Integrating Disability Management into Wellbeing
When an organization is deciding on their wellbeing strategy to determine their wellbeing programming, tools from disability management practices can be leveraged. This is in addition to wellbeing stakeholders leveraging tools and data from group benefits, employee assistance programs (EAP), psychological health and safety systems, engagement and culture assessments, etc. Note, insight from each source of tools and data complement each other!
In particular, tools from disability management practices can provide wellbeing programming a path to impacting the productivity and performance of workers, in addition to the wellbeing of workers. This article focuses on the productivity and performance aspect.
Since disability management practices target fitness-for-work, wellbeing programming which complement what it means for a worker to be fit-for-work (or fit-to-work) to help workers stay-at-work (SAW) and return-to-work (RTW) across the health spectrum — resulting in minimizing any lost-time from work. The principle here is supporting workers to fulfill their job demands by having the appropriate capacities to do so, and providing support for both developing and maintaining worker capacities through wellbeing programming. This is all the more important for safety-sensitive jobs to prevent work-related injuries and illness.
A wellbeing stakeholder can look at the strength, mobility, perception, and psychological/cognitive demands of a job, through a job demands analysis (JDA), and create wellbeing programming which focus on these functional abilities to support worker performance and productivity. In a sense, a wellbeing stakeholder can reverse engineer content from a JDA to create programming to support worker capabilities. Such examples may include musculoskeletal fitness sessions such as stretch breaks, ergonomic assessments, or scheduled yoga, as well as time management resources such as resilience worksheets, digital solutions for healthy self-care and sleep habits, pain management resources for speaking to healthcare providers, and biometric tracking through health risk assessments or screening clinics.
Even more general than looking at the JDA, the very act of wellbeing stakeholders advocating for aerobic and resistance training can help workers with their capabilities, such as the importance of muscular strength and coordination used when operating equipment, how the range of motion within joints matters for posture when sitting for prolonged periods, and how endurance can affect the mind in terms of maintaining focus on tasks and situations throughout a day or week. In April 2021, I wrote about this topic for the CG Zest Wellness Blog, “Fit for Work: How Your Body Can Help You Be Your Best.”
In addition to a JDA, other disability management tools for wellbeing stakeholders to leverage include functional abilities forms (FAF), functional capacity evaluations, and fitness-for-duty forms.
Wellbeing stakeholders may ask themselves the following five (5) self-reflective questions:
- How is the physical health strategy of the wellbeing program helping workers lift, bend, coordinate motor skills, or maintain a certain posture for their job demands?
- How is the mental/emotional health strategy of the wellbeing program helping workers with managing stress, emotional states, concentrating, memory, or problem solving for their job demands?
- How is the social health strategy of the wellbeing programming helping workers work alone or with interpersonal contact for their job demands
- How is the work-life balance strategy of the wellbeing program helping workers manage feelings of fatigue or burnout for their job demands?
- How is the secondary or tertiary prevention strategy of the wellbeing program helping workers identify signs and symptoms for adverse health conditions detrimental for their job demands?
Further, wellbeing stakeholders creating programming to help worker capacities meet job demands should always be met with the organization and management putting forth policies, procedures, and practices to support the psychological safety of workers and controlling for psychosocial risk factors within the workplace.
That said, tools and data from disability management practices can certainly provide wellbeing programming a path to benefiting the productivity and performance of workers.
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Nathan Kolar | linkedin.com/in/nathankolar
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