From a financial and workplace perspective, most employers understand the need to manage casual absence and disability claims properly—but the devil of disability management is in the details. Here are five practical steps to help employers take their disability programs to the next level.
1. Move from a static program to a dynamic process
Creating a dynamic, focused, well-planned and integrated process takes cohesion and people who see the big picture.
Develop a program that includes policies, procedures and practices and that takes into account the connections between casual, short-term, long-term and occupational absences.
Return to work in progress
The 3 Ws of return to work
Creating a positive return-to-work experience
A cohesive global approach will have a positive impact on overall costs. It’s important to anticipate the impact of your actions to ensure that one action does not have an adverse effect on another part of the program. For example, placing additional controls on your short-term disability program could result in a higher rate of casual absences.
Involve the stakeholders in the creation of your program, ensuring that multiple challenges and perspectives are taken into consideration. Getting their support is essential for your program to have an impact.
Create a process that includes a flow chart, a description of established roles and responsibilities, major steps, a communication protocol, confidentiality guidelines and the required paperwork.
Establish clear and consistent return-to-work procedures. Ensuring that everyone has a common understanding of what is expected will make things easier for both the employee and his or her manager.
2. Communicate
Transparent and effective communication is required—both at the program level and while managing the absences.
Communicate your policies, practices and procedures to the different departments so that they are well understood across the organization. Ensuring that everyone involved in the process, including managers, employees and unions, has a good common understanding of the company’s corporate strategy is key.
Maintain regular communication with all parties in order to keep the program alive. Everyone must be informed of the program’s evolution and results, which requires disclosure and transparency.
Celebrate the results one year after the implementation of the program. Make it a positive experience: emphasize success stories and best practices. And don’t forget to share these experiences with employees.
Be sure to select a disability management provider that will support your communication efforts. At the absence management level, case managers must be champion communicators. They should pick up the phone when others might send a form or a letter, and they need to be able to discuss their concerns with physicians and treatment providers as well as with employees and managers. As integrators, the role of case managers is to ensure that all parties come together around a common objective: a timely and safe return to work.
3. Involve front-line managers
Connecting with managers is a must for any program’s success.
Ensure that you have buy-in from front-line management so that disabled employees receive their full co-operation when planning to return to work. Provide information and support to actively engage your management team in the return-to-work process.
Listen to and reassure front-line managers—they may not know how to deal with the day-to-day process of a disabled employee returning to work. Furthermore, managers often have their own fears and misconceptions about illness, especially mental illness.
Not only do they have to deal with the return of an employee who might be fragile or afraid, but they must also deal with those employees who may have misconceptions and concerns about how this return will affect their own work. Managers typically have all sorts of questions about an employee’s absence and return to work—Should I call him? Can I ask how she is feeling? Do I want to know?—and employees may become embarrassed or uneasy when they see others feeling this way.
Plan the return to work with simple steps to make things easier for everyone. Supporting managers is important, so be sure to give them good return-to-work tools. The provider selected to help your organization with absence management will be an ally in giving front-line managers the coaching they need to make an employee’s return to work successful.
4. Accommodate
Be open to a range of return-to-work options and accommodating measures.
Returning a formerly disabled employee to his or her own job is not always possible, so explore the available options. Consider the following questions to determine if an accommodation is feasible:
• What are the terms of the collective or individual employment contract?
• Does the accommodation contravene the collective agreement?
• Is alternative work possible and available at present or in the near future?
• If not, can a new position be created without causing undue hardship?
• Will the new position require additional training?
While employers are aware that they have legal obligations to accommodate an employee’s return to work, many of them still face challenges in offering work accommodation, which involves modifying the disabled employee’s existing job tasks for a certain period of time. In some organizations, it may be appropriate to establish a pool of transitional jobs to accommodate employees who are attempting to return to work. Regardless of the option selected, accommodating disabled employees will help you to control costs.
5. Build accountability
Encourage departments to be accountable for monitoring return-to-work efforts, providing each department with its own statistics and metrics.
Examples of key performance indicators include the following:
• the number of casual absences and the incidence rate for short-term, long-term and occupational absence;
• the interval between the date of disability and the date when the case manager is notified;
• the interval between the date of disability and the start date of the return-to-work plan;
• outcomes achieved by the plans developed by service providers;
• the average time until return to work (per type of program, such as regular work, temporary accommodation or permanent accommodation);
• the percentage of employees returned to work by outcome type;
• the recurrence or new disability rate;
• costs of the return-to-work programs; and
• the overall cost of these programs as a proportion of total payroll.
Measuring the impact of your program provides relevant information for decision-making. Each sector should track the costs—and the cost savings—and then compare the data within a similar time frame before and after the program’s implementation.
Work absences caused by injury and illness result in significant costs to organizations. We often hear about the direct and indirect costs, as well as the impact on productivity in general, but what is measured less often is the impact on the individual. Reduced income, the complex and often slow workings of the healthcare system, uncertainty regarding the employee’s own health as well as the family and financial situation all combine to create a considerable burden on the employee and his or her family. Having a comprehensive disability management program that reduces the costs and concerns of both the employer and the employee puts all stakeholders at an advantage.
Christine Potvin is vice-president, disability risk management, health and wellness, with Standard Life.
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