Employer Self Service: Georgia Department of Labor

Contact Information of Individual Submitting Nomination

Nominator: Linda Manis

Agency Name : Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL)

Employer Self Service

Several years ago, the Georgia Department of Labor (GDOL) began a modernization program to update aging systems. The latest initiative, Employer Self Service, was targeted at the thousands of employers in the state that interact with GDOL daily, resulting in cost savings and improved efficiency in performing transactions, and benefiting both the employer and the agency. Employer Self Service had three (3) main business objectives.

1. Provide an Employer Portal that allows for single sign on to GDOL applications. Providing an easy to use front end to GDOL applications supports the goal of a) reducing mailings to employers and b) providing easy access to online tools. The deployment of the Employer Portal allowed GDOL to eliminate the mailing of yearly tax rate notices. The yearly cost of mailing tax rate notices is $150,000. GDOL will see a yearly return on investment of $150,000 by driving employers to obtain their tax rate notices online (no more mailings). The Employer Portal allows for single sign-on to GDOL's Tax Employer applications: filing taxes online, paying taxes online, changing account information, viewing historical data related to taxes paid.

2. Implementing ACH Credit as an alternative to payroll service providers sending in paper checks was designed to drastically reduce manual processing. In 1st quarter 2015, GDOL received 140,000 paper checks. Manual processing of those paper checks took 3 to 4 weeks. GDOL was able to implement ACH Credit in 3rd quarter 2017. Since the initial deployment, GDOL worked with payroll service providers to convert them from check to ACH Credit. Our efforts were met with success. In 1st quarter 2018, GDOL received 63,800 paper checks. That is a 55% reduction in checks received from 1st quarter 2015. More importantly the time to process those checks was reduced from 3 or 4 weeks to 1 or 2 weeks.

3. Implementing wage file upload as an alternative for single employers currently mailing in paper returns or magnetic media is another initiative designed to reduce manual processing. Wage File Upload went live 1st quarter 2017. At that time 969 employers utilized the service. By 4th quarter that number grew to 2,888.

All of the objectives in the Employer Self Service program have the shared goal of reducing the manual effort required from UI Operations staff. The program's goal is to realize cost savings by reducing the number of resources required and reallocating resources to strategic functions.

Statement of results, accomplishments, impacts and any other appropriate information that demonstrates why the nominee's efforts were an exceptional contribution.

In 2018, 50% of the employers in GA registered in the Employer Portal.
Employers are able to pull up historical tax information in the Portal. This has significantly reduced calls to operations staff to create reports for employers.
Employers are able to update their mailing address online. This has resulted in a reduction in returned mail.
Employers are able to reset their password online. This has reduced calls to the operations staff.
Employers are able to view their account information "at a glance". This feature has reduced calls to operations staff. Additionally, the calls are shorter in duration.
ACH Credit resulted in 55% reduction in paper checks received 1st quarter 2018 compared to 1st quarter 2015.
ACH Credit resulted in exponential reduction in "suspense processing". To resolve a paper check on "suspense" took from 4 to 12 weeks. Using ACH credit the "suspense" process is reduced to days.

Other significant contributions

The focus on automation has resulted in payroll service providers taking advantage of updated technology – ACH Credit vs Paper Check. Utilization of ACH credit reduced risk of fraud./li>
One service provider represents 39,000 Georgia employers and files on their behalf. Before the ACH Credit implementation, they would have to bear the expense and effort of producing 39,000 individual checks along with the mailing of the checks to the Georgia Department of Labor. GDOL would then process each check received in a laborintensive process that included opening, sorting and scanning each check individually. The ACH Credit process allowed providers to submit a single file, representing the payment for each employer, that would then be automatically processed by the bank as well as by GDOL, same day. Service providers across the state now take advantage and benefit from the new ACH Credit process./li>
ACH Credit has resulted in over 50% reduction in paper checks received just in its first year./li>
The paper check process took months to identify accounts that were not in the system. ACH Credit process notifies employer immediately when a payment is received for an account not on file./li>