Florida’s Unemployment Benefits System to be Virtual

A 35-year-old system of filing for unemployment benefits is due to change in Florida. There is a plan in place to make it completely virtual, by having everyone complete online applications to apply for the assistance. It was renamed as the Reemployment Assistance program in Florida, and is set to go virtual in October.

This can be an improvement to their process, which currently takes about 6 weeks from the time the claim is filed to the time the first payment is made. Currently a part of their process is a confirmation from adjudicator, which happens either by phone, email or mail. After switch to the online method of filing they can potentially rely mostly on online chat, email and phone. This may be used to speed the process up.

There are a few concerns in regards to this change, first is accessibility. The argument is that not everyone has a computer at home, and this may create a barrier for the people that are more disadvantaged on the economic scale, which presumably are likely a large part of the customers of this particular program. This is supported by the research findings of the PEW Research Center:

It’s evident that people that will be impacted by this change are the people with a lower level of education and people with lower income.  These are the same people that may be working at the jobs that are at risk, or jobs with higher level of turnover.

Growing your professional blog. Step 1: Starting

I would like to share some ideas on how to grow your professional blog. I currently somewhere along these steps, but I believe that I can contribute some information on what worked for me when I was writing a blog.

Ok so you have a want to post your thoughts about something in your field online. I’ve had that thought for a couple of years before I actually started writing this blog.

First of all, you should act. Don’t second-guess yourself and think about serious commitment yet, just go to a free blogging site either blogger or wordpress and just create a blog and post your first article. It’s really painless to do and you will feel better about yourself right after you do it.

Second - don’t expect any kind of hits on your blog right after you post. That’s the reality of it; your blog is not going to get any views for some time other than your friends and family if you tell them in person or on facebook. Frankly speaking I am still convinced that my blog is in the same boat, although the stats claim that I have over 2000 views in the last 2 years.

Third – try to educate yourself on how social engines work. Boolean search logic specifically is key to understanding how your page gets discovered, so you need to figure out how to tag your pages.

Fourth – keep posting. Like anything online it’s all content driven. Before you get any kind of exposure from your blog there needs to be enough content there to attract people. Which means that you are going to be filling your blog with posts and for a long while you will not see the kind of result you may have hoped for, other than for the odd mention every once in a while.

Fifth - don't be afraid to change gears. Personally I've had 3 blogs before I settled on this blog that you are reading. I've tried different hosting options and different topics. I decided that I would rather have a place to record my thoughts with a varying degree of relevance to human resources than to try to maintain different kinds of blogs. It's just a matter of committing to maintenance of the blog on some kind of reoccurring basis. Right now I try to do a post every week or two. And if I want to start writing more in the future, it will not be starting from scratch again, which is great. I could always adjust the topic of the blog and start delivering more content. I think that, since blogs are living websites, change is good for them.