Prevention is key to reduce injuries, illnesses, and related costs. However, mishaps are inevitable, and employees often find themselves off the job for a few weeks or even months. When accidents happen, your clients should create an effective return to work (RTW) plan for their employees. Strong programs will keep employees safe, improve productivity, and significantly reduce incident-related costs. There are certain mistakes to avoid when bringing employees come back to work to create a solid RTW plan.
Excessive Delay
The longer employees are out, the less likely they will ever return to the job. A quick return to work is a crucial component in protecting their long-term livelihood. A prompt yet structured RTW plan is strongly advised. Workers will have a better chance of holding their livelihood and a sense of purpose, while employers will avoid hefty expenses associated with rehiring, retraining, and insurance adjustments.
Poor Communication
Communication is a crucial complement to an effective RTW plan. A reasonable safety precaution against re-injury, higher costs, and litigation is a very clear and thorough job description. Detailed specifications of job duties, physical requirements, special skills, the individual’s recovery process, and environmental conditions assist healthcare professionals in determining how and when the employee can return to work.
The safety and management teams should always be in constant contact with the injured workers, set and adjust expectations as needed, and ensure the worker feels safe and valued and helps prevent unnecessary risks. The goal is to increase productivity without aggravating their health condition resulting in greater costs.
Relaying on Health Care Professionals
All healthcare professionals are a vital component to the return to work process. However, they should never be solely relied on for their expertise in establishing a return to work program. Each employee and scenario is unique, and action plans require input from your management, safety team, and legal team to make appropriate accommodations. Health care professionals may provide a list of general activities a worker can do, but that must be translated into actual job duties.
Inconsistent record keeping
It is always in your client’s best interest to keep thorough records of the job sites, workers, tasks, and conditions involved. Along with securing staffing industry workers’ comp, they should record the details of the affected employee’s return to work, clarifying the injury’s true impact on the individual and organization. This information will significantly help to pinpoint problem areas within the company and adjust safety policies accordingly. The clearer the record, the more efficiently changes can be made to effectively decrease risks.
About World Wide Specialty Programs
For the last 50 years, World Wide Specialty Programs has dedicated itself to providing the optimal products and solutions for the staffing industry. As the only insurance firm to be an ASA commercial liability partner, we are committed to that partnership and committed to using our knowledge of the industry to provide staffing firms with the best possible coverage. For more information about Staffing Professional Liability Insurance or any other coverage, we have available to protect your staffing business, give us a call at (877) 256-0468 to speak with one of our representatives.