Transitional duty helps control workers comp costs
Garry Kranz reports in Workforce Management: “Transitional Duty Pays Off For Everyone; Companies find that giving workers modified duties beats a long stay on workers’ comp, even if it means having them take jobs at local nonprofits.”
The article starts with the example of Dannon Yogurt:
Sphere: Related ContentDannon Yogurt knows that the best-laid plans for workplace safety can’t prevent every injury. The Fort Worth, Texas, food-products giant emphasizes safety precautions as the greatest preventive measure. But Dannon also has a transitional-duty program, which aims at getting injured employees back on the job as soon as possible for their own physical and mental well-being, and for the fiscal health of the company.
Working with medical doctors, Dannon officials modify an injured employee’s existing job whenever possible. Sometimes, however, an injury is so severe that even modified duty is impossible. On those occasions, the Volunteer Center of North Texas tries to match Dannon employees with local nonprofits in need of additional short-term staff.
Lending out employees as local volunteers, with the approval of their doctors, has had a big impact on Dannon’s bottom line. The company has reduced lost workdays by about 30 percent. Medical costs dropped between 32 and 35 percent. Recovery time has been slashed 27 percent. “The program reinforces the habit of going to work each day, which is a very strong trait. The quicker employees get back to doing work, the quicker their healing,” says Joe Baldwin, Dannon’s workplace safety manager. JPS Health Network, a Fort Worth hospital, has been a chief beneficiary. One Dannon employee puts in a 40-hour workweek at the hospital’s gift shop, and another night-shift employee mans the information desk for five hours each evening. “Volunteers are getting harder and harder to find. That’s why Dannon’s program appealed to us,” says Traci Day, the hospital’s director of volunteer services.
Dannon pays a portion of the employees’ wages while they work for nonprofits. Baldwin says the payoff comes in the form of reduced insurance premiums. Plus, getting workers healthy quicker helps reduce the length of time that replacement workers are on the payroll.
Improving the oddsIt’s not hard to figure out why companies like Dannon want creative strategies to rein in the runaway costs of medically related absences. The likelihood that a person will return to work decreases with each passing day, from 90 percent at four weeks to a mere 2 percent after 52 weeks, according to a joint study by Intracorp, the Washington Business Group on Health and the Journal of Workers Compensation. The same study found that employers could save $3 to $10 for every $1 invested in a return-to-work program. Employers benefit by potentially reducing premiums for workers’ compensation.
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