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Today, executives are looking for an edge anywhere they can find it. There is no greater opportunity than with a company's workforce, your largest expense and, more importantly, greatest asset.
Rising workers' compensation costs and concerns about productivity are forcing executives to take a closer look at how they manage employees. In fact, employers spend 15 cents of every payroll dollar on employee absence, according to Marsh/Mercer's 2003 Survey of Time-off and Disability Programs. While at one time workers' compensation costs and the impact of employee absences may have been considered an unavoidable cost of doing business, executives are no longer accepting the status quo.
What Will You Say When They Ask What Happened?
When focusing on maintaining a competitive edge and effectively managing a company's most valuable asset - employees - executives should be asking the following questions:
- How does my ability to manage workers' compensation costs compare to my peers? What proactive steps can I take?
- What are the key causes of absenteeism in my organization?
- Do I have an effective and efficient transitional duty and/or return-to-work program?
- Have I created a work environment that encourages employee productivity?
- How do I track my occupational and non-occupational absences? Should I be linking these two systems?
Who's Looking Out for You?
Marsh's Absence Management practice focuses on the policies, procedures, work environments, and management philosophies that will make a workforce more productive. The goal is to ensure that the people who were hired, trained, and retained are in an environment that encourages them to be both present and productive.
Key elements to an effective integrated absence management program include:
- Deploying strategies designed to prevent or reduce the risk of unplanned employee absence
- Developing procedures that can contribute to lower labor costs, increased productivity, higher employee satisfaction, and improved services levels
- Managing human capital costs through the integration of disability and absence management programs
Diagnostic Tools
With thorough research and sophisticated diagnostics, we can help identify the root causes of absenteeism and identify the key enablers for absence, i.e., a poor benefits structure, lack of a transitional or return-to-work policy, ineffective policies and procedures, and /or management attitude.
Sample programs include the Economic Model, Workers' Compensation Gap Analysis, and Managed Care Impact Assessment.
Solutions
With a thorough understanding of an organization's drivers, the Marsh Absence Management team will create and follow an action plan that meets the organization's specific needs. The program may include some of the following elements:
- Education: Provide senior management and front-line supervisors with information on the company's disability program and encourage their support and participation. Engage management and employees by defining their roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities.
- Return to Work/Transitional Duty: Create a program that encourages employees to return to work as soon as they are medically able and provide temporary duty assignments that are meaningful to both the employee and the employer.
- Procedures and Processes: Identify, select, implement, and evaluate policies and procedures that reduce redundancy, inefficiency, and potential disability as well as workers' compensation claim abuse.
- Physician Practice Management: Provide health care recommendations to injured employees within state guidelines and act as an advocate on behalf of the injured or ill employee. Educate physicians on the work environment and the physical requirements of each job.
- Benefit Redesign: Develop a benefits program that meets both organizational and employee needs. This can include evaluation of paid-time-off (PTO) programs, integration of Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) reporting and tracking across benefit lines, and implementation of processes to identify and eliminate potential "double-dipping."
- Work Site Redesign: Reengineer the workplace to match physical capabilities with job requirements. Potential solutions may include task segregation, job rotation, and devices to reduce the effects of energy and load.
Measurement
During the diagnostics phase, we define how the organization measures up to industry best practices and establish a baseline against which companies can measure future progress and success. In the development of each Marsh solution, we work with the organization to set specific goals that are meaningful and develop a plan to help measure and track the organization's progress in meeting absence management goals.
If you have any questions or would like additional information, please contact us.
If you are seeking information about insurance and related services, please visit marsh.com.
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