Return to Work Works in Community

Today’s January 23rd, 2023. We’re a couple weeks into the new year. How you doing on your New Year’s resolutions? Hello, my name is Michael Stack and I’m the CEO of Amaxx. And that’s a great question.

How Are Your New Year’s Resolutions Going?

Here’s my guess. Here’s my guess, and here’s what the statistics say. If you plan to lose weight, get your finances in order, spend more time with family, et cetera, et cetera, whatever your resolution was, if you just set it by yourself, you didn’t tell anyone about it, you didn’t get any support from anyone about it, you’re probably off the tracks already a couple weeks in. Ah, I don’t know. I’ll get to that maybe next year. Maybe the summer. I’ll work on that. You know, we’ll get that thing kind of thing squared away, whatever it was.

If you are collaborating with others, if you have a running partner, if you joined a running group, if you have an online forum, if you have some support to help you accomplish your goal, help you achieve something difficult, that maybe you haven’t achieved very well in the past, you have a significantly better chance to achieve that goal.

We Do Better in Community

Let’s talk about work comp and what that means for us, that general concept, and I think we can all agree to that. We can all agree that yes, that is true. What I just said. What I just said is up here on the board, we do better. We do better in community, we do better in community, we do better in community, in whatever it is we’re trying to do.

So, in the work comp world, we talk about return to work. We talk about an injured employee trying to overcome, achieve something that’s difficult, kind of like that. Maybe that new year’s resolution that you set, you know, several weeks back, they got to get back to health, back to function, back to where they were in the past. We leave them on their own. We leave them on their own. We leave them to say, okay, you just set their resolution, great. Don’t tell anyone about it. Don’t get any support. Don’t have anyone check in on you and we, we expect you to get back. And that’s just ridiculous. It doesn’t work for us. It doesn’t work for them.

It doesn’t work for us that are not injured and it doesn’t work for them. When we talk about the value of bringing people back, so much of this from an employer standpoint is actually internalizing that within ourselves, internalizing that within ourselves. How would you act in that scenario? What would you need in order to help get you back? That’s likely gonna help somewhere else?

Communication and Community Work

And here’s the takeaway. Here’s the takeaway. We do better in community. Get those people back, get ’em back to work, communicate with them, reach out to them. We’ve got our communication best practices. We’ve got a great training on that topic. First day phone call, get well card, weekly check-ins, bringing them back in, bringing them as a part of the workforce.

Even if that workforce isn’t specifically saying, Hey John, you know, how you doing with that shoulder injury? We want you to continue to push. We want you. Just being in that environment, in that community environment is so much more valuable than being home. It’s just so much more valuable. It works for us and it works for them. Remember the takeaway. When the turn, when it comes down to putting return to work programs into practice, we need to understand that we all, all, all do better in community. Remember your work today, worker’s compensation, you 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 the founder & lead trainer of Amaxx Workers’ Comp Training Center, which offers the Certified Master of Workers’ Compensation national designation.

Contact: [email protected].

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