Hey there, Michael Stack here with Amaxx.
If I asked you to think of a friend of yours, who immediately comes to mind? What value does that individual bring to your life?
This past weekend, I connected with some old friends of mine, some good friends from college, guys I’ve known for over two decades. We spent a couple of days together back at Indiana University where we went to college. It was a heck of a lot of fun. A heck of a lot of fun connecting with those very valuable relationships and longstanding relationships in my life, and it just gives you a little bit of a boost connecting with such good friendships and good connections.
Injured Workers’ Often Cut Off From Work Friendships
It got me thinking today about injured workers, and how in general, we as adults make our friends. A lot of times we’ll have old friends, old college friends like I did, that just connected with. But a lot of times as we grow older, as adults, we make those connections, a lot of connections, through the people we work with, kind of through those social connections. Then of course, through our kids and all that kind of stuff as that develops.
But that piece of the social fabric, those friendships and social connections at work, some of them stronger than others, oftentimes for injured workers, get cut off right at the time of their injury, at the time when they need it most. When we talk about that little boost, they need that little boost, but they’re not getting it, it often has that negative effect because they’re not connecting with those individuals in their life any longer.
Friendships Can Be Positive Support For Injured Workers’ Recovery
I want you to think about the meaning of that for that friend that came to mind when I asked you to think about that individual. Think about those social connections that you have at work, and the meaning that has in your life and the boost that sometimes that gives to you, and the importance of that in an injured worker’s recovery process.
I’m going to give you two techniques to foster that, to give that to those individuals when they could use that little boost as well. So let me give you these two techniques, and I want you to think about these and have them implemented in your program.
Visit Injured Workers at Hospital
The first one, very simple, go to visit that injured worker at the hospital. Go to visit that injured worker at the hospital, make that person-to-person connection with them when they’re in that recovery, immediately following that injury. Go to visit that person at the hospital. You talk about sending a get well card as well, this is really significantly more effective. Bring some flowers, bring something that they like. If they don’t like flowers, bring something else that they might enjoy.
Meet With Injured Worker Weekly at Company
Then number two is meet weekly at the company. So meet weekly at the company. We talk about weekly meetings with the injured workers. Have that weekly meeting be at the organization, physically at the organization. If it’s at the manufacturing plant, if you have a construction site, whatever it is that you have, wherever it is that you’re working, meet with them, personally have them come in, if at all possible, to the organization.
They can make some of those physical connections, those emotional connections, reconnecting with the fabric that may be for that person, a big support in their life that can really help draw them through which might be a very difficult recovery. If you can meet with them, stay connected with the company, stay connected with those relationships, it can not only give them that boost, but it can oftentimes help push them over the edge.
Don’t discount the importance of a lot of this impact on those injured workers, because it can be very, very positive and create very positive outcomes.
Again, my name is Michael Stack, I’m the CEO of Amaxx. Remember, your work today in workers’ compensation, can have a dramatic impact on your company’s bottom line, but it will have a dramatic impact on someone’s life. So be great.
Author Michael Stack, CEO Amaxx LLC. He is an expert in workers’ compensation cost containment systems and helps employers reduce their workers’ comp costs by 20% to 50%. He works as a consultant to large and mid-market clients, is a co-author of Your Ultimate Guide To Mastering Workers Comp Costs, a comprehensive step-by-step manual of cost containment strategies based on hands-on field experience, and is founder & lead trainer of Amaxx Workers’ Comp Training Center .
Contact: mstack@reduceyourworkerscomp.com.
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