By
Leave & Disability Coordination Handbook, ©Thompson Publishing Group, Inc.
Front-line
managers need to be trained to return employees on leave to work as quickly as
possible, even if those employees are not fully recovered, recommended Skip
Simonds, director of program development in UnumProvident Corp.´s
return-to-work programs. He advised attendees of the National Business &
Disability Council´s annual conference in New York City to get supervisors´
buy-in for return-to-work programs by educating them about the escalating costs
of long-term disability leave.
Frequently,
when employees are injured, supervisors console them by telling them they do
not want them back until they are 100 percent. "This is wrong,"
Simonds warned. Supervisors should let employees know the employer wants them
back when it is safe for them to return, which may be well before they reach
maximum medical improvement. "People recover faster when they´re working
than when they´re not," he said.
"Front-line
supervisors are the queens and kings of return-to-work," he said. Most
well-meaning human resources policies, including return-to-work programs, will
not be fully implemented if managers do not have any incentives to implement them.
The
cost savings in returning employees to work quickly should be emphasized. Once
someone starts receiving long-term disability benefits, those benefits continue
to be paid until the worker gets better, returns to work or dies. The longer
someone stays out on disability leave, the less likely that person will return.
If the employee opts to receive long-term disability benefits and does not
return to work, the employer will be hit with the double costs of paying the
worker´s benefits and no longer profiting from that person´s skills and
experience.
This
double whammy will hit employers even harder as baby boomers age, Simonds
predicted. Older employees typically submit more long-term disability claims
than younger workers do, so the aging of baby boomers, the 76 million persons
born from 1946-1964, should be accompanied by a spike in disability claims. The
departure of any worker capable of performing his or her job with
accommodations is particularly costly in the current tight labor market, which
is forecast to continue as baby boomers age out of the workforce.
Employers
also are paying more for long-term disability benefits because people are
living longer. The medical ability to prolong life increases the number of
claims and the claims´ durations, raising costs for employers "in two
separate dimensions."
In
any workforce, a significant number of persons will take leave for some period
of time. Of people aged 35 to 65 years, three out of 10 stop work for 90 days
or more at least once, Simonds stated.
While
HR professionals should emphasize that return to work is an investment that
yields a return, HR should acknowledge circumstances and legal requirements
that impede return to work. There are some positions such as health care jobs
that have lower rates of return to work because they are stressful.
"Statistics show it is easier to get a steel worker back to a blast
furnace than a nurse´s aide back to a hospital," he noted.
Other
circumstances may lead to a rise in spurious benefits claims. Mergers and
layoffs spike the incidence of workers seeking long-term disability benefits.
When a layoff is announced well in advance, the increase typically happens
within three months before the layoff. Long-term disability benefits typically
rise three to six months after mergers when employees who have stuck it out
decide that they do not like the new corporate structure.
Return
to work can be more difficult for some impairments. Psychiatric disabilities
represent the fastest growing cause of lost time. Workers with invisible
impairments, including psychiatric disabilities and soft-tissue injuries, can
be more difficult to bring back, he said. However, the ADA prohibits such
generalizations about people with disabilities, requiring instead that
employers consider the workers on an individual basis.
Supervisors
should be trained not to rush return to work too much. Eligible employees (see
¶218 of the Handbook) have a right under the FMLA to take 12 weeks of
leave, which may run concurrently with workers´ compensation leave, managers
should be reminded. After FMLA leave runs, more leave may be required under the
ADA.
What
supervisors need to know is that once employees have exhausted their right to
leave under these laws, supervisors should do everything in their power to
return them to the work-force, even if the workers initially opt to take
long-term disability benefits.
Simonds
encouraged HR to start a dialogue with managers about return to work and be
open to managers´ suggestions in making appropriate adjustments to
return-to-work programs with the following anecdote. When he wanted to get
married, he could not think of a good way to pop the question, so he asked his
older brother for advice. His brother suggested that Simonds go see a movie
about married couples with his girlfriend and ask her if she´d like to live
like that too. "That may have been a hokey way and I did not do it that
way, but I had no clue. I needed for him to suggest a way and I took it from there
and got over the fear of doing it."
Similarly,
HR professionals may know of ways to help front-line managers return people to
work. "You know a way to start a conversation and suggest a way for them
to do it."
Once
a return-to-work initiative works for one employee with a disability, a manager
is more likely to hire a person with a disability, Simonds added. Training
front-line managers about return to work could help "open the door for
many other employees entering that marriage we call a job."
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