Exelon’s Employee Service Center was challenged with a significant cost cutting initiative and was seeking methods to cut costs and execute work with fewer people. It considered outsourcing unemployment cost control to achieve this goal. Exelon also sought better reporting tools to track performance, and improvement in several aspects of its unemployment cost control process, including systematic verifications of unemployment tax rates for each tax I.D.  Exelon considered alternatives including shifting work to other departments and concluded outsourcing was the best option.

The discussion covers the implementation timeline and key implementation issues such as the necessary communications with state departments of labor. The event also treats improvements to privacy protection that Exelon gained from the streamlined claims handling process. Project results are discussed, including protest rates, favorable decision rates, and “win ratios” at the hearing level – all of which exceed the industry average. Exelon succeeded in removing ½ FTE and achieved cost savings, net of the outsourcing fee. In the first year of outsourcing, Exelon removed $408,500 in charges to its unemployment accounts due to favorable protests during 2005, and removed an additional $294,000 from charge audits.

The event includes a discussion of key privacy issues related to HR and payroll processes, including recent legal developments in privacy protection at the state and federal level, and key safeguards that HR and payroll departments should consider in order to adhere to evolving legal standards.