This month’s focus – Returning to work after disability leave

In 2012, 13.7% of working age Canadians reported having a disability. 

Neglecting to pay attention to disabilities in the workplace can have a large financial impact on a business.  Particularly on small to medium sized businesses where money is tight and human resources are limited.

Consider absenteeism, which is frequent or persistent absence from work.  According to the Conference Board of Canada, the average cost of workplace absenteeism in 2011-12  was $16.6 billion and the average absenteeism rate among Canadian organizations in 2011 was 9.3 days a year, per full time employee.  However, despite the high costs of absenteeism, less than half of Canadian organizations currently track employee absences. 

Now, let’s consider presenteeism, which is attending work while unable to work at full capacity, for instance due to sickness or disability.  This is also costly for Canadian businesses.  The Canadian Mental Health Association reports that costs associated with an employee coming to work while ill or not able to perform their duties adequately can be 7-15 times higher than the costs of absenteeism. 

At Champions, we work with employers in a number of different areas including attraction, recruitment and retention of employees, as well as helping them to develop their overall disability and inclusion policies.  It’s about education, shifting perceptions and in the end, just plain good business sense. 

This month, we are focusing on how employers and employees can work together to facilitate smooth transitions when returning from long term medical or disability leave.  Although common, long term absences can be tough.  With many stakeholders involved and potentially complex bureaucracy, interpersonal relationships in the workplace can be tested.

Recently, we were fortunate to speak with Joanne McCusker.  As an Occupational Health Nurse and Supervisor of Occupational Health at Calfrac Well Services, Joanne specialises in this area and has helped hundreds of employees with smooth transitions back to work.  In general, a return to work translates to greater financial stability and a productive and active lifestyle.  Workers can re-establish social connections, which includes their co-workers.  Employers benefit too, as the return of a team member eliminates extra costs of temporary hires and boosts the morale of the team, e.g.  co-workers no longer feel the pressure of added duties to cover  and Joanne adds, 

“They don't need to feel guilty anymore.  Many employees feel guilty when they miss a day of work, let alone long term absences.”

Joanne notes 4 common difficulties that arise when an employee returns to work after disability leave:

• Acquiring specific and objective medical information about the individual’s fitness for work.

• When an employee does not have a complete understanding of their condition and wants to return to work too soon or is too hesitant to return to work.

• When the employer has limited, meaningful and productive modified duties available to the worker.

• Communication challenges, with health providers and between employers and/or employees.  

Communication challenges have the potential to cause significant barriers to return to work, workplace relationships, employee retention and presenteeism and absenteeism.  The key to solving these issues is often on-going education and moreover, open communication between stakeholders, e.g., employer or HR representative, health practitioners and employees. 

Joanne's advice for a successful return for work is:

• Early intervention - start contact with the employee right from the beginning of the absence. 

• Ongoing, regular follow up while the employee is absent, to keep up a connection to the workplace and give employers a clear and accurate picture of the employee's progress.

• Obtaining appropriate medical documentation.  This is vital in determining what limitations the employee have and what accommodations the employee may require.

• Close collaboration and open communication.  During return to work planning all stakeholders should be informed of the process and have an opportunity to provide input.

• Consider a return to work meeting involving all stakeholders.  Joanne usually conducts these on the first day back when someone has been off for a long period of time or with employees who have had complex mental health issues.

• A clear and detailed return to work plan with timelines, an outline of expectations, detailed descriptions of limitations/modified duties and accountabilities for all stakeholders is also recommended.

Awareness of these simple pieces of advice will help employers large and small to better manage the return to work transition for employees with disabilities.  

Seeking advice from experts such as Champions or professionals like Joanne, can give all stakeholders the tailored support they may need for a successful return to work and help to reverse the current absenteeism and presenteeism trends in the workplace.

For more information or to get in touch with Joanne or one of Champions' Employment Retention Specialists please call us, 403.265.5374

Making Space and Time to Get the Mental Health Care You Need

Last week, a dataset on mental health was released from the 2012 Canadian Community Health Survey, and the numbers are sobering. In the last year, approximately 2.8 million people in Canada over the age of 15 reported symptoms consistent with mental health or substance abuse disorders. This is roughly 10% of the population.*

*What is even more startling about this number is that it excludes people living on-reserve or in other Aboriginal settlements, full time members of the Canadian Forces, or the institutionalized population.

Having a mental or substance use disorder, experiencing higher levels of distress, or having two or more chronic physical health conditions were positively associated with reporting a need for mental health care. This is something we encounter frequently at Champions, where the combination of living with a disability and a mental illness can exacerbate symptoms of both conditions.

Counselling was reported as the most common type of care needed by respondents, and nearly 33% of people who had a need for mental health care said their needs were either not met or only partially met. Personal circumstances – like being too busy – were the most frequently reported reasons for people not receiving the mental health care they need.

