Emotional intelligence key to return-to-work strategy: Panel

ORLANDO, Fla. — When the person in charge of workers compensation for one of the country’s largest school districts began sending get-well cards to injured teachers, support staff, maintenance workers and bus drivers, the district’s legal costs decreased by 16% within a few years.

Rosa Royo of Miami-Dade County Public Schools was among the panelists who spoke Tuesday at the Workers’ Compensation Educational Conference on the “critical” role of emotional intelligence in keeping workers engaged in a process that intends to treat their injuries and get them back to work.

Panelists discussed the “deconditioning, disengagement and disinformation” among injured workers grappling with the injury itself along with the mental hurdles — stress, anxiety and confusion were mentioned — associated with being injured.

The results of not going back to work can be devastating to a claim and a person’s livelihood, according to Dr. Les Kertay, Chattanooga, Tennessee-based chief medical officer at Ascellus, a behavioral health provider for injured workers.

“The health consequences, emotionally and physically, of being out of work are worse than smoking,” he said. “From a purely statistical perspective, you’re better off being at work and smoking than you are being out of work.”

Employers will want to engage in an injured worker’s wellbeing, despite the workers compensation industry’s historic stance on psychological components that can creep into a claim, the panelists said. “Because workers compensation claims can be so transactional, we tend to forget to listen” to what’s happening in the injured worker’s life, said Debra Livingston, Tampa, Florida-based CEO/founder of ReEmployAbility.

Dr. Kertay stressed that factors such as depression and anxiety are not diagnoses but should be managed alongside the physical components of a claim. The workers compensation industry is “hemorrhaging money” as a result of failing to do so, he said. It could be as simple as asking an injured worker how they are doing.  The term “biopsychosocial” can be made simpler, he said: “It’s life .… It’s what’s going on in that injured worker’s life.”

Ms. Royo described a school employee who didn’t comply with medical treatment, which impeded efforts to return to work. The school district later learned, through the union, that the worker had been homeless periodically and couldn’t make her appointments.

Much can be accomplished by learning “how to communicate in a way where the other person feels heard,” said Greg Hamlin, Birmingham, Alabama-based senior vice president and chief officer at comp insurer Berkley Industries.

Other solutions include providing the injured worker information that’s free of legal jargon and clearly communicates the employer’s intentions. That process needs to begin before a claim is filed, as part of employee training, to lessen confusion and anxiety when a worker is injured and navigating the workers comp system, Ms. Royo said.