll back up might take it a second to come through i'm just waiting for it to load on your end probably so what i want to point out on this form when we get back to the front side is this form is going to come to you with a due date and it's very important because this information is necessary to determine whether this claimant should be paid or not so getting the form in timely so that we can prevent any improper payments to the claimant if for instance they don't tell us about something when we're taking the claim they could misinterpret when they were told that there was um not a there was no work left for them that it could be a lack of work versus it's actually a discharge and you still have work you just don't want this individual to do it for you anymore so the due date is very important and if this form has to be returned there is a 100 penalty if it is not returned by the due date on the form the penalty can also be assessed if the information provided is inaccurate or is incomplete i'm still not seeing the front so why don't we change forms and go to the b8f the front on that is the information i want to share is on that one as well yeah darcy just let me know if whatever reason it's not changing which uh was the next form you wanted to see again b8f yes and the b8f is also going to be very familiar it looks an awful lot like this form which is the b10s all of our form numbers are down in the bottom right hand corner if you uh have some forms and want to follow along from your own records i'm not seeing anything change okay um do you because i have switched i don't know if if anybody else is having that issue of not seeing the form switch but yeah um do you want to maybe try jumping out and then jump back into the meeting darcy just so that oh shoot this person doesn't see it either oh there it is okay okay okay all right just bearing with us appreciate it okay so um you're going to see that big bold box that says due date and that's the date that we must have the form back by statute you are provided with 10 calendar days from the mail date of the form um section um on this form this form is sent to you if you are not currently charged for this claim or if the individual has already had one separation from your employee during the course of this benefit year and they're coming back in to reopen the same claim that they were filing on before and underneath request for separation and payment information you're going to see some bull some bullets that look like black squares this form only has to be returned to us if the claimant separates for a reason that is not lack of work is being paid any type of remuneration that is listed in section b um is on a family leave or was hired to cover for someone who was on family leave and they've now uh the original employees now returned to work sometimes people misread this section just because we're sending you the form and we're not telling you that somebody has left your employment the um it really is more of an if or statement if the claimant voluntarily quit if the claimant was discharged uh received payments at separation or due to the separation otherwise this form is essentially the same as the b10s and asks for the same information okay then can we move on to the b10ns yep i uh we'll click over that right now and get it so that we can see the whole thing right thank you and it may just take a second for it to switch over there it is perfect okay so the b10ns is essentially the same form as the b10s except that this goes out to all of the employers who are being charged for this claim but who are not identified as the last employer in time so you're going to see this form when someone who used to work for you potentially up to a year and a half ago has filed an unemployment claim but wages that you paid to this individual are still being used to calculate his claim and we were going to ask you for the same type of information in regard to his separation because this form is to use to determine whether your account remains chargeable or whether your account should be relieved of charges on this form we don't ask for payment information because we're not looking at the claimant's eligibility for benefits at this time we are solely looking for information about the separation in order to determine whether your account should be charged or not and then the next form we're going to look at is our b84w alrighty switch it over okay while we're waiting for that we'll just talk about it a little bit the b84w is notice of benefit charges to your experience rating record and if you have people who have been charged against your account during a month you will receive a notice of benefit charges to your experience rating record this is telling you what charges are being assigned to your account either for current employees who are on layoff and filing or past employees and this is another opportunity for you to protest whether an account your account should be charged so you may receive this for a month or two with charges on it that you've already protested and at some point we're going to get to that b10s form and right now it's taking approximately eight or more weeks with the volume of these separation forms that we're processing to get through so it may be two months it might even be three months that you see an individual still on your notice of charges that you have already sent in a charge protest on i can assure you that those charged protests are being looked at and that um any charges that are assigned to your account that should not have been will later come back to you as a credit on you'll see a credit indicated on this form next to the dollar amount by the initials cr you'll notice this this form says this is not a bill because this is an insurance program we operate just like your auto insurance program if you are this information is used to determine whether your rate will remain the same go down or go up when the rate period ends and your new rate is sent out to you in the end of june okay at any point in time whether you are welcomed if you have information that calls an individual's eligibility into question we encourage you to contact us and um tell us what you know you are the eyes and ears of the program in your community and are the first strong line of defense against people receiving benefits that they shouldn't be receiving okay and then we're going to go to the b70 okey-doke okay and the b70 form is a wage request this form always must be returned by the due date on the form it also carries a 100 penalty if it is not received and this information is when we need recent wage information to determine whether a claimant qualifies for a benefit amount in many cases when we're looking at a initial claim and determining monetary