Canadian Employment Law Today

Employer opportunities To turn these challenges into opportuni- ties, the employer must understand the issues, provide leadership, and create a supportive corporate culture and work en- vironment. Upstream action is extremely effective at preventing unwanted down- stream consequences: Adopt a joint labour-management ap- proach to attendance control and disabil- ity management. Employers working with their unions can design, implement, evalu- ate and continuously improve their atten- dance control and disability management efforts. Formalize the DMP. e "cornerstones" of a DMP include: • Early intervention — An employer-initiated response aimed at keeping the ill or injured employee connected to the workplace and preventing medical absence in the first place. Early intervention decreases the num - ber of sick days and increases the likelihood of successful and sustainable return to work. • Claim management — e administration of income-loss claims through employee benefit insurance plans (short-term dis - ability, workers' compensation, and long- term disability insurances). • Case management — e assessment, planning, implementation, co-ordination, monitoring, and evaluation of services available to meet an employee's health needs. Focusing on competent disability case management greatly improves the or - ganization's DMP outcomes. • Return-to-work planning — A "socially fragile process" in which the returning employee, supervisor, and co-workers face the challenge of renegotiating work rela - tionships and duties. Work accommoda- tion must be mutually beneficial; it must meet the employee's capabilities and the organization's business needs. • Return-to-work placement — Ideally, em - ployees should return to their own job — a known position in which they can excel and receive co-worker support. e place- ment must be monitored to ensure that re- covery is realized; an action rarely under- taken by employers. • Confidentiality — In managing employee personal health information, all individu- als are legally required to protect its con- fidentiality. • Documentation — For disability claim man- agement, case management, and return-to- work planning and placement, documenta- tion is crucial. It enables monitoring of the employee's recovery and return-to-work outcome, and demonstrates the organiza- tion's duty to accommodate due diligence. • Program evaluation and continuous im- provement — Data collection and analysis enables the employer to understand the true cost of disability, and identify im- provement opportunities. • Ethical disability management practice — e ethics of the disability situation must be objectively weighed so that the decision- making is rational and based on facts, rath - er than on emotional issues. • Legal compliance — Disability manage- ment is impacted by law. Stakeholders must be aware that specific acts and regulations change; they should obtain legal counsel to ensure they have the most current case law information when setting up programs or when dealing with specific disability cases. Create an integrated Disability Man - agement Program. Employers who have created an Integrated DMP have achieved strong performance outcomes — for exam- ple, reduced employee group benefit costs by 15 per cent to 35 per cent. It involves: • Maximization of organizational resources and expertise — Linking the Human Re - sources Program, Attendance Control Programs, DMP, Occupational Health and Safety Program, and Employee Assistance Program into an Integrated DMP. • Disability Management practitioner exper - tise – Position these practitioners to guide, steward and govern the organization to be able to effectively and efficiently control ab- senteeism and manage disability. • Competent disability case managers are vi- tal to the successful and sustainable recov- ery and return-to-work process. DMP evaluation e DMP has to be regularly evaluated to ensure that it is delivering value. For this to happen, the organization has to es- tablish program goals, objectives, action plans and performance targets, as well as to regularly measure and evaluate their achievement. Supportive work culture By creating a supportive work culture that maximizes human performance, manage- ment creates a work environment in which safe work practices, a respectful work- place, meaningful employee support, hir- ing practices that provide good person-job fit, adequate information and equipment, employee education and training, and en- couragement to perform at a high level, are the norm. Case Management assessment To effectively manage employee illness and injury and diminished functional capacity, a case manager conducts a case manage- ment assessment. Hence, the barriers and drivers to a safe and timely return-to-work outcome are identified. Effective case man- agement involves changing barriers into drivers for a successful return to work. Canadian employers face significant chal- lenges in disability management. Yet, by providing strong leadership and creating a corporate culture focused on establishing an approach to effective absence control and disability management, a solid foundation is created on which to build. Canadian HR Reporter, a Thomson Reuters business 2017 January 4, 2017 | Canadian Employment Law Today ABOUT THE AUTHOR DIANNE E. DYCK Dianne E. Dyck is an occupational health nurse and occupational health and safety specialist with Progressive Health & Safety Consulting in Calgary. She can be reached at (403) 282-9330 or degdyck2@gmail.com. CREDIT: RATTIYA LAMROD/SHUTTERSTOCK

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