One of the best ways you can keep your workers’ compensation costs under control is by bringing injured employees back to work as soon as they are medically able.

Even if the employee can’t return to his or her regular job due to medical restrictions, you can bring the employee back to work in a light-duty, modified-duty or transitional role.

Because work injuries are unexpected, you might have trouble thinking of light-duty jobs for your employee to perform. That’s why SFM created a free listing of ideas — broken down by industry — of potential light-duty jobs.

Here are links to the transitional work ideas by industry:

• Bus driving/transportation industry
• Construction industry
• Grocery stores/convenience stores
• Health care
• Manufacturing
• Service industry

Transitional jobs listed include:

• Answering phones
• Completing equipment inspection logs
• Data entry
• Greeting customers
• Filing
• Shredding documents

Even if the jobs listed don’t quite fit your organization, they might help you think of other ideas.

Research shows that timely return-to-work helps speed recovery and increase the likelihood that injured workers will ultimately work again. That makes it worth the effort to bring employees back, even if at a reduced capacity.

Read more on how return-to-work helps control workers’ compensation costs in our post, why early return-to-work benefits your employees and bottom line.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.

By Brian Bent, CPCU, ARM

With an increasingly globalized economy, more and more people are traveling overseas for their jobs. But how does overseas travel affect workers’ compensation coverage?

Employees who are working overseas temporarily are generally covered by their employers’ domestic workers’ compensation policies.

The issue is that “temporarily” is not clearly defined in the policy language or by state statute. Because of this, viewpoints differ on what constitutes a temporary work assignment. This is why it’s important to make sure your insurer knows about any foreign business travel your employees are doing.

Additional coverage might still be needed

Even if your employees are covered by your domestic policy, the countries to which they’re traveling might have additional requirements. Depending on where employees are traveling, you may also want to look at additional coverage options such as kidnap and ransom coverage or foreign voluntary workers’ compensation to cover any loss potential that might not be covered fully by your domestic policy.

This is not intended to serve as legal advice for individual fact-specific legal cases or as a legal basis for your employment practices.