Pennsylvania’s Shared-Work Program
Shared-Work allows you to retain your workforce during a slowdown while providing significantly more UC benefits to employees, compared to employees who have simply had their hours reduced and filed for partial UC benefits.
With the Shared-Work program, an employer divides the available hours equally among an employee unit rather than laying off any employees. Employees covered by a Shared-Work plan receive a percentage of their
Unemployment Compensation (UC)
Weekly Benefit Rate while they work a reduced schedule, if they are otherwise eligible.
Employer Benefits of Shared-Work:
- Maintains full staff for future business growth
- Reduces future hiring and retraining costs
- Maintains worker productivity
- Retains experienced employees
- Reduces financial strain on employees
- Keeps worker morale high
How Shared-Work Works
A Shared-Work plan applies to an affected unit or department, shift or other organizational unit designated by you, the employer, with at least two participating employees.
Based on your available work, you may choose a reduction percentage between 20 and 40 percent. The employees in that unit will work the resulting reduced hours, sharing the work. If the number of hours your employee(s) were paid in a week differs from your plan hours listed in your plan application, it is possible that your employee(s) may not be paid Shared-Work benefits for that week per PA UC Law.
When you want more than one unit to participate, just designate them for an additional plan. In that way, another unit and their plan may have different reduction percentages. Each employee in a unit must be at the same reduction percentage.
Your Shared-Work plan will be active for the period that you’ve indicated or until your business gets back to normal.
Find out if you’re eligible to start a Shared-Work plan.
Additional Resources:
Employer UC Contributions
If you are a contributory employer, the experience-rated portion of your UC contributions may increase based on the Shared-Work benefits that are paid.
If you are a reimbursable employer, you will be responsible for the portion of UC benefits that are attributable to the employee’s service with your company.
Shared-Work allows you, the employer, to temporarily reduce employee hours and then quickly ramp up operations without the expense of recruiting, hiring, and training new employees. At the same time, Shared-Work helps to protect your employees from the financial hardship of a full layoff.
Interested in sharing work and saving jobs?
Learn more about Shared-Work Eligibility.