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Overview - Getting Started

Welcome to WorkWORLD™, developed by the Employment Support Institute at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Business. Enhancements, updates and maintenance to WorkWORLD software have been funded in part by the Social Security Administration, and through arrangements with state government and other agencies in Delaware, Georgia, Iowa, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, and Virginia. If you have a disability, WorkWORLD is designed to help you make informed decisions about going to work, returning to work, or increasing your earnings.

Getting Started:

NOTE: If you are Using the Help/Information System On The Web, we suggest that you browse through that topic by following the previous link to acquaint yourself with its features and operational differences from the version installed with the software program.

ALSO NOTE: If you are depending upon WorkWORLD's speech capabilities to understand and use the WorkWORLD program, we highly recommend that you start by going to the Speech Overview topic.

You can start by:

·        Taking one or more of the Tutorials; or

·        Reading the following general instructions; or

·        Plunging right in and starting to enter information.

We of course recommend one of the first two options, but we hope that WorkWORLD operates sufficiently similar to most Windows programs that you will find its operation intuitive. In any event, you can get started fairly quickly by reviewing the remainder of this topic and the topics:

Navigating WorkWORLD and Entering Data

Using the Help System

NOTE: Calculations and recommendations generated by WorkWORLD are based solely on your inputs. Neither ESI nor SSA can be held responsible for data entry errors, omissions, faulty or inaccurate information, or for failure to follow instructions.

IMPORTANT: Laws, regulations, and policies governing the benefit and work incentive programs covered by WorkWORLD change frequently to reflect legislative, judicial, and regulatory actions at the Federal, State, and Local levels. Certain newer changes may not be incorporated into the version of WorkWORLD you are using. Authorized representatives of the various programs can provide authoritative information concerning your specific situation.

VERY IMPORTANT: Even if you are sure there are no input errors, you should always check with your SSA Claims Representative and representatives of any other applicable benefit programs before acting upon WorkWORLD results. Actual results may vary from WorkWORLD's results in some cases because WorkWORLD does not cover some exceptions to the general rules that apply only in rare situations.

General Instructions:

Start by telling WorkWORLD about your current situation. WorkWORLD asks you one question at a time about, for example, where you live, what benefits you have, and whether or not you are currently working and earning money.

NOTE: SSA now offers a free Benefits Planning Query (BPQY) report that contains much of the detailed information needed to accurately answer the Current Situation questions.

After you have answered all of the questions about your current situation, you can then use WorkWORLD to ask "What If…?" questions. "What if I went to work part time and earned $350 per month?" "What if I earned $850 per month?" "What if I used the PASS work incentive and put aside money to buy an automobile?"

You can ask "What If…?" questions by having WorkWORLD create a new column of answers to the right of the answers for your current situation. We call this "creating a new situation." (Detailed instructions for doing this are in the help topic, "Create a New Situation.")

In the new column, answer the same questions, or new questions, as if the situation you want to test were true. For example, you may not be employed, and so you answered "NO" to the question, "Earnings: Do you have any income from wages, salary, or self-employment?" You want to know, however, what will happen to your benefits and net income if you got a job. In the new column, you would therefore answer "YES" to that same question. A new question will then appear, asking you how much you are earning. You would then enter an amount to see what would be the effect of earning that amount.

Questions appear one at a time. Because some questions are only necessary if you answered a previous question in a certain way, only the questions relevant to your situation will appear. For example, if you respond "NO" when asked if you are married, then no other questions related to your spouse will be asked for that situation.

As you move from one situation to the next (from one column to the next), questions that were necessary in a previous situation may not be required for outcomes in another. For example, if you were to answer "YES" to being married in the first situation, WorkWORLD will ask spouse-related questions. If in the second situation you changed your answer about being married to "NO", the spouse questions you answered in the previous situation would be visible, but the answer boxes for those questions in the new situation will be gray and your cursor will skip over those questions.

Help screens are available explaining each question and explaining how to use WorkWORLD. If you are unsure of the meaning of a question, clicking on the "More Info…" button in the answer box will give you an explanation of the question. Or from the keyboard you can hold down the "Alt" key and press "M" for an explanation.

Often the explanation in a help screen may use terms that may be unfamiliar to you. Additional information is available for any of the underlined terms. Clicking on any of the underlined terms will take you to explanations of those terms. (Alternatively you can use your tab key to highlight each term and press the "Enter" key to bring up the explanation of that term).

Clicking on "Back" in the second help toolbar will take you back to the previous help screen. (Holding down the "Alt" key and typing "B" will do the same thing.)

The results for each situation are displayed on the bottom portion of the screen when you have answered all of the necessary questions for a given situation. (The "QUESTIONS PENDING" note in the second row from the bottom of your screen -- just left of the date -- will change to "Situation Complete" when you have answered all of the necessary questions for that situation.)

The results come in three forms:

1.        There are Text Results providing recommendations to explore work incentive possibilities and displaying "alerts" and "notes" related to the situation;

2.        There are the Numerical Results, showing you your SSI and SSDI (Title II) benefit amounts, your gross income, work expenses, and net income for each situation; and

3.        There are Graphs of those same numbers.

You may pick which type of results you want to see by choosing one of the three tabs along the bottom of WorkWORLD's main screen.

You may save your results to a file, using your name or a code of your choosing. You may print out both your answers to the questions and the results.

We sincerely hope that you find WorkWORLD valuable in planning your use of SSA Work Incentives and your return to work (or your first work effort).

Here, again, are the other topics you should review if you decide not to take the tutorials:

Navigating WorkWORLD and Entering Data

Using the Help System

NOTE: SSA now offers a free Benefits Planning Query (BPQY) report that contains much of the detailed information needed to accurately answer the Current Situation questions.

Also see:

Integrated, synchronized, closed-captioned multi-media demonstrations of WorkWORLD are now available on the WorkWORLD website. Tutorial modules explain WorkWORLD's features and show many aspects of its operation, while presentation modules discuss the software's use in the broader context of benefits planning and service delivery for individuals. See and hear all the modules on the Tutorials and Presentations page at:
http://www.workworld.org/media/menu.htm

WorkWORLD™ Help/Information System

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This is one topic from the thousands available in the WorkWORLD™ software Help/Information System.
Complete information about the software is available at: http://www.WorkWORLD.org