Effective June 27, 2021, the Georgia Department of Labor returned to pre-pandemic, state unemployment operations. Contributory employers were relieved of unemployment benefit charges for claims filed for individuals who were unemployed or partially unemployed due to COVID-19. Effective June 26, 2021, the relief for unemployment benefit charging will end regardless of the reason for unemployment. Unemployment benefits paid for weeks ending on or after June 27, 2021 will be charged to the most recent employer under the law section OCGA 34-8-43. With this change, the requirements for filing Employer Partial claims reverts back to pre-pandemic rules.
For employers who are still filing Pandemic related partial claims to GA, when your employee returns to work at or near their normal schedule, it is no longer necessary to complete the Georgia Partial Claims process. If an employee has been permanently laid off or is no longer employed by you, you can convert their employer filed partial claim to a Regular UI Claims without the employee having to file a new claim with GA. This also ensures that the claimants can continue to receive benefits without interruptions.
If you are converting claims from employer filed partial claims to individual claims, please wait one business day after you have uploaded your final weekly employer filed partial claims spreadsheet before submitting your employer filed claims conversions. The system needs time to process the weekly benefit employer filed partial upload file before converting the claim to an individual one. If this is done before allowing the upload, the conversion will override the request for weekly payment cancelling the request.
Follow these steps to convert employer filed partial claims to regular UI individual claims on the Employer Portal:
- Log into the Employer Portal.
- Select the employer account number under Registered Account.
- Select the Partial Claims Conversion link under Common Links.
- Select All or individual employee names who are permanently laid off or working reduced hours, but you elect to no longer submit employer filed claims on their behalf on the Partial Claims Conversion page.
- Review your list of selected employees on the Partial Claims – Preview page. Select the Export to Excel button if you wish to export your list to an Excel spreadsheet. If changes are necessary, select the Cancel button to return to the Employer Portal Dashboard and restart the process. Select the Confirm button to approve the list and convert to regular UI individual claims.
- Advise your employees that their claims are being converted to individual claims and they will be responsible for requesting their own weekly UI benefit payments.
For more information on the conversion process, please visit https://dol.georgia.gov/document/covid-19/claims-conversion-program-instructions/download