Washington § 50.12.365 - Plain language required for letters, alerts, and notices.

(1) The department must designate department employees to assure that letters, alerts, and notices produced manually or by the department's unemployment insurance technology system are written in plainly understood language and tested on claimants before they are approved for use. Criteria for approval must include comprehensibility, clarity, and readability. If the messaging of any letter, alert, or notice falls short of those criteria, manual methods of producing a comprehensible version shall be considered while the department waits for their unemployment insurance technology system to incorporate required modifications.

(2) Determinations and redeterminations must clearly convey applicable statute numbers, a brief explanation of pertinent law, outline of relevant facts, reasoning, decision, and result.

(3) The department will work with an unemployment insurance advisory committee comprised of business and worker advocates to explore:

(a) Establishing thresholds that will trigger automatic adjustments in department staffing assignments and phone agent staffing levels;

(b) Establishing a pilot to provide a caseworker approach to the claims of a group of claimants with that casework carrying over to reemployment services;

(c) Increasing language access, including by providing translation of notices sent to claimants as part of their unemployment insurance claims; and

(d) Frequency of the initial and continuing training to meet the needs of RCW 50.12.360.

(4) Dedicated toll-free phone lines must be established for claimants who lack computer skills or access to computers, claimants with disabilities, and claimants with limited English proficiency.

Findings—Intent—2021 c 271: See note following RCW 50.12.360.