by One of your key tasks as an employer is ensuring workplace safety, which can significantly affect you if workers sustain an injury and get sidelined from their roles for a while. Planning to get them back on the job can be equally tricky, especially if they are recovering from something exceptionally severe.
Fortunately, top-grade return to work programs can help with the task, allowing you to create a flexible work schedule and environment for injured or ill employees rejoining the workforce after a considerable gap. Besides allowing people to readjust to their professional role, it can also help you save claim costs.
The following is a quick guide that will walk you through the essential things you should ensure to make such workers comfortable in the workplace again.
Understand the benefits
Some new business owners may be unaware that such initiatives can reduce claim costs to a significant extent, helping them save money while retaining talented employees despite their injuries. Invariably, it is among the best employment practices in the industry, enabling you to show your workforce how much you care about them.
Moreover, it can increase productivity or prevent it from being hampered as people return to their roles a lot quicker than usual, enduring your bottom line is largely unaffected by the unforeseen hurdle.
Assess and analyze alternate work conditions
The idea is to customize a work environment wherein someone struggling with a temporary or permanent disability can adjust more quickly. For instance, consider placing a former field operative in a safer, desk-oriented role, such as a clerk or data entry operator, helping them perform their duties more comfortably. Otherwise, some may risk aggravating their injuries, while others might not be able to handle any physical labor at all.
Besides making it easy for them to work, these efforts can boost employee morale vastly, allowing them to fit into a new work environment reasonably quickly.
What to do when you cannot modify a job role
If a person cannot adjust to a modified work setting or role, consider creating a new one tailored to their specific requirements. For example, permit them to oversee daily tasks, fill in vital paperwork, take inventory at the desk, and similar roles that require less manual toil. Depending on the circumstances, they can go back to their old positions or progress in the new ones.
Invariably, this is a crucial step as employees add value to an organization, functioning as the very backbone of the entity, ensuring each role is perfectly carried out. Employers benefit from this setting, too, as the workers will receive a paycheck for their efforts instead of disability benefits.
Invest in workers’ compensation
While it is good to have these programs to help workers come back to work and adjust more quickly, it is equally crucial to have workers’ comp that enables you to provide them with cover in case of workplace injuries and illnesses. It can help them with medical costs, lost wages, fatal injuries, death and disability benefits, etc.
Also, it will cover you in case there are lawsuits wherein injured employees allege their state is owing to the negligence of safety protocols at the workplace. So, find a reputable insurer that provides free quotes and premium plans at affordable rates, allowing you to safeguard yourself and your employees against unforeseen accidents and injuries on job sites.
