Employees’ wellness is one of the essential strategic management decisions in any firm. Workers’ compensation programs promote competitive advantage, employee behaviors and draw quality workers in a business organization. Under such programs, workers can be able to make the following claims or rather benefits: protection programs, paid time-off, and services from the company.
Protection programs
These programs seek to protect the income of employees to a socially acceptable income stream for workers with disabilities. The protection programs can be grouped as disability programs, life insurance, and pension programs. Firstly, the disability programs enable disabled workers to claim their socially approved wages while they recover from job-related illnesses or injuries. Furthermore, the disability program can be short-term or long-term. The short-term disability protection can be claimed when a worker is unable to perform his or her task in the duration of fewer than six months, and a further benefit of 50% to 100% of pre-tax can be realized. On the other hand, the long-term disability program enables a worker who is unable to perform any job qualified for within six months period to life; to claim a benefit of 50% to 70% pre-tax pay, though there is a 6-12 months waiting period, during which the other benefits are used first. Secondly, life insurance programs can be claimed by beneficiaries if a worker is dead. This includes unplanned death and dismemberment reimbursement. A company pays the employees’ beneficiaries upon his/her death. And thirdly, the pension protection claim can be made when an employee retires or is terminated from his or her job; this improves the welfare of the retired worker.
Paid time-offs
Since workers need a break once in a while from their workplace, employers offer paid time-offs in the form of holidays, vacation, sick leave, special leave, funeral leave, military leave, travel leave, rest period “break”, lunch period, sabbatical leave and volunteerism. These claims can also be made as integrated time off policies that combine holiday, vacation, sick, and personal leave policies into a single paid time off policy. This enables workers to have the freedom of scheduling time off without justifying the reasons.
Services
Services offered by workers’ compensation programs seek to promote employee behaviors with strategic value. Some of the services that can be claimed include Employee assistance programs – these are provided for alcohol or drug abuse, domestic violence, the emotional impact of AIDS and other diseases, clinical depression, and eating disorders. Family assistance programs – these help workers to provide elder care and child care and also offer company-sponsored daycare programs hence improving the workforce welfare. Other services include daycare, tuition reimbursement, transportation services, outplacement assistance, wellness programs, smoking cessation, stress management, and financial education.