A Facelift to the MyBenefits Portal Makes It Easier for Claimants and Employers to Understand the UI Process
The S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce Announces Fresh Look for the Benefits Portal

The S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce (DEW) is pleased to announce the launch of its revamped benefits portal. This launch features upgrades to the current Unemployment Insurance (UI) system that places a strong emphasis on customer service and accessibility. The new face of the portal offers the same processes for UI benefits, but in a more efficient and sleek design, making it easier for the user to navigate.

In particular, the new dashboard feature displays all of the critical information in one place with cues for the user to help them respond to the agency with information needed for their claim.

“The agency’s goal is to take an already modernized portal and streamline it into a more user-friendly experience,” said S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce Executive Director Dan Ellzey. “We are proud of how our agency assisted claimants and employers during the pandemic, and we will continue to develop the system with sophisticated and advanced features that serve as an innovative model for the nation.”

The state’s UI benefits portal was introduced in September 2017 in order to completely modernize an antiquated Mainframe application written in COBOL. The launch of the MyBenefits system moved many tasks from paper to portal, allowed the initial part of the claim process to be automated, improved security services, allowed for real-time information to be displayed, filtered eligibility more efficiently, and offered a myriad of new services to users.

The Mainframe application infrastructure created delays and failures in many other states during the pandemic; however, in South Carolina, the new system was able to scale up quickly as claims grew exponentially week-over-week as an unprecedented number of South Carolinians lost work. Across the nation, states were left in a frenzy attempting to update their own UI benefits systems in response to the pandemic, with some even having to resort to physical paperwork due to old claimant systems being overrun with users.

Thanks to the 2017 modernized system, the S.C. Department of Employment and Workforce was able to scale up the accessibility of the MyBenefits Portal to ensure that the system would not collapse under the strain of the surplus of new claimants.

Throughout the past year and a half, the agency has been listening to the public as they learned to navigate and understand the complexity of unemployment insurance benefits and identified visual opportunities in the portal to streamline and reorganize some of the processes.

With the help of InnTec Consulting and Capgemini, agency staff diligently worked to improve the user experience in the system and solicited feedback from Palmetto Project and the Richland County Public Library. These improvements have led to the launch of the facelift of the MyBenefits and Employer Self Service Portals. It is now easier than ever for customers to log into their account to file, certify a claim, change information, review the status of a claim, and much more.

Claimants and employers can learn more about the portal updates and usability by reviewing DEW’s new video and PDF tutorials available on the dew.sc.gov website. The agency will release additional resources for the portal in the upcoming weeks, including additional videos, tutorials, and an updated claimant handbook.

A white paper for the MyBenefits Portal facelift has been created and is available to view here.