This article is brought to you by our sponsor Canada Life.
Employers can often ignore the consequences that employee health issues have on their productivity, and historically focus on the medical aspects rather than on the social and psychological issues that can either cause or be impacted by absence. By engaging with absent employees, employers can help to retain valued and experienced members of staff, and may help to minimise recruitment and training costs.
Stress is acknowledged as a main cause of long-term absenteeism, and an organisation that values and supports its employees should see fewer workers taking time off work for stress reasons. Claims management services have been developed to ensure that the relevant rehabilitation plans are available in this often intangible and hard to treat area, through professional rehabilitation and counselling services.
Regular communication between all parties - employer, employee, insurer and medical professionals - is absolutely essential. Close management can not only minimise the possibility of the absence turning into a long-term claim, but will also ensure that the employee feels valued.
When people lose the social interaction of being in the workplace, there is often a reduction in self-esteem, and returning to their role can seem an increasingly insurmountable obstacle. Claims management services will offer guidelines that can help the employer to ensure that this is a smooth transition, for example, by offering employees a graded return to work to build up work stamina. It can also involve employees in planning the graded return to work and set realistic expectations and offer support and regular communication upon the employee's return to work.
While insurers continue to offer products and services that achieve success and deliver value for money, there is little excuse for employers to ignore the benefits that can be offered by claims management services, while watching their rising absence levels directly affect their premium costs.
Marion Ware, head of marketing, Canada Life Canada Life
The views and opinions in this article are those of our sponsor, Canada Life, and do not necessarily reflect those of www.employeebenefits.co.uk.
