Last week my blog dealt with the likelihood of a Recession beginning during 2025 and what business owners can do to prepare. This week I’d like to present another tool that is available for times like this. This tool is the Washington State Employment Security Department’s SharedWork program.
SharedWork is not new, the program was introduced in 1983. Despite this, I find that a lot of clients have never heard of it and have never used it. That’s a shame, because it is a great program that can provide a safety net to employers and their employees.
The idea is that sometimes an employer has a temporary period where they don’t have full-time work for all their employees, but they do have part-time work and they want to retain their people. SharedWork allows employees to work part-time while also collecting a portion of their unemployment benefits.
Employees must work at least 50% of their usual hours. The employees on SharedWork can be changed weekly, and the number of hours worked can also be changed each week.
For example, if an employee works three days in one week (60% of FTE), they can collect 40% of their unemployment compensation for that week. The next week the same employee might work 100% of their normal hours and they wouldn’t collect any unemployment benefits. Then, say, during the third week, they work 80% FTE, they could collect 20% of their unemployment benefits.
The employees do not have to do a job search during the weeks they are not fully employed. Meanwhile, the employer saves money while retaining valuable people. Most employers will qualify to participate in Shared Work.
To learn more about the program, go here: https://esd.wa.gov/get-financial-help/sharedwork-program/about-sharedwork
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