'Returning to employment? Don't forget about your benefits!' When individuals receiving benefits return to employment having been registered as unemployed, it is important that they report the change in their income to the Benefits Unit on time, to avoid repayment demands. Why do individuals not comply with this notification requirement? And what interventions could improve compliance? A revised letter from the UWV Employee Insurance Agency and an additional page on the Benefits Unit website failed to significantly change this behaviour.

Why this experiment was conducted: unnecessary repayment demands
Unemployment benefit recipients who return to employment and who also receive additional benefit must report the change in their situation to the Benefits Unit in good time, since this may affect the amount of benefits they are entitled to. Not all individuals comply with this notification obligation, meaning they may have to repay overpaid amounts later. An extensive behavioural analysis revealed, amongst other things, that only 50% of citizens know that it is their responsibility to report any change in their income to the Benefits Unit. Added to that, 60% have difficulty estimating their annual income, making it more complicated for them to report the change.

Types of intervention: revised letter and additional webpage
Based on a behavioural analysis, it was decided to focus the intervention on the factors knowledge and capability:
• revised letter on termination of unemployment benefit: UWV sent individuals receiving unemployment benefit a digital termination letter when it is established that their earnings have exceeded a threshold amount. In this letter, UWV included a section about the importance of notifying the Benefits Unit of any change in income, where individuals received benefit (see image 24)
• new webpage: The Benefits Unit created a new webpage to help people report their new income correctly. This webpage included a detailed step-by-step plan, designed to enable individuals to calculate whether their income had altered so much that they needed to report a change (see image 25)

Method used: impact measurement
Part of the UWV offices sent the intervention letter with the added section and a link to the new webpage (N=3,885); another part sent the regular termination letter, i.e. without the added section and link (N=7,533). The impact in these 2 groups was compared: how many individuals notified a change to the Benefits Unit and how many visited the webpage?

Result obtained: no discernible difference
The intervention did not result in more people reporting a change to the Benefits Unit. It made no difference whether they received the intervention letter or the regular letter. Very few people in the intervention group visited the dedicated webpage created by the Benefits Unit. Also, they did not log onto their personal pages on the UWV and Benefits Unit websites more often. The only significant impact measured is that individuals in the intervention group contacted the UWV less often than individuals in the control group.

Impact: lessons learned
Although the intervention itself did not reveal any significant differences, the insights from the study are highly relevant for the Benefits Unit as well as the UWV, enabling them, for example, to make improvements to the termination letter and the explanation on the Benefits Unit webpage. The advice that emerges from this study is that more joint studies should be conducted, since they enable agencies to discover how to design their processes to minimise the requests they make of people. This prevents errors and subsequent repayment demands. Ideally, people should no longer need to report changes that another official agency, body or point of contact is already aware of.

Source: https://www.binnl.nl/home+-+en/knowledge/publications/bin+nl+publications/HandlerDownloadFiles.ashx?idnv=2719979