Different from straight unemployment benefits that are only given out when the employees are fully laid-off, the Work Share Program provides employers options to retain as many of their employees as possible by allowing them to ‘share’ a full time work schedule. Instead of having to lay off employees, the employer can temporarily reduce hours for an entire department or work-shift and allow employees to share the work. The affected employees can then claim unemployment compensation for the hours reduced from their schedule, and earn regular wages for the time worked. This means that each employee can continue to be compensated for full-time employment, and employers can keep their workforce engaged and in-tact.

For their part of the project, OSaaS designed one centralized cloud-based system that automated the entire Work Share process from application submission through approvals and activation. Salesforce.com contributed a case management system that replaced several manual internal processes and allowed the multiple departments involved to quickly and easily enter their part of the required information . This new combined OSaaS and Salesforce.com solution resulted in increased accuracy and saved time and money. Employers can submit applications electronically and start a case; EDD staffers are immediately notified and can quickly review and move the application to the next step; and everything is transparently tracked by all. As a result, the employer application filing was 12x times faster and allowed for a larger volume of applications processed, preventing the layoffs of thousands upon thousands of employees across California.

This Work Sharing automation project was awarded the Best of California award for 2020 and thus is continuing to grow and scale as Work Sharing becomes a sought after program for many employers affected by the Covid-19 pandemic.