eligibility we are looking back up to 18 months but this law gives us three opportunities to determine whether someone qualifies we start with old wages and we work our way forward so the b-70 form is asking you to provide us with wage information that is not yet due on your quarterly report so it's important that these forms get turned around and get right back to us so that we can then move forward on determining an individual's eligibility okay so i think that's the only forms that we have time to go through um and all right so yeah i'll just jump back to our other topics um kind of talk through already what uh what the forms are and what do i need to return next thing on our agenda is the deductible income and adjudication process i believe so i don't know if you have any you want to talk through any of that or if you would rather just jump right into the spreadsheet versus individual forms that would be the next thing well i'm going to touch really quickly on what we consider to be deductible income deductible income is income that is deemed disqualifying by statute and it requires us to issue an eligibility determination to to identify for both the employer and the claimant which weeks of the claim are being impacted by this money and when benefits are going to start for the individual recent statute has added a new category of deductible income deductible income currently is vacation pay that is paid at or due to the separation or even if it's paid but not time taken off in the four weeks prior to separation vacation pay also includes personal time off some employers also call it pto or cto um all of that falls under our vacation personal time uh statute we also look at wages in lieu of notice one of the most mis construed topics wages and move notice is literally if you are letting an individual go you're not able to give them any notice so you're going to pay them for through the end of the week or through the end of the day or through the end of the pay period all of that money is also deductible income uh severance pay if paid generally at the end of a permanent separation is deductible income and if a severance agreement is required to be signed in order to receive that money we need a copy of that agreement um statute requires us to review the agreement to determine if the agreement spells out how that money is allocated and then our newest category is sick pay if you are paying out a balance of sick pay to an individual that money is now deductible as well and requires a claims adjudicator to review that and issue a decision we also consider as personal pay would be payment for a holiday that is not a recognized legal holiday under vermont statute the most common day of this is the day after thanksgiving many employers give that day off with pay in your policies you call it a holiday for unemployment we call it personal pay okay so then let's move on to the mass layoff spreadsheet many of you received an email telling you that this year as part of our seasonal layoff process we will no longer be opening claims for your workers and so we're going to we have information that's on our website available for you to give your employees when they're being being laid off that tells them how they can go online and open their own claim or reopen an existing claim you want to go the website kyle yeah let me just pull that up yep and so that is just for those who may not have known uh it is on our website at labor.vermont.gov and click on unemployment insurance uh there's seasonal layoffs and claims information so the link is labor.vermont.go unemployment dash insurance seasonal and then darcy i guess if you want to talk if you want to talk through i can scroll down to the employment section but we do have the information up here for both claimants and employers on this page so um why don't we just scroll down to the bottom just so we can see it sure absolutely and then down here for employers you will see that this is where you're going to find our mass layoff spreadsheet it's not populated there at this moment but it will be there later today um but we also have the one sheet handout that you can print off and give to employees that explains to them how they get their unemployment claim opened one of the things that's really important to remember about opening the unemployment claim is that it has to be opened during the first week they wish to be paid for so if um they want to file as soon you know as soon as you lay them off they can file during the first week that their hours are reduced or they are laid off totally in order to establish their claim and to be paid so that they don't miss a week unemployment claims begin on the date they're filed they do not get backdated okay and then please start darcy did you want me to open the the spreadsheet or um i certainly can do that why do you open the spreadsheet let me see if i can i can try to pull that up as uh you're talking through stuff right here all right so as i said at the beginning of this we're going to send you a lot of forms and when you have a company-wide shutdown that's an awful lot of paperwork to process but if you are laying off 10 or more people we're going to encourage you to complete our math layoff spreadsheet this can be provided to us in lieu of you returning all of those forms it's really only going to be needed if you have individuals who are laid off due to a lack of work and who are being paid deductible income at or due to the separation if they're being laid off they have no income that they have that's going to impact their claim um we don't need to have this the spreadsheet either so it's a great way to report to us all of that vacation pay information in one location that allows our claims adjudications unit to gather information necessary to issue those decisions but to also do what we refer to as a multi-claimant adjudication which allows us to get decisions out to your employees faster so that they can begin receiving benefits sooner this year we've scaled down our math layoff spreadsheet we if since we're not opening claims we don't need you to provide as much information as you had in the past if you've used this format we have added columns for sick pay and um removed columns that no longer really apply to us so darcy darcy somebody carmella tucker did just provide a question in the in the chat about using the mass playoff spreadsheets for initial layoffs of more than 10 or not at all this year just clarifying what you had said earlier i believe we're asking you all as employers to direct folks to our website because they can file or establish their claims online as opposed to the process which has been that they couldn't have done that in the past um so would we want is that any more information