When workers get hurt on the job, the company's first priority is to help them recover. Of course, the company also has an interest in getting injured workers back to work as soon as possible-ideally to the same job and schedule as before. Unfortunately, this goal often proves unrealistic, especially for workers who worked unusually long hours or nonstandard schedules before they got hurt. According to a study recently published in the Journal of Occupational Rehabilitation (JOR), such workers have a harder time resuming their prior routine after sustaining injuries. Let's talk more about the JOR study and what it reveals about the relationship between workers' post-injury schedules and their successful re-entry into the workplace after an injury.

Standard RTW Doesn't Fit Nonstandard Schedules

Many standard return-to-work (RTW) programs fail to account for the worker's previous schedule when setting the work schedule for an injured worker. Such programs tend to focus on returning the worker to his original, pre-injury schedule regardless of his post-injury needs and capabilities. More often than not, these efforts to restore the status quo prove unsuccessful. As a result, the company may have to cut the worker's hours or fire him-or even force him to quit. In addition to exposing the company to liability for failure to accommodate a disability, failure to reintegrate nonstandard schedule workers into your workforce costs your company money. After all, replacing workers is more expensive than retaining the workers your company currently has.

Why doesn't standard RTW fit the worker who works a nonstandard schedule? The JOR study notes that nonstandard work schedules-such as night or evening shifts or shifts involving long hours-have been linked to stress, fatigue, cardiovascular disease and other medical conditions. Recent studies have also documented an increased risk of occupational injuries and illnesses among workers who work nonstandard schedules and long hours. For example, one study showed that workers working schedules involving a lot of overtime hours had an 81% increased risk of injury. Another study showed that, compared to workers working standard day shifts, workers working:

A Possible Explanation

The researchers offered a theory to explain this phenomenon: The increased fatigue and stress inherent in working long hours and nonstandard schedules put special demands on injured workers when they tried to return to work-especially if the worker's physical abilities were still diminished from the injury. In addition, the effects of working long hours or nonstandard schedules could make returning workers more prone to errors, thus jeopardizing their successful return to productive employment and possibly resulting in their quitting or getting fired. So the researchers hypothesized that working long hours or nonstandard schedules both:

But before the JOR study, there wasn't enough evidence to prove the existence of a link between working long hours or nonstandard schedules and adverse RTW outcomes. Also, there was no evidence on which types of nonstandard schedules most affected a worker's RTW success.

Conclusion

Next week, I'll break down the findings of the JOR study and discuss how to use them to support your own RTW initiatives.

TSUNAMI

Can It Happen Here?

By Glenn Demby

The recent tsunamis that levelled parts of Indonesia, Thailand and Burma are arguably among the worst natural disasters ever. The fact that they occurred on the other side of the globe may make them seem like something remote. After all, a tsunami could never strike North America. Or could it?

Actually, it could-and has-happened here. Several times, in fact:

And it could happen again, most likely on the Pacific Coast. Probably the greatest risk to North America, according to the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency, would be a tsunami generated by an earthquake along the so called Cascadia subduction zone 50 miles off the coast stretching from Vancouver to Northern California. This is where the Juan de Fuca plate dives under North America and generates friction intense enough to set off tsunamis like the one that hit South Asia in 2005. Vancouver Island is especially vulnerable.

A tsunami in the Atlantic Ocean is also possible but much more remote a risk. Conversely, because the threat is smaller, there aren't warning stations in place in the east like there are on the Pacific Coast (for example, in British Columbia, the Provincial Emergency Program gets alerts and warnings from the West Coast of Alaska and relays them to people in the province). So if a tsunami did strike the eastern part of North America, it could be especially disastrous.

The U.S.'s principle defense against tsunami is a system of six-ocean network of deep detection buoys that monitor changes in ocean temperatures and movements that pose risk. In December 2005, President Bush proposed and Congress approved a plan for expanding the network to 39 sites in the Pacific and Atlantic Ocean Basins, including the Gulf of Mexico, Caribbean Sea and Far Pacific Ocean.

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