Unemployment Letters: Clearer and More Accessible

The Washington State Employment Security Department (ESD) works to increase economic security for Washingtonians by providing unemployment benefits, job training, and workforce data. 
State Bill 5193, requires ESD to use clear and understandable language in all communications. To meet these requirements, ESD asked Anthro-Tech to help them write clearer decision letters about people’s unemployment benefits. 
Specifically, they wanted us to simplify the letter drop-ins. These are templates that explain the decision, the reason for the decision, and what the person can do. Customers said the language in these drop-ins was confusing. 
ESD gave us hundreds of letter drop-ins they send to customers. After three rounds of prioritization, including a content audit, we chose 90 letters from 750 options. These covered all relevant issues and language variations. 
To see how clear the letters were, we designed a customer survey. Participants represented various literacy levels, languages, educational backgrounds, and cognitive abilities. Their feedback showed that the letters were difficult to understand due to unclear explanations, confusing flow, harsh language, and too much jargon. Our content strategists and UX researchers recommended ways to make these communications more helpful for people applying for unemployment benefits.
Our work on ESD's confusing unemployment decision letters had an immediate effect. Using the survey data, ESD quickly began rewriting the decision letters. The new versions have better structure and formatting, less jargon, clearer cause-and-effect statements, more understandable explanations, and a less bureaucratic tone. These changes will make it simpler for people claiming unemployment benefits to understand the ESD’s decisions and the reasons for them.  

ESD now has practical recommendations and clear guidelines for improving their customer communications. We provided plain language tips along with specific examples and explanations to help their team create more understandable decision letter drop-ins. These recommendations include avoiding hypothetical situations, using friendly and caring language when denying claims, and placing the decision early in the letter.