Choosing Work: Encouraging People With Disabilities to Participate In the Social Security, Ticket to Work Program Through Integrated Telephonic and Digital Outreach

Background:  According to a 2000 World Health Organization report, employment can promote mental well-being by providing structure, social contact, purpose, identity and activity. These benefits, along with financial independence, make access to work valuable to people with disabilities. Social Security’s Ticket to Work program provides access to employment support services to approximately 13.4 million Americans on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and/or Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) benefits who wish to prepare for, seek and sustain employment. These services are provided by state Vocational Rehabilitation agencies and private entities that contract with Social Security known as Employment Networks.

Program background:  In September 2010, Social Security awarded Booz Allen Hamilton a contract to provide outreach to SSI/SSDI beneficiaries who might benefit from the Ticket to Work program and the Work Incentives Social Security provides to support beneficiaries interested in working. Through this contract Booz Allen manages an integrated communication and outreach program that includes multiple social media channels, educational webinars, website support, print and multi-media informational materials, and maintenance of a 45-person call center.    In 2011 and 2012, Social Security changed the way it informed new  beneficiaries about their eligibility for the Ticket program by eliminating its direct mail effort. The agency also discontinued its support for in-person educational seminars called “Work Incentives Seminar Events.” The challenge was then: How do we communicate the benefits of this program to a diverse population with a variety of communication preferences and accessibility issues without tangible and high-touch resources such as mailings and in-person events? 

Evaluation Methods and Results:  This poster will describe an integrated outreach strategy that uses telephonic and digital technologies and techniques to reach this audience of beneficiaries to inspire them to explore and participate in the program. We will discuss

• How we identified those beneficiaries who were deemed most likely to be successful with the program and targeted them to receive Integrated Voice Recognition (IVR) phone calls that encouraged them to call the Ticket to Work Helpline and provide their email addresses as a basis for additional outreach.
• How we provided more opportunities for engagement with beneficiaries through our monthly webinars, through a Facebook Q&A session immediately following and by providing a “Viewing Party” toolkit to community partners and service providers to bridge the virtual & in-person gap.
• How we used Twitter as a platform to discuss disability employment for special populations via the program’s first-ever disability employment Twitter chat (#DEChat).
• How we are connecting data to email and text messaging outreach in our next phase through a choice architecture structure to encourage beneficiaries’ participation.

Conclusions:  Since implementing IVR each month 20,000 new beneficiaries are being contacted by an algorithm-based call. Currently the IVR cumulative response rate is 24% (9.6 times higher than a standard direct mail response rate). This targeted approach has saved Social Security more than $1M in postage.

Implications for research and/or practice:  A multi-modal approach to outreach can assist government programs reach the right people at the right time while saving money.