July 2020
Integrated Absence Management
Integrated absence management requires an increasing amount of expertise from industry professionals. Whether you are tackling paid and unpaid leave law requirements, building comprehensive data management systems, or navigating challenging pandemic issues, this issue of @Work magazine is filled with resources and recommendations to help you build effective, integrated programs for your organization.
Features
Interaction of Paid FML Benefits and Existing Unpaid Leave Laws
New state paid leave programs may have multiple compliance mandates. More often than not, the design of unpaid and paid leave programs have many points of divergence. As a result, coordinating unpaid and paid leave programs presents a complex challenge for employers and their leave vendors. Read more.
Workplace Impact of Cannabis Legalization
Cannabis legalization is already affecting your workplace culture and productivity, but its impact involves many uncertain factors. It’s important to review key trends to estimate the major impacts that are beginning to arrive. Read more.
Spotlight Articles
Program Showcase: From Design to Data
Integrated absence management involves negotiating an incredible array of agreements within your organization, as well as with your vendors. You need to understand some data management basics to translate your negotiated agreements into a functional data platform that delivers all those promises on the back end. Read more.
Compliance Showcase: FMLA & ADA Interplay
Employers face challenges when an employee’s health condition might provide protections under both the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA). ADA and FMLA rights intersect and sometimes collide. Read more.
Compliance Showcase: ADA Documentation
Real estate agents say the three most important things in home sales are location, location, and location. You can borrow that way of thinking for your organization’s ADA compliance. The three most important things are documentation, documentation, and documentation. Read more.
Columns
Absence Matters: Out-Thinking COVID-19
For those who were struggling with mental health issues prior to COVID-19, their situation may have been magnified by this year’s events. Now add individuals newly affected by COVID-19 and seeking treatment or assistance for the first time, and it is easy to see a system at or exceeding capacity. Employers need to recognize this developing trend and how it affects their workforce. Read more.
Integrated Absence Management: A Human Approach
The revolution in data science is creating new opportunities to improve disability management. Combining new data capabilities with a human-centered approach can help benefit managers make a difference in disability outcomes. Read more.
Engaging Today’s Workforce: A Holistic Benefit Approach
The COVID-19 pandemic has touched every aspect of our lives and especially our workplaces. Now, more than ever, employees are relying on employer-offered benefits and programs as they focus on their productivity and health. It’s critical to address employees’ needs, and this, in turn, can help bolster engagement and loyalty. Read more.
Employer Solutions: Total Absence Management
Lost time is lost time, whether an employee is out due to a job-related accident or is a weekend warrior with a sports-related injury. Effective integration of both the risk management and benefits sides of the house can help employers better manage absences and safely return people to work. Read more.
FMLA & ADA Medical Information: Emotional Support Animals
We have all been reading about the proliferation of pet buying with the shelter in place and other COVID-19–related orders that have required us to stay close to home. Once employers start welcoming employees back to the workplace, we will likely see more requests for accommodations involving “emotional support animals”. Read more.
IAM Technology Tips: Speaking IT’s Language
Human resource departments often struggle to get their share of the IT budget for strategic projects involving compliance, pay, and improving the employee experience. But that lack of technology investment can come at a great cost to the organization. Learn how HR can start to speak the IT language to get its fair share of IT resources. Read more.
Absence & Accommodation Technology: Improve Absence Reporting
When it comes to absence reporting, data is power. However, it’s only powerful if you’re able to translate it into meaningful, actionable metrics. In our current age of data overload, it’s crucial to look for absence management technology with strong reporting capabilities and spend time determining the reports that will benefit your organization. Read more.
Common Sense Compliance: Integrated Absence Management
Layering leave and accommodation entitlements with existing disability programs can result in confusion between job protection and available benefits. It requires collaboration among all your in-house and outsourced leave management resources to ensure your employees are getting the leave, coverage, and accommodations they need. Read more.
A Clinician’s Viewpoint: Targeting Support
At the beginning of a claim, it can be difficult to know if or when referring to a case manager would be helpful. Several tools are now available to help identify which claims would benefit from referral: various risk assessment and long-term disability predictor scores, soon to be amplified and automated by artificial intelligence. Read more.
Workplace Mental Health: Building Trust
As organizations struggle with uncertainty and chaos, one key element has never been more important: trust. Enhancing trust between employer and employee, in teams, and for institutions will make the difference in how effectively we share the responsibility to maintain resilience at every level. Read more.
Benefits & Risk Management: Unplanned Absences
In this COVID-19 world, workforce management may well be more critical to enterprise success and continuity than ever before. Having integrated reporting structures in place to provide a complete view of all types of unplanned absences is essential to facilitating optimal workforce management. Read more.
Departments
The CEO's Desk: Becoming…Indispensable
As integrated absence management professionals working in a corporate environment, the response to the COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically impacted our profession and industry. During this year of extraordinary difficulties, you have risen to to the challenge and become indispensable in your organizations. Read more.
DMEC News: July 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic has transformed work and life, creating new challenges for employees and employers. Join us in August for expert and honest insight into these challenges during the 2020 DMEC Virtual Annual Conference. We’ll explore practical solutions and offer timely guidance on the most pressing employer issues in the post-pandemic future. Read more.
Compliance Memos: July 2020
The July 2020 compliance memos cover employer compliance obligations during the pandemic and employee benefit laws that are advancing across the United States. Read more.