Time, stress and general busyness can make taking care of our health difficult. It is interesting that those who required medication had the highest rating for having their needs met, over 90%. This suggests that certain parts of our health care system are more adept at treating mental illness than others. The treatment where we need to create time and space for ourselves, or for others, continues to be lacking.

If your workplace or personal life is so busy that you can’t find time to care for your mental health, then they are probably a source of or at the very least contributing to the problem. The best place to start is often to stop. At work, this means creating space to recognize the issues around mental health and get a dialogue going. Only when people begin to discuss and talk about mental illness in an open and honest way can solutions begin to reveal themselves.

Everything begins with workplace culture. And workplace culture rarely begins with a policy or forced workshop for staff. If you are a manager, ask yourself how many people in your workplace have a mental health issue. If the answer is zero, you most likely have a problem. Why? Because the odds of your workplace being the one place where the 1 in 10 Canadians with a mental health issue don’t work is exceedingly improbable. On the flip side, if your staff members are repeatedly taking stress leave, or extended absences from work, then you may also have a problem.

Emotional intelligence training can be a great place to start in the workplace. This can get employees to think about their own emotions and those of others. Building this kind of social support in the workplace can create conversation and be the building blocks of a more supportive culture. Once this conversation gets going then space will be created for more programmes which look after employee health - ones that people will take the time to engage with.

Managing Stress in the Workplace

One of our community partners - Canadian Mental Health Association, Calgary - has recently launched their first e-learning module on stress management in the workplace. This brief module, designed for anyone and everyone in the workplace, will help you to better recognize stress in yourself and others and provide tangible strategies to effectively address stress in the workplace. The information can also be useful in other aspects of your life.

We highly recommend for you to take this ten minute course and to share it with your co-workers, family and friends. It is a tremendous resource and can play a great part in shifting perceptions about mental health and disability in the workplace.

Start the course by clicking on the image below.

Managing Your Duty to Accommodate Conference

What: Managing Your Duty to Accommodate Conference

When: August 20-21, 2013. 

Where: Calgary, Alberta

Champions is proud to partner with INFONEX for their upcoming Managing Your Duty to Accommodate Conference this August. The conference will provide human resource and management professionals with the critical information needed to stay abreast of their ever-changing obligations. Hear from a distinguished faculty, including members of the Champions team, as well as other legal professional and industry practitioners, to get the real guidance you need to deal strategically with your most pressing accommodation issues.

Our Executive Director, Lisa Moon, will be leading a session titled Creating a Culture of Inclusion: Developing and Implementing a Disclosure Policy. She will also be joined by a member of our Board of Directors, Nicole Jelley, who will be discussing best practices on Accommodating an Aging Workforce for Greater Productivity.

More Information About the Managing Your Duty to Accommodate Conference

As an employer, you face increased pressure and costly challenges to accommodate physical, mental and stress-related disabilities, employee addiction, family responsibilities and many other issues in your workplace. Employers run into complex accommodation cases when employees fail to address their accommodation needs, deny reasonable requests for medical information, resort to self-accommodation or stay cooperative.

Get updates on the latest legal developments, rulings and guidance. Deepen your understanding of family status law and learn about a new ground where accommodation applies. Have a chance to listen to different views on the evolving law of family status accommodation from a legal expert, union representative and corporate representative in a panel discussion. Explore how you can strategically monitor your employees during the accommodation period - how to set appropriate time and policy. Understand when and how to accommodate your employee with mental illness as it can be often a convoluted and frustrating process. Maximize your ability to engage in partnership working with a union to develop an accommodation plan. Discover how you can create a wellness program for your aging workforce. Develop a greater awareness of how you can demonstrate your commitment and leadership towards accommodation to your employees. Compare the latest legal updates and rulings on disability management and how these apply to real word examples. Improve your soft skills to communicate with your employees on sensitive issues and develop your own communication framework that would fit your workplace.

Employers must stay on top of the latest legal updates and strategies to ensure the workplace is accessible and that their accommodation practices and comprehensive and legally compliant. Join us in Calgary to learn how you can best manage your duty to accommodate. 

• Listen to expert legal guidance and updates on duty to accommodate in human rights matter
• Understand the latest court rulings on family status accommodation and their effect on your workplace
• Learn how to overcome frustration of contract: how employment-contract frustration and the duty to accommodate interact
• Discover why you need to monitor your employees during their accommodation period and proven techniques for doing it right
• Explore processes and guidance for managing complex mental health and substance issues
• Define your legal responsibilities for accommodating employees with mental illness and their physiological states
• Enhance your partnership working with union in the accommodation process
• Hear about Alberta Health Services Continuum of Resources for the Workplace
• Get guidance on accommodating an aging workforce
• Explore why you need to place business value on successful accommodation
• Compare the latest legal updates and real-word examples of disability cases from injury, to modified duties, to return to work
• Develop your soft skills to communicate better with your employees on sensitive accommodation issues

Register today! Use discount code 1077-CCC-CaT to get a discounted rate as a friend of Champions.