RTW Toolkit: Transitional Work

As we continue to help you build out your Return-to-Work Toolkit, we wanted to cover a second key area of focus – Transitional Work. It’s important for employers to have multiple different and effective return-to-work strategies built into their workers’ compensation programs. Let’s review how Transitional Work can be a very beneficial return-to-work option.

What is Transitional Work?

Transitional Work is a therapeutic return-to-work tool that uses actual work tasks within the functional capability of an injured worker to aid in their recovery. It’s offered in the workplace as part of a task-oriented alternative return-to-work program. It’s suitable for injured workers who are medically stable and can safely tolerate job-specific work progression.

Transitional Work Programs are designed to transition injured workers back to their full-duty positions and are tailored to fit each employers’ needs. These programs can be created internally by your own team with the assistance your Managed Care Organization (MCO). Employers may also choose to utilize a professional physical or occupational therapist to create and develop their Transitional Work Program (TWP).

Benefits of a Transitional Work Program

Statistics have shown that employers will incur significant indirect costs from a workers’ compensation claim. These costs can be as much as four times more than the actual claim costs themselves. Some of the indirect cost are due to:

• limited/decreased productivity
• increased hiring and training costs
• higher overtime expenses
• increased legal costs
• lowered morale
• loss of business
• loss of customer goodwill

Transitional Work Programs allow injured workers to remain engaged and productive during their recovery. In doing so, they avoid many of the negative impacts that often accompany post-accident recovery, including lower self-esteem, lost wages, and emotional and physical stress – all of which can delay the healing process. Transitional Work Programs are proven to get injured workers back to work safely and timely.

Lost time is the one factor that has the most impact on Ohio workers’ compensation premiums. Therefore, it is essential that all the tools and strategies available are used as often as possible to aid in returning injured workers to the job as quickly and as safe as possible.

Your MCO Partner

An MCO partner like Sheakley UniComp can guide you in creating and implementing return-to-work strategies that actually work. We can also help you understand more about the BWC and its processes. Your MCO serves both the best interests of your company and your employees by keeping your workers’ compensation costs down and returning injured employees to work quickly.

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