on that darcy so um yeah exactly kyle what we're not doing any at this point because it's it's a your workers are able to do this easily themselves is we are not going to be opening claims from math layoff spreadsheets or from initial claim applications that we had used as part of the math layoff process anyone who wants to file a claim is going to be responsible for opening that claim on their own and we're encouraging them to try using the online filing first if for some reason they are not able to file online they still can file their own claims by calling our initial claims line at eight seven seven two one four three three three zero um staff will still be there to assist them to open the claims but um it's really becoming more of a user-driven process the spreadsheets will really only need to be returned if you are paying out any type of deductible income at the separation and if you get any forms that are sent to you for claimants that you have not laid off and provided to us on a math layoff notice those forms would likely have to be returned to us as well i want to draw your attention on the math layoff spreadsheet to the instructions tab there is additional instructions there to help you complete the form if you're not sure of something and if you have any questions about completing the math layoff form you are welcome to contact our employer assistance line someone can answer your questions about that and get you off on the right start yeah thanks darcy i just wanted to add in case it's uh still loading to come up and for the instructions that um as you said earlier darcy that the this spreadsheet will be made available online later today and then i do believe i would assume as well that we would be potentially sending the link to find that again to employers as well so directly uh via email but um you can definitely find that on our website as well on the seasonal page awesome anything else anything else darcy on the the mass uh layoff spreadsheet i'm just gonna jump back over to the uh website if not i just wanted to to call out a few of the the resources and if you had anything to add that's as well we're diving with the math layoff spreadsheet awesome so just in terms of other resources that are on this page on this on the unemployment dash insurance seasonal page as darcy said there's a link to the one sheet that i would definitely encourage employers to provide um yeah just give it a second it must be my connectivity today is is not the best um i blame the weather for that kind of stuff uh just in terms of the resources that are available on this unemployment insurance seasonal page there is the as i said the one sheet for employers that has information about how to establish and reopen a claim online um and then also a link to the uh ui claimant handbook uh that would be specific for employers and there's more information for claimants at the at the top of the page so darcy i'll jump back over to the uh presentation okay um so i think that kind of covers the mass layoff spreadsheet versus individual forms uh bullet point i think that the next next few topics um would be benefit charges um and then i did see before we move on uh carla asking so we really do not have to give our employees the b65 form anymore um do you want to provide some just clarification on the b65 form and if employers need to provide that to their employees carmel you are correct we are not going to be using the b65 which is a paper application for unemployment claims employers who have previously used the mass layoff filing process have been required to have their employees complete that form and return it to us anytime that we had to establish an initial unemployment claim since the employees are going to be opening their own claims we won't need that form from anyone awesome thank you okay um so the next yeah the next thing on the agenda was uh talking about benefit charges um so i don't know if that's something that you want to talk through and just provide a little bit more clarification as well um so i think that we've talked a bit about benefit charges um benefit charges are assigned to base period employers um when and to be a base period employer your wages past wages paid to an employee are being used to calculate a benefit amount all base period employers are potentially chargeable but based on the information that is provided to us we will determine whether the uh employer should be charged or their account should be relieved if the you are not the last employer in time and you're receiving a form b10ns and you have an adjudication decision from a prior claim or a copy of an appeal decision don't worry about filling out the form just send us a cop attach the form to a copy of the decision and send it back in to us um it's not possible for our system to recognize when a claim has been the employer has been relieved of charges based on a separation determination um in a prior benefit year it does not automatically get applied to the new year lack of work separations are always chargeable separations the claimant is out of work through no fault of their own this year things are a little bit different with our work search um requirements that do the pandemic we currently are not requiring claimants to seek work regardless or to register with vermont job link certainly they are welcome to register if they would like to but at this time it's not a requirement as we begin to see how things are shaping up with the employment picture and as the pandemic evolves we may be reinstituting work search and individuals would be notified of that winner if it happened and then the next topic is return to work dates and again for people who have filed or worked with us last year have during the seasonal layoffs we made a move to asking you to go online and update return to work dates for your workers instead of having it come into our office and become something that is delaying your employee from being paid if the return to work date has changed but um is something that we are trying to schedule into our workload so when you are on our website you can go into our employer online services and right in there you will find a link to update or to our i think it's called our return to work portal employees return to work data application this application lets you add remove or change or return to work date for an individual that you have laid off you can also you can do one individual at a time you can do an upload if you have a file that you would like to upload to change multiple return to work dates one thing about the return to workday portal is that if you have multiple people in your organization who will be changing return to work dates possibly in different locations the system only allows for one