DMEC: Welcome to absence management perspectives, a DMEC podcast. The Disability Management Employer Coalition, or DMEC as we're known by most people, provides focused education, knowledge, and networking opportunities for absence and disability management professionals. DMEC has become a leading voice in the industry and represents more than 20,000 professionals from organizations of all sizes across the United States and in Canada. This podcast series focuses on industry perspectives and delves into issues that affect DMEC members and the community as a whole. We're thrilled to have you with us and hope you'll visit us@dmec.org to get a full picture of what we have to offer, from webinars and publications to conferences, certifications, and much more. Let's get started and meet the people behind the processes.

Heather Grimshaw: Hi, we're glad you're listening. I'm Heather Grimshaw with DMEC, and we're talking about leave utilization today with Jenny Hakin, integrated leaves and accommodations program manager for Puget Sound energy. Effectively managing employee leave utilization is a hot topic of discussion for employers and the focus of a recent column in DMEC at Work magazine titled strategies for managing excessive use of Leave. We will unlock this column for podcast listeners and have asked Jenny to join us today and share some information about the company's successful programs which have reduced unnecessary leave. This is noteworthy in and of itself, but it was accomplished at a time when the company was adding staff. Leave management is a balancing act for employers that want to ensure they support employees needs for various leave types, while also protecting employees who cover work for those out on leave to maintain production and service standards. This is a multifaceted responsibility for integrated disability and absence management professionals, some of whom manage or may manage hundreds of leave laws to set the stage for listeners. Would you provide some background information about this concept of curbing leave utilization and why this is important for employers?

Jenny Haykin: Yes, providing leave is a balancing act. We want to support our employees and provide them with needed breaks during difficult times as well as major life changes such as adding a child to the family and we must be compliant with leave laws. But when absenteeism becomes too common, it typically causes short staffing, leading to overworking those who are at work, particularly the ones with the best attendance. Overwork can negatively impact health and well being, furthering the need for absenteeism. It becomes difficult to meet business objectives when the use of leave becomes prevalent.

Heather Grimshaw: That's really helpful. Context, Jenny I'm also hoping to include some information about the fact that abuses are more the exception than the rule, as I understand it.

Jenny Haykin: Yes, I agree. Abuse is the exception. The work environment can be a factor. Generally, in supportive work environments, employees are benefiting from being present. Purpose, connection with others, learning, and being recognized are all advantages work can provide. In addition to providing an income. Missing work repeatedly or for a long period of time impacts all of those advantages and most workers do not see that being in their best interest, abuse or overuse can be an issue. However, when employees are avoiding a negative work experience, are generally not well enough to be employed, or often have other priorities that take precedence during work hours.

Heather Grimshaw: Hoping that you'll provide additional context here in terms of the employer cost to providing short term disability leave.

Jenny Haykin: DMEC benchmarking found that 60% of base wages is the most common amount offered by employers. Some employers offer less and some offer up to 100%. 26 weeks is the most common maximum benefit duration. Employers may pay insurance premiums or self fund. At Puget Sound Energy, the amount is 80% for up to 120 days. We are self funded and we have a highly skilled, well paid workforce in Washington state where wages are relatively high compared with other parts of the country and we pay a third party administrator for administration using Puget Sound Energy as an example for for an employee who will say earns 100,000 a year, we are paying the employee over $8,000 a month for a maximum claim duration. Depending on the waiting period, we'll be paying about $30,000 in disability pay. In addition, there the external administration costs, temporary employee or overtime costs if applicable, as well as the costs of the other benefits the company contributes to and the internal administration costs, such as tracking the leave in the payroll system.

Heather Grimshaw: It's so helpful to hear all of those different components. Thank you. So from previous conversations, I understand that Puget Sound Energy had 70,000 hours of short term disability leave. When you started in your role as the integrated leaves and Accommodations program manager, would you talk with us about the interventions you tried and which ones were most successful?

