PAM Unemployment Fund adopts robot to speed up processing of unemployment applications
The coronavirus pandemic has had a big impact at the Unemployment Fund of Service Union United PAM. In April alone, Union members sent in more first applications for unemployment allowance than they did in all of 2019. The Unemployment Fund has now adopted a robot to help process the backlog of applications.
“We want to offer excellent service to the members of our Unemployment Fund. This is why we quickly adopted the robot to help pre-process applications, making the overall processing faster and more efficient,” says Ilkka Nissilä, director of the Unemployment Fund.
According to Nissilä, this spring has been an unprecedented situation for the PAM Unemployment Fund.
“In April alone, we received approximately 18,500 new applications, which is roughly the same number we received during all of 2019. This is because the corona pandemic hit service sector jobs with particular intensity,” says Nissilä.
With the help of the new robot, Unemployment Fund staff have more time for the actual processing and decision-making regarding applications for unemployment allowance.
The robot has been specially designed for the Unemployment Fund. It can check applications very quickly, detect incomplete applications and automatically send requests to the applicants for further information. This releases the human staff to focus on the actual decision-making. The Unemployment Fund robot was created by Digia and MOST Digital.
“With the huge number of applications, service industry professionals who are members of the Unemployment Fund have had to wait longer for their unemployment allowance decisions. We have recruited more people to process the applications. The robot is an additional resource to help us. I believe that we can now get the allowances to people faster,” states Nissilä.