Work Share

How much paperwork is required for businesses and employees participating in the program?

Work has been done to make the process as easy as possible.

• ​Work Share Fact Sheet
  
• Work Share Frequently Asked Questions Sheet​​

​Employees participating in Work Share must retain coverage in the retirement plan under the same terms and conditions as employees not participating in Work Share. Hours that are reduced under the Work Share plan must be credited for purposes of participation, vesting, and accrual of benefits as though the usual weekly hours of work had not been reduced. However, the dollar amount of employer contributions to a defined contribution plan that are based on the amount of employee compensation may be less due to the reduction in the employee's compensation. For example.

• ​Retirement contributions to a defined contribution plan are based on the hours an employee worked. If your employees all normally work 40 hours per week, but are having their hours reduced by 20% under your Work Share plan, they must be treated as having worked 40 hours for purposes of participation, vesting, and accrual of benefits.
  
  The amount of money the employer contributes into the plan, however, would be reduced by 20%. The employer's contribution rate remains the same, but the actual amounts contributed would be decreased due to the employee having lower weekly earnings. 

​Yes.

• ​Employees must be treated as working their normal hours for purposes of eligibility for the plan, vesting, and benefit accruals (i.e., years of service). These components relate to time/hours worked. In its shared work plan, a PERS-participating employer must certify that no employee participating in the shared work plan will have their hours reduced below 50 per month and 600 per year.
• Contributions to the Individual Account Program can be reduced to reflect reduction of the actual salary paid to the employee.

​Yes. Work Share helps prevent layoffs. If you reduce your employees' hours worked by 20 to 40 percent for the week, they will potentially receive Unemployment Insurance benefits for the reduced hours and the $600 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) benefit through July 25, 2020.​

​Yes. Work Share is ideal for situations where an employer needs to gradually bring employees back to work. When employee hours are reduced 20 to 40 percent, they will continue receiving Unemployment Insurance benefits, including the $600 weekly Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation (FPUC) benefit through July 25, 2020. ​

You must be able to work and available to work to qualify for Work Share. If you have available work for your employee and they choose not to work for any reason, they would not qualify for Work Share that week.

Exception: If your staff misses work due to COVID-19, please let us know. We will accept their weekly claim but will need to review it under regular UI guidelines, not under Work Share. The person's earnings may also impact their eligibility for the week. ​

​UPDATE: Beginning August 2, 2020 through December 26, 2020, an employee may use approved, accrued leave as hours worked during the week, such as leave taken for other reasons, including because the employee is sick, is caring for someone else who is sick, is on jury duty, or because of COVID-19 related reasons. This does not apply to leave taken for vacation purposes. FOR EXAMPLE: If an employee is scheduled to work 40 hours per week but needs to be out all week due to being sick or taking care of someone who is sick, they should use between 24-32 hours of accrued leave to meet the Work Share reduction in hours. If they take more than 32 hours or under 24 hours, they will not meet the reduction in hours of 20-40%.​​

​Yes. If your employee did not work enough hours during the week to meet the minimum number of hours worked, they can use leave to meet the reduction requirements.

Example: They must have worked a minimum of 24 hours during the week if they customarily work 40 hours a week. If you had 20 hours of work for them in the week, the employee could use 4 hours of accrued leave to receive shared work benefits for the week.  ​

​A normal workweek for Work Share is considered the seven-day period of Sunday through Saturday and includes the hours that you normally work.​

​If you normally work more than 40 hours each week, you would still need to have a 20-40 percent reduction in work hours to qualify for Work Share benefits. You must use a 40 hour workweek to figure your reduced work schedule, even though you normally work more than that.

For example, if you normally work 50 hours each week, your Work Share workweek is reported as 40 hours. Your hours would need to be reduced between 8-16 hours each week, for a workweek of 24-32 hours, to qualify for Work Share benefits. In this case, we used 20-40 percent of 40 hours per week.​

​If you normally work less than 40 hours each week, you would need to have a 20-40 percent reduction in work hours to qualify for Work Share benefits. You must use the amount of hours you normally work to figure your reduced work schedule.

For example, if you normally work 30 hours each week, your Work Share workweek is reported as 30 hours. Your hours would need to be reduced between 6-12 hours each week, for a workweek of 18-24 hours, to qualify for Work Share benefits. In this case, we used 20-40 percent of 30 hours per week.​