Jenny Haykin: Yes, to provide some context, we had about 2,700 employees at that time. That many hours of disability was the equivalent to losing the work of over 30 full-time employees a year. There was a lot that needed to happen to bring down this number and several interventions were successful, bringing the short-term disability hours down as we added to our overall headcount. Today, our headcount is just over 3,300 and our short-term disability hours, which gradually decreased, are approximately 38,000, a 45% reduction. Here are some of our most successful interventions. There was a culture change initiative concerning how medical limitations were viewed and addressed. Management wanted to do right by their employees and would encourage them to stay out until they were 100%. While the intent was to let employees know they had the space to recover. That type of messaging suggests that when an employee isn't healthy, they should not be contributing. It focuses on the limitations instead of the ability to work. An educational campaign explained the importance of letting employees know how valuable they are, and as long as they were able to work in some capacity, we would look to modify their job or provide alternative work when we reasonably could. Management was very on board with this as it kept them from being short-staffed. Employees embraced it too. We have very dedicated employees here who take a lot of pride in their work. Being welcome to keep working was very important to our employees. Some of our desk workers even have gone so far as to choose to continue working with their doctor's permission, while hospitalized, while on bed restaurant, and when terminally ill. Before the pandemic, when there was less telecommuting, we had a fleet of loaner recliners which were typically all in use for employees who were not medically able to sit up to work. It is common at our company for employees to encourage their doctors to release them to return while recovering. Another intervention was building up our vendor partner infrastructure. There were very few companies doing disability accommodation consulting work in Washington state at the time, so we identified a vocational rehabilitation counseling firm for injured workers that was interested in training up to do ADA, job modification, and ergonomics work. Fortunately, I had the experience doing the work they had been specializing in as well as the work we needed them to do. So I trained them how to facilitate ADA accommodations. Although we are talking about non occupational disability here, the consultants provide the same accommodation services when there's a workers compensation claim, and additionally they're all trained in ergonomics. We added the services of a third party nurse case manager. She assists employees and their healthcare providers by aiding them in getting the needed paperwork to the absence and disability administrator and the vocational rehabilitation counselors. This helps get leave in disability claim determinations quicker as well as return to work documentation sooner. The nurse also assists by reviewing medical treatment when employees want that service. We had one employee who had a depression diagnosis. He wasn't responsive to treatment and kept worsening and transitioned to long term disability. In her medical review, the nurse discovered his thyroid had never been tested. She asked the doctor about this. The doctor did a thyroid test and discovered that was the issue with treatment. For that, the employee recovered and was released to return to work. Our employees can refer themselves to the services of the vocational rehabilitation counselors and the nurse case manager at their own discretion or be referred when the need for services is known. Of note, we use the same service providers for occupational and non-occupational medical concerns. Employees learn about these services through a variety of communications, including when they call our absence management vendor for leave at intake. They hear, if you think you can continue working and earning 100%, press three and that routes them to job modification services. We also took a close look at our short- and long-term disability plan design. One of our short-term disability plans was not consistent with the others. It was attributing to high absenteeism because it provided up to eleven months of paid leave annually. Plan design can inadvertently contribute to lost time from work if it's too generous. We changed that plan as well as the associated long term disability plan so that employees could transition to long term disability sooner if they were unable to work for extended periods. The DMEC's absence plan design and practices benchmarking report is an excellent resource to understand what plan designs other employers have, and it is worth reviewing if looking to change how a plan is offered. Another thing we do is look at who is utilizing the leave programs. The most different interventions are applied depending on the circumstances. If the reason is multiple injuries at work, I talk with the individual employees about how to increase their safety at work and the benefits of using our industrial athlete program. If the reason is extended illness, the use of our disease management programs is encouraged. In other cases, prognosis information helps clarify that the employee is not well enough to continue working. In the Zolas cases, there's long term disability and continued medical benefits to help when the employee transitions out of the position they've been holding. Also, we encourage reduced schedules with a combination of paid leave and work to help employees continue working while they are receiving medical treatment and when they are transitioning back from leave.

Heather Grimshaw: I love all the different pieces and parts of this. Very impressive.

Jenny Haykin: Thank you.

Heather Grimshaw: So Jenny, I think I heard you a reference to industrial athletes, which certainly prompted my interest. Would you talk a little bit more about that?

Jenny Haykin: Sure. Industrial athlete programs help employees be prepared to do physical work, and that includes using proper body mechanics, training on lifting techniques, posture, and also doing stretching.

Heather Grimshaw: I think that's fantastic. Thank you. Taking you back a little bit, I'd love to hear how you knew there was an issue that could be mitigated at Puget Sound energy when you first started.

Jenny Haykin: The Integrated Benefits Institute provides resources for comparative data when a specific workgroup is experiencing a difficult amount of absenteeism. Also, we hear about it from management or HR advisors, and we work to identify and address the root cause. It is also very helpful to run data out of the payroll system to understand how much time off is being used and in what work groups.

Heather Grimshaw: I love the references there to the to that root cause. So you've already answered my next question here. In terms of the data you collected to assess maybe a potential issue, will you also talk about data that you use to assess success?

Jenny Haykin: The most useful data is from our absence management and job modification vendors. As an example, we launched a mental health campaign and we could see that the requests for leave and short-term disability for mental illness were going down while requests for mental health accommodations were going up, letting us know that employees were getting the message and taking advantage of options other than leave. We obtain data from our absence management vendor once a year and as requested, when we're adding and changing offerings to employees, such as the mental health campaign or communications promoting accommodation services, data is requested to gauge how well the efforts are working.

Heather Grimshaw: When you were looking initially for the for the data, was it readily available to you or did you have to do some digging?

Jenny Haykin: It was readily available. We have several payroll codes we use so we can track utilization of all the variations of leave types, and we can rely on our vendors to provide data from their systems.

Heather Grimshaw: So hindsight is always 2020. And I'm curious what advice you would give to your colleagues who might not have started down this path yet.

Jenny Haykin: If you see in the data that there is high leave usage, look for the root cause. Is the plan design too generous? Are employees encouraged to stay off work when they have a medical issue? Is the work environment unpleasant motivating employees to be off work? With this type of understanding, you'll know how to prioritize what to work on or what the organization needs to address.

Heather Grimshaw: That's great advice, Jenny. And I do think that your comments earlier about are you potentially or inadvertently sending messages to employees who may not know what all is available to them? I love the fact that you have that pre recorded message. If you think you're able to continue working, I think set at 100% of your earnings, press three. The constant reminders, I think would be very helpful, especially for someone who is trying to navigate this complex territory. Yes, well, thank you so much as always, for sharing your expertise and these very practical examples.

Jenny Haykin: Thank you very much.

Heather Grimshaw: Before signing off, we wanted to provide a little more information about the DMEC absence exemplar dashboard that was mentioned during this episode. Employers can learn how their leave benefits compare with companies in their size and industry categories. Using this tool, there are now two interactive, self-service benchmarking dashboards that support employers absence plan design and practices needs. Both dashboards feature data from the DMEC Absence plan Design and Practices Benchmarking Survey, which includes responses from more than 1100 companies. The survey is open, and we continue to collect new responses from organizations across a range of industries, sizes, and regions. The benchmarking dashboard allows you to filter responses by multiple industry categories, compare results with companies in your size category, download reports for internal presentations and benchmarking efforts, and more. We've included a link to the DMEC Absence exemplar dashboard in the notes section of this episode.