Most Injured Employees Milk Their Time on Light Duty: Fact or Myth?

Author in the Prevent Future Claims category

Do employees really try to stay out of work longer than necessary when they get injured on the job? To accurately answer this question, there are two key factors that need to be looked at – the employee’s personality and the conditions surrounding your return to work program.

In order to weed out the few who would take advantage of a more lenient return to work program, employers are forced to come up with programs that appropriately balance the day to day routine that employees crave with a job that is productive and meaningful, while still making the program a deterrent to prevent employees preferring the return to work program over their regular job.

Employees, in general, want to return to work as soon as possible for many reasons. Having friends in the workforce, the need for a steady daily routine, and the fear of becoming de-conditioned while not working, to name a few. However, every so often, you will come across an injured employee who does not worry about any of these things and would rather look at being injured as paid time off than an irritating interruption of their daily routine. Even though these employees make up a small percentage of the overall workforce, they are responsible for the strict conditions of many return to work programs.

More…

Topics: , , , , No Comments

Believe in Your Employees and Create a Safer Workplace

Author in the Reduce Current Costs category

Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in your employees? Do you believe that every job assignment makes a company flow and is just as important as the next? Do you believe that if any employee is injured, it affects the entire company? Take time to think that if any one of your employees was injured, who could pick up the slack to keep your business on course? If you are an employer who believes in your employees, then you are already on the right track to creating a safer workplace.

Returning an injured worker back to the assembly line is just as important as returning the CEO to his or her desk. Whether it is a repetitive strain injury such as carpal tunnel, an ergonomic issue such as neck or back strain, or even a fracture from a traumatic injury; recovery and return to pre-injury employment is the most important and mutual goal.

Action should be taken to assist with the needs for your injured worker. Your injured employee needs to have a plan for the beginning, middle and end of his or her recovery. With graduating work, programs like work hardening, and safety classes your workplace can have the chance to prevent future injuries as well.

Contact Proof:Positive for more information about preventing future workplace injuries, and assisting those who have already been injured.

Topics: , , , No Comments

Get Your World Turning

Author in the Prevent Future Claims category

Let’s get this straight you have employees that:

  1. Have a specific job goal
  2. Are willing to participate
  3. Have a deficit of their physical, emotional, functional, and occupational abilities
  4. Are at the point that a modified work program would not be prohibited

Are they at home collecting dust? Goodness, I hope not! Let’s get them in a modified program. Get them up, get them moving, and then put them into a work hardening program.  The Health and Wellness Rooms and Work Hardening Programs numbers do not lie, your employees will be up more than 50% faster than if they participated in self recovery at home. Not only that, but money makes the world go round, and it’s the hard workers that turn it for you. Research shows that having employees in a Wellness Program and/ or a Work Hardening Program drastically reduces costs to our inundated workers’ compensation system.

More…

Topics: , , No Comments

Social Capital – Funding the Trust in Workers’ Compensation

Author in the Reduce Current Costs category

The workers’ compensation system is filled with complex relationships and competing agendas. It can be confusing or even exasperating for an employee who must navigate this system alone. Employees need an advocate they can rely on while in the workers’ compensation system.

The employer must be that advocate.

By investing in prevention and early return-to-work systems, an employer can create social capital – the trust or ‘good will’ needed to maintain relationships – even in difficult situations. The key is to select a talented employee health partner. Proof:Positive can help you make these systems your own, by involving employees during every step. Engaging employees in prevention and the return-to-work process builds trust and shuts down the avenues for over-treatment and litigation.

Ask yourself this question: Do we give a F.I.G. about our injured employees? Use this mnemonic device to assess your organization’s ability to maintain trust when an employee becomes injured and enters the workers’ compensation system.

More…

Topics: , , , , , No Comments

Workplace Injuries Cost Businesses Like Yours $554 Billion in 2003

Author in the Prevent Future Claims category

Cost of on-the-job injuries, 2003The cost of on-the-job injuries can counteract every effort a company makes to maximize productivity, client service, and profits. The massive costs associated with these injury claims are an indication that companies are struggling to balance the need for a safe, productive work environment with the demand to increase efficiencies and improve profit margin. But as American industrialist Lee Iacocca once suggested, if you get the people part right, the rest will fall into place; on-the-job injuries will decrease, workers’ compensation costs will drop, and performance will peak. More…

Topics: , , , , , 6 Comments

The Health and Wellness Room

Author in the Reduce Current Costs category

Health and Wellness RoomBy providing injured workers with meaningful projects and ongoing training, The Health and Wellness Room keeps employees from falling “out-of-sight, out-of-mind” and returns employees to work 50 percent faster than disability leave spent at home. Here is how it works:

  • Injured workers attend classes to learn about safety and  proper medical treatment. 
  • Proof:Positive staff coordinates with claims adjusters and medical providers to ensure treatment is progressing on schedule.
  • Proof:Positive develops customized, productive activities—in cooperation with the employee’s supervisor and within physician’s authorization—that keep the employee working and on the payroll.
  • Attendance in the Proof:Positive program is mandatory, which provides accountability measures.
  • Work hardening prepares the employee to return to their original job.
  • The Health and Wellness Room eliminates time off, thereby acting as a deterrent of fraudulent or malingering claims.
Topics: , , , 3 Comments

Prevent workplace injuries

Reduce work comp costs

More info

  • Email admin@proofpositiveco.com
  • Phone (800) 766-8292
  • Fax 530-529-3564
  • Locations Currently in Washington, Oregon, California, Texas, Ohio, and 5 other states...yours is next.

© Copyright 1999-2019 Proof Positive Consulting. All Rights Reserved.