password one pin to be used for the entire organization we can't create pins for multiple locations and darcy just before we move on to the uh refusal of work portion um a lot of this information uh you know the that seasonal page will be continually updated as we get more and more uh resources so definitely feel free from an employer's perspective to um you know just really just jump to that page first you know we'll be adding more resources like darcy is referring to um whether it's the return to work dates or uh as we talked about the refusal of or the mass layoff form and then i know darcy i think you're gonna through the reporting of refusal of work i know we do have a form um on our website currently for that as well so certainly we'll be adding links uh to that to the to the seasonal page so um i guess darcy if you want to last but not least talk through the uh reporting of refusal of work sure um would you take us to where it is on the website kyle sure i can definitely do that i think um i will say i'll be likely adding it to that seasonal page but just in terms of uh where it is currently um i can i can definitely bring you there but if you want to start talking through it sure just so that folks can kind of see it i will say we i do have some updates to make to the uh the multiple uh filing portion of that but people can definitely still submit individual um this is yeah uh individual reports um before refusal to return to work so if it's not up currently it should be here shortly but if you go currently it's on the unemployment insurance page if you go down to where it says fraud there's a link for refusal to return to work and you can click on that which gives you some more information about refusal to return to work and other types of fraud and then brings you right to the form uh that you can fill out and then that goes on to our staff so um if it's if again if it's not up darcy it should be here in a in a few seconds uh to come up so again apologies for the connectivity issues okay so um as a requirement of unemployment an individual is always required whether they're required to seek work or not to be willing and able to accept suitable work if offered to them and if you have offered work to a former employee ask them to come back after layoff and they refuse we're asking that you report to you can either use the refusal of work website tool or you could you can fax or email a letter to us our fax number at the claim center is 802-828-9191 and we have a general email box which is labor dot ui claims center at vermont.gov if you're sending us information it's important to have details again we would be in touch with you for details of when the offer was made what type of work was offered to them the wage of the work that was offered to them and it is important when you're making an offer of work to be specific with the individual um about what work is being offered um the courts have determined that the the offer of work has to be sufficient for the individual to make an informed decision so um so it's it's important to even if it seems redundant to remind them of the way coming back to work what they're going to be doing the work location and then if they refuse if you can find out why they are refusing the work we're going to ask them that as well as we move forward into investigating that refusal and i think that's about it awesome and darcy i did put the link to the in the i put the link in the chat to the refusal to return to work report form and i'll throw the link in the chat as well for some of the other pages that we were referencing earlier including that seasonal page but i would like to open it up now darcy if you're if you're ready to take some questions if there are any from folks i guess we can we can start i don't see any more questions in the chat but if folks want to go ahead and post questions in the chat that's great thank you to darcy for posting the fax information i know a lot of that's on our a lot of that information is online but i'm always best to just get that information here but before we do uh pivot to the chat i do want to offer folks on the phone uh the opportunity uh to unmute themselves again that would be star six to unmute and feel free to ask any questions that you might have regarding anything about this seasonal and mass claims process i know we kind of threw a lot at you feel free again to unmute and just go ahead i'm just going to kind of keep talking until i hear somebody you know jump in but as i said this presentation has been recorded and we'll be posting it onto our youtube channel and actually putting that presentation right onto the seasonal page so that folks can find it as well and likely sending the link out to you all as employers so that you can re-watch this presentation so not hearing anybody with questions over the phone and not seeing anybody posting any questions in the chat so i guess darcy do you have any kind of final thoughts about anything if you know i see uh carmella is looks like something in the in the chat but um you know certainly if anybody has any questions please feel free um you know to reach out i know that we'll be doing another one of these sessions uh we have another one of these sessions scheduled for uh next thursday at the same time at two o'clock so uh please feel free to join us um at that time uh as i said we'll be posting this uh more and more information as we get closer um to uh the the end of the uh as we get closer uh to the end of the month um i know we're only a few days away so darcy did you have any kind of last thoughts or anything um for folks well i think you know for your workers who have routinely relied on you to open your claims when it's necessary to do that this is going to be a little bit scary for them particularly some of our older workers and that on the seasonal page there is actually a claimant portion that um gives them important information and that there's also um a recorded presentation there that they can also watch to help answer any questions that they have absolutely thank you and i'll uh i'll throw that link here in the chat just real quick um but yeah i think we'll just be communicating more and more um you know with folks and i did just throw that link into the chat again that was labor.vermont.g v slash unemployment dash insurance slash seasonal so please uh be sure to head to that page for any questions we'll be adding more resources uh to that page as uh the days and weeks and months go on so darcy and everybody darcy thank you for so much for the information as i said we'll be doing another one of these next week so we'll look forward to potentially seeing folks then but other than that thank you all for joining us and have a great rest of your day thank you