A client who assigned all of their injured employees to the same work area for light duty. The employees immediately developed a friendship that resulted in symptom exaggeration, defiance and litigation.

An insurance agent who asked me to review the claim file of an employee who was on light duty and managed to file three additional claims within seven days of returning to work.

A file that resulted in an employee filing an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) complaint after being terminated for not showing up for a light-duty job.

Several injured employees who became extremely comfortable in their assigned light-duty positions and refused to return to their pre-injury jobs.

A claim for an employee who found a new excuse every time we asked him to return to work—every time he showed up for work, his symptoms of constant pain kept him from doing any work. Finally, he got his attorney to find him a doctor that took him off work permanently.

As I made the decision two years ago to write this book, I recognized that I would have to change the way employers viewed light duty before I could motivate them to implement proactive return-to-work policies. This book had to accomplish three things:

1. Change the perception of light duty.
2. Quantify the cost of not implementing a return to work program.
3. Provide the employer with clear steps that will result in a positive return-to-work experience.

Despite all of the negative conotations about injured employees, I feel that I can, through this book, outline the steps that you, the employer, should follow to ensure that injured employees return to work after an accident. Many companies have return-to-work programs but few realize the full benefits of the program because they omit or overlook key elements of the process.

Return-to-work programs are only effective if they are implemented with the support of upper, middle and lower management….

...How difficult is it to bring an injured employee back to work?

Statistics show that 50 percent of all injured employees return to work within ten days of their injury. A majority of those employees then return to their pre-injury job with no residual problems within thirty days. The other 50 percent attempt to circumvent the system by staying out of work beyond the time frame that is expected for the type of injury they suffered.

It is remarkable to review statistics that compare the length of time an employee is off work due to a non-work–related injury and the length of time they are off work due to a work-related injury. If you compare diagnosis, prognosis and treatment, the work-related disability statistics are significantly higher. If you remove the fact that the injury happened at work, most individuals would recover and resume their regular duties very quickly. Adding the workers’ compensation component creates a sudden extension of symptoms, treatment and a distinct delay in the amount of time required to return to an active lifestyle.

What contributes to injured employees remaining off work?

The key component that is often missing from a company’s Injury Management Program is a written Return-to-Work Policy. Many injured employees have been released by their treating doctors to return to work but their employers are reluctant to allow them back into the work environment. In these instances, the insurance carrier has to pay benefits to an employee who has approval to work but is sitting at home with nowhere to go. The major factor that contributes to this reluctance is a lack of a clear policy with specific procedures that can be applied immediately after an accident that will result a positive return-to-work experience.

...Why is all of this important?

The National Safety Council estimates that there are more than 80,000,000 lost work days due to occupational injuries or illness. This is a billion-dollar problem for the American workforce. This is a pandemic of huge proportions but we as a society overlook the magnitude of this problem. Historically, the laws have not adequately supported the return-to-work process—it is much easier to offer an injured employee a settlement than it is to give them the opportunity to return to gainful employment. The responsibility for this lies with every insurance carrier and every employer. We as a society created this problem and the burden to correct it is in everyone’s lap.

The Challenge—What is your role as the employer?

The critical steps for any employer are to understand the system, to learn the pitfalls and to set up appropriate procedures for returning injured employees to work as soon as possible. Our firsthand knowledge will guide you step by step through the return-to-work process. We will also show you how to incorporate the treating physician into the process and how to use the “Florida Workers’ Compensation Uniform Medical Treatment/Status Reporting Form” (DWC-25)—a significant addendum made to the Florida Workers’ Compensation Statutes in October 2003.

Employees generally do not want to be at home. And, even if they do want to be there, it is your job to remind them that they are still gainfully employed and that watching TV is not an acceptable benefit from the injury.

I would like to challenge every employer to reduce their lost work days by 25 percent each quarter. You can do so by implementing the steps you will learn in this book. It is up to us to stop the workers’ compensation cycle by giving employees the opportunity to continue to contribute even if they are injured.

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