Equality Critical In Return-to-Work Plans

Chicago

Putting injured workers on light duty as their wounds heal is agood way to reduce lost time days, but policies for alternativeduty need to treat all employees equally, the risk manager for onemunicipality warned here.

During a roundtable discussion at the recent Public RiskManagement Association conference in Chicago, Debra Carson, riskmanager for the City of Longmont, Colo., described how a “disparatetreatment” lawsuit spotlighted the need for change in the citysemployment policies.

Longmont previously had established a limited number ofalternative duty days for people who were injured on the job, shesaid. Employees who couldnt return to work following their workerscompensation claim began a 12-week Family Medical Leave Act benefitthat could ultimately end with termination, she said.

“What we found out was that there were people with injuries orillness not caused on the job” who were not able to performessential job functions, Ms. Carson said. However, some of theseemployees, it was discovered, “were being accommodated by theirsupervisors, but their time wasnt ticking. This happened because wedidnt have a system set up.”

This was first brought to her attention by the policedepartment, she said, which “had people with, for instance, a waterskiing injury, who were on light duty and the clock never ticked.So they could be placed on light duty for years,” because theinjury was not work related, she said.

The situation caused “rumblings of a disparate treatment claim”by employees who felt it was unfair that someone injured on the jobwas given limited alternative duty, while an employee who becameill outside of work had unlimited alternative duty.

“They were absolutely correct and it was something we hadntthought of,” she said. “So we updated our policy and I think we areone of the few [municipalities] that have done so.”

Longmont adopted a new policy that limits alternative duty timefor all employees to 24 weeks–”end of story,” she said. “What weretrying to do now is stack[ing] the Family and Medical Leave Act[benefit] on top of that.”

A return-to-work program assigning employees to light duty whennecessary resulted in lower amounts of lost time from work for LakeCounty, Colo., said Brandt Byrd, senior personnel technician.

Important to the success of the program is knowing “what theirjobs entail and what employees can or cant do based on theirinjury,” he said.

A job description is given to the employees medical doctor, whocan then more accurately assess whether the employee is capable ofperforming his or her job, he said.

Mr. Byrd said job descriptions are easily available because hisdepartment is linked with human resources.

“You want to try to keep your lost time days down,” he said.Lost time is more frequent in areas like law enforcement and roadconstruction that are “traditionally higher in workers compensationrates as far as cost per year,” he said. “Being self insured, welook at preventing injuries and minimizing exposures.”

Actively involving employees in safety programs is another wayto reduce the number of days lost, Mr. Byrd said.

To keep employees involved, one department holds a contest thatculminates in an annual awards breakfast, he said.

Prizes are given to areas that reach established goals fornumber of days missed, number of accidents, and number of trainingprograms attended.

“This has absolutely helped bring down the number of accidentsand days missed,” he said.

Reproduced from National Underwriter Property &Casualty/Risk & Benefits Management Edition, September 3, 2001.Copyright 2001 by The National Underwriter Company in the serialpublication. All rights reserved.Copyright in this article as anindependent work may be held by the author.

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