Light Duty for Personal Injury/Illness

psrcello

I'm in the midst of a heated debate about whether or not we should be offering light duty assignments to employees who have non-work related illnesses or injuries.

On the one hand, I seem to remember receiving some legal advice a number of years ago that if we offer light duty for workers' comp cases, we'd better be prepared to offer it on the non-work related cases as well - treating every affected employee consistently. (There was some sort of an ADA connection here, if I remember correctly.) Therefore, I've long held to the belief that we need to look at the employee's restrictions and the available light duty assigments to make the determination, not whether or not the underlying condition is work related.

On the other hand, the safety "wonks" are saying that we shouldn't bring back an employee with a personal illness or injury until they are released to 100% full duty. Theory here is that we risk "buying" a workers' comp case if the employee aggravates the personal condition while working light duty.

Can anybody out there give me some advice on this?

Pork

PSRCELLO: Being off work for a personal illness is damaging to one's ego, self worth, and social relationships developed within the organization. Whether we understand it or not the organization has a psychology which is the sum of the individual's values in the organization. Getting ees back to work from sickness and injury should always be the organization's goal. Treating one differently, is a bad move. We set deadlines for the FMLA of 12 weeks and light duty is included. Light duty is also available for the W/C victim. Both contribute to the employee beliefs that they are important to the organization and we care about them as individuals. I agree use "LIGHT DUTY" to your companies' advantage!

PORK

ray a

My experience has been if a person is on a light duty assignment and they continue to have problems or have a reinjury, responsibility defaults to disability not workers comp. I always allow ee's to return under light duty as long as the doctor gives specific instructions.

Down_the_Middle

For whatever value----------I use this expression repeatedly:

You don't get injured employees well to get them back to work.....you get injured employees back to work to get them well!!!!

Good luck with your battle.........

Betty I_O

PORK is right on . . . we also prefer to return an employee to light duty, not necessarily in their own job, dependent upon the restrictions imposed by their physician and review by our Employee Health Clinic MD. For example, we've even had clinicians or other professional types on light duty work in our print shop collating brochures or in our lobby area at the Information Desk answering inquiries from visitors.

mwild31

Hi psrcello - I would be interested in learning more about the legal advice you received regarding if providing light duty to worker comp. cases - a company is then on the hook for non-worker comp. cases - if you or anyone on the forum has this information, I would greatly appreciate a copy/resource to confirm.

I really treat non-work related injuries and the request for light duty on a case by case basis. If we can accomodate, we do, if we can't, we can't. I can't create a job if there's none there, but if the work can be adjusted to accomodate, I would do so, because we wouldn't like to lose a valuable employee. This is from a private company perspective - and it may be different in government/union shops.

As to the safety issue, if the work injury is new, it doesn't matter if the employee was previously injured or not - it's new. If a new injury occurs, but it's really an aggravation of the injury sustained off the job - then it will eventually get denied.

Hunter1

mwild: aggravation of a pre-existing condition IS work comp under some state WC laws.

mwild31

hunter1 - I think it's a gray issue in w/c circles - including WA state where the w/c very much favors the employee. It's been my experience, in WA state, that it can be denied & does not expose the employer to w/c.

Balloonman

First off get rid of the phrase light duty. Is should be a restricted duty program................light duty get to many people thinking they do not have to work hard. As a previous post or two has said, if you aggravate the condition during the restricted duty it becomes a WC claim.

If you do this with non-work related injuries on a case by case basis good luck, someone will feel they are being discriminated against. I typically do no accomodate non-work related injuries.
My $0.02 worth.
DJ The Balloonman

mwild31

[font size="1" color="#FF0000"]LAST EDITED ON 10-22-03 AT 02:00PM (CST)[/font][p]Thank you DJ - I have had much luck with the case by case basis. x:-) I've also had luck with receiving denial of a claim because the employee aggravated their pre-existing non-work related injury - it took time, but it did happen. Of course, the details are important, but if I go into the details, the post will be a mile long.

My response is meant to simply bring another side to the question in that to immediately go to the side that you can NEVER bring someone back because of an existing non-work related injury for fear of aggravation is WAY too absolute for me. I also should say that I think the size of the company is very important as well - there are things I can do as a private smaller company (case by case, applying a consistent standard) than can be done at larger ones (too many people to review & the greater potential for inconsistency due to multiple locations/physical size of company, etc.) - at larger ones - I would dedicate a policy to the issue. Just my 3 cents. x:-)

ps - I agree with the terminology & I should have used the accurate terms in my post.