Get Them Back to Work to Get Them Well

“Return-to-work and rehabilitation need to be focused more at the worksite than at a clinic,” says Dr. Donald Shrey, Ph.D., a specialist in return-to-work programs. “Some people say you need to get people well to get them back to work; I say get them back to work to get them well.”

Dr. Shrey is president of Advanced Transitions, Inc., an international consulting corporation specializing in disability management audits and strategic planning for the development of successful return-to-work programs and disability management systems. Shrey is also the author of a book on the topic, Principles and Practices of Disability Management.

Key Principles

Shrey emphasizes a number of key principles for successful return-to-work programs:

• “People should be able to transition back to work while going through recovery, rather than waiting until they’re 100 percent able to perform regular job activities. On any given day, there are plenty of people who aren’t working at 100 percent anyway, so why adopt a 100 percent philosophy for injured workers?”
• “Joint labor/management involvement is essential in the development of a transitional work program, whether the workplace is unionized or not.”
• “Maintain the bond between the worker and the employer, and keep people ‘attached.’ When employees’ identities are strongly wrapped around their role as workers, and you remove them from work, their identities begin to change, and they start feeling more like patients than workers.”
• “Research in the field has always focused on factors related to the worker—age, education, impairment, motivation, etc, but not enough attention is focused on the work environment. We have to understand labor relations, job satisfaction, and relationships among workers and between workers and supervisors.”

Workers’ Comp—walk this legal tightrope without fear of catastrophe. BLR’s upcoming webinar will get you up to speed—without leaving the building. Click here for details

On-Site Rehabilitation

Shrey believes one of the hallmarks of successful transitional work is the degree to which treatment can be completed on-site.

“One of the shifting forces in my career was recognizing that taking people away from the site to a clinic can be detrimental in a number of ways.”

Unlike advocates of traditional work-hardening programs, in which employees perform simulated job tasks at an off-site facility to prepare them to return to the job, Shrey favors keeping an employee who has been approved to return to work on-site, performing as many functions of his or her “regular job” as possible.

In order to fill the remaining hours, Shrey advocates the development of a job task bank, a collection of necessary work tasks that can be tapped as temporary assignments while recovery continues. The bank is organizationwide and must be regularly maintained.

Part of the day for a transitional worker might also be spent in therapeutic activity. Here, too, Shrey recommends the “work” of rehabilitation be done on premises. This could mean bringing in a physical therapist or needed exercise equipment. The investment is well worth the benefit, he believes, even in smaller workplaces.

Through his experience in a variety of industries, Shrey has found that most employees can safely return to their original jobs within 8 weeks when they follow his recommendations. But it takes more than a good attitude on the part of the worker—it requires an infrastructure created to encourage communication and accountability among all the players, including those outside the workplace.

There are times when discipline or termination of a workers’ comp claimant is warranted, just as it would be for any other worker.  But do you know when? Join us on August 17 for an in-depth 90-minute interactive webinar all about disciplining and terminating workers who are out on workers’ comp or have returned to work. Learn More