Behavioral Insights
Our Behavioral Insights (BI) team applies behavioral science to help solve complex challenges facing the workforce system. By understanding how people make decisions, we can help improve compliance, reduce improper payments and streamline processes.
Our Approach:
- Innovative: Inspires fresh ideas and approaches
- Iterative: Uses a "try, test and improve" approach
- Informed: Leverages data and research
Why Behavioral Insights?
Behavioral Insights offers a framework for understanding people’s behaviors and choices which underlie the things they do. These insights can be helpful to government programs, as they strive to address behaviors that contribute to program challenges.
Behavioral Insights can address fundamental behavioral problems in programs, such as:
- Helping claimants better understand UI program requirements
- Nudging claimants about expectations when there is still time for them to meet the requirements
- Identifying and reducing obstacles to customer compliance in tax and benefits systems
- Helping claimants plan and execute better work searches
- Supporting staff in communicating program changes to customers
What We Offer
We can help your state with the six areas of support outlined below.
Communications Support
● Plain Language Reviews
● Form Redesign
● Pop-up Messages/ Reminder Messages
● Communication Strategy Development
● Desk Aid Creation
Systems Design
● Business Process Analysis
● Process Audits
● Journey Mapping/ Behavioral Mapping
● Behavioral Diagnosis of Problems and Barriers
Capacity Building
● Intensive Trainings
● One-time Workshops
● Organizational Upskilling
● Plain Language & Evaluation Guides
Measuring Impact
● Surveys
● Data Analysis
● Analysis Plan Development
● Formative & Impact Evaluations
User Experience (UX) Design
● Website/ Portal Redesign
● Prototype Design
Customer Research
● Participatory Research and Design
● Interview & Focus Group Guide Development
● Interviews and Focus Groups
● Usability Testing
Resources
Available to NASWA members only. Login required.
The BI Beat
The BI Beat is our monthly newsletter column, featuring insights, practical examples, and interviews from the field. Check out the most recent editions below, and view past editions here.
Tools for Compliance: Claimant Video
In 2019, NASWA’s Learning and BI teams partnered with Deloitte to adapt a claimant video originally developed by a state to explain UI requirements. This line from our white paper on the implementation project sums it up well: Narrated using an empathetic tone and illustrated with relatable, simple animation, the claimant video conveys the most critical information that claimants need to know in less than 5 minutes.
Getting Employment Separation Right: Designing for Accuracy, Not Assumptions
Why can’t employers and claimants just report the same thing? You know each case requires investigation, delaying payments, and straining staff time. You also know most of these cases aren’t fraud. They’re simple misunderstandings rooted in how claimants interpret a single question: Why did your employment end? Each of these small mismatches adds up, creating more work for staff and employers, and stress for claimants. It’s a familiar pattern in unemployment insurance programs, one that behavioral science can help explain and address.
Tools for Compliance: Employer Handbook
Employers play an important role in UI. The failure of employers to effectively engage with the UI system — whether by not responding to requests for information or misreporting employee wages — contributed to 14% (or $4 billion) of improper payments last year. (2024 Improper Payment data). To help employers take more accurate steps, NASWA produced a Model Employer Handbook.
Learn More
Our team is available to provide virtual or in-person assistance for your agency.
