My parting thoughts about how ESD “repairs the world”

By Suzi LeVine, Employment Security Department commissioner — July 2018 to January 2021

Tikkun olam.

It’s a Hebrew phrase for “repair the world.”

It’s the idea that we are obliged to do what we can during our lives to leave the world better than when we entered it. It’s one of my core values and dictates how I choose to spend my time and my energy.

Given this north star, I feel incredibly fortunate to have spent the past two and a half years as the servant leader of the Employment Security Department (ESD), where so much happens to make the world a better place. In this, my last blog post as commissioner, I’ll:

• Share some of the examples of progress made by the team during my tenure.
• Provide a reflection on unemployment benefits and this crisis.
• Honor the incredible staff at the agency.

Progress in these last two and a half years
The regular, ongoing work of ESD impacts Washingtonians across the state and from all walks of life. It ranges from re-employment services through WorkSource to the Washington Service Corps and from unemployment benefits to H2A certification. In addition to the ongoing steady-state work of the agency, some exceptional efforts over the past two and a half years have enhanced or improved how we serve the state. The well-known highlights include:

• Launching Paid Family and Medical Leave within 30 months from bill signing to benefit delivery — with more than $600 million in benefits provided to almost 100,000 people in the first year.
• Responding to the COVID crisis by delivering more than $13.8 billion in unemployment benefits to more than 1 million Washingtonians in less than a year.

But I’m also very proud of many lesser known successes. While I served as commissioner, we:

• Created the Agricultural and Seasonal Workforce Committee and inaugural report. This effort will ensure that, when someone bites into a Washington apple or drinks beer made from our hops, it not only tastes good, it also feels good because they will know that both the worker and the employer were treated fairly.
• Conducted and then published recommendations from an extensive military spouse listening tour in partnership with the state Department of Veterans Affairs. Recommendations that bubbled up from these sessions are now finding their way into both state and federal legislation.
• Delivered innovative Career Connect Washington apprenticeship grants. These are transforming how Washingtonians gain access to the American dream by providing earn-and-learn opportunities across the state.
• Designed and supplied the life-changing Economic Security for All grant. Providing families with escape velocity from poverty is at the heart of this grant program — the first of its kind in Washington state.

Organizationally, we:

• Created a values lens to enhance the culture of the agency. They say that culture eats strategy for lunch. By centering our strategic plan around our values, we were able to have our lunch and eat it, too!
• Created new groups focusing on equity, diversity and inclusion, as well as on planning and governance.
• Kept our staff safe by transforming the agency at the outset of the crisis from less than 5% telework to over 95% telework — within two weeks!
• Increased the positive response rate to “I would recommend ESD as a place to work” by 6% in the most recent state Employee Engagement Survey — even after adding 1,200 new staff and enduring the pressures of a pandemic.
• Developed a state agency’s first economic cycle plan in Washington state. We distilled key learnings from the recession into a set of recommendations on how ESD should prepare and act. Written before the pandemic, it gave us a jumpstart to our COVID response. Granted, it was designed for a slower ramp-up and only for about a 2–3 times workload increase, but it still allowed us to modestly increase our readiness.

And so much more.

A reflection on unemployment benefits and this crisis
I am clear-eyed — as is ESD — that there is no declaring victory at this point.

In these past 10 months, I’ve learned and lived the power of the word “AND.” Two things that are seemingly in conflict can be true at the same time. Every day, for example, we continually wrestle with these two ANDs:

• We have paid an unprecedented $13.8 billion to over a million people in 10 months AND, in any given week, 1.5 to 2% of claimants are awaiting resolution of their claims because of eligibility and/or identity issues.
• We need to get benefits out as quickly as possible to people who need them AND we need to put all precautions in place to prevent imposter and unemployment insurance fraud. Those precautions can delay paying benefits.

And the ANDs continue the more you delve into the details.

AND yet:

• Many have not yet received the benefits they need.
• Many need benefits but — because of the governing laws — are ineligible for them.
• Some have received benefits but are being asked to pay them back because of eligibility.
• The massive need continues. Just last Tuesday, we received 72,000 calls to our unemployment call center.

In other words, despite so much progress — so much work remains. But let me take a step back to provide some context:

The core work of Unemployment Insurance programs boils down to:

• Validating eligibility according to the law — initially and ongoing.
• Verifying that someone is who they say they are.
• Determining how much money someone should be receiving.
• Getting them the money.

Sounds simple, but the laws governing this work make administering it anything BUT simple.

And, in this crisis, four more dimensions complicated our work even further:

• The volume and velocity of the increase in claims swamped our systems. We were not equipped or funded to handle that load.
• The addition of new programs and the need to gauge eligibility across multiple programs initially and ongoing — including for those switching between programs — complicates claiming and customer service. Every week someone’s situation may change. Plus — new information comes in over time, such as new hours reported, that might impact eligibility.
• Time-based programs cause complexity and angst. The pandemic-related programs include end dates, which changes a person’s eligibility over time.
• A massive criminal attack pressed us to dramatically increase our verification, detection and prevention efforts.

A culture of continuous improvement
I have been so proud of the team for facing these challenges and working through really hard decisions. They have constantly innovated and worked around the clock to tackle these complications. We have changed how we work and have made continuous improvements.

I know some thought our computer system had many “glitches,” but we actually experienced relatively few technical errors. However, the crisis spotlighted many parts of the system that need improvement, and those enhancements will come.

The culture of innovation nurtured before the crisis bloomed throughout the pandemic. It continues to grow now and is only getting stronger. Innovation and adaptation require an environment in which people can try and, if they don’t succeed, learn and try again.

ESD’s collective opportunity and obligation going forward is to take what we’ve learned from this crisis and improve what we do. That culture is in ESD’s groundwater, and that’s a great thing!

I’ll finish with this: A good leader has a great team!

None of our progress these past two and a half years — and especially these past 10 months — would have been possible without the dedicated, caring, smart and hard-working staff at ESD. I am forever grateful to them for being my colleagues, my teachers, my inspiration and my partners in repairing the world.