The Best of Both Worlds
By Andy Berg, Vice President, Operations, Sedgwick
Many employers were forced to shift jobs to work-at-home models at the onset of the pandemic.1 Not surprisingly, one of the results of this change was fewer job accommodation requests. In fact, some employers saw a 32% decrease in accommodation incident rates from 2019 to 2020, and it stayed relatively flat through 2021.2
Reductions in requests for intermittent leaves of absence, environmental modifications, and physical accommodations were the biggest drivers of the overall decrease. And that makes sense when you consider that employees working from home had more ability to take frequent breaks, work flexible hours, stretch, and go to quick doctor visits.
But in 2022, employers started returning employees to worksites.3 And, unsurprisingly, accommodation incident rates increased by 8.7%.2 To ease the challenge of returning to offices, consider the following strategies.
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