One can look at any challenge as an opportunity. In this way, a surge in federal and state return-to-work protections offers career opportunities for adept individual workers’ comp professionals and firms.

A small number of claims payers in workers' comp got it, in part after their large clients insisted on help in nonoccupational return-to-work and job accommodation. Previously, I have noted Broadspire, Sedgwick and York. I’ll add Hartford, the insurer. I expect others will appear.

Return-to-work decisions for injured workers have become more fraught with land mines, because these decisions now have to comply with federal and state job accommodation standards. I’ve written before that the absence and job accommodation protections have gotten so complicated that an employer is almost certain to be in violation of at least one mandate.

The centerpiece of the job accommodation rights expansion is the Americans with Disabilities Act after the act was amended in 2009. Since then, the ADA requires an employer to apply basically the same job accommodation approach to all employee medical absences and disabilities. Second, the scope of conditions covered has greatly expanded.

For example, when an employee with a shoulder injury returns to work, the employer not only has to address the restrictions linked to that injury but also be alert to preexisting problems, such as a personal disorder. 

Consider social anxiety disorder. A recent Federal appeals court in a fifth circuit ruling in Jacobs v. N.C. Administrative Office of the Courts shows how broad ADA coverage is today. The appeals court affirmed that Christina Jacobs, a deputy courthouse clerk in North Carolina, enjoyed ADA protection for social anxiety disorder. 

The law firm of Williams Mullen, commenting on the case, wrote that “an impairment is a qualifying disability within the meaning of the ADA if it substantially limits an individual’s ability to perform a major life activity as compared to most people in the general population. The court found that Jacobs’ social anxiety disorder met this low threshold because it substantially limited her ability to interact with others as compared to most people in the general population, even though it did not prevent her from interacting with people on a daily basis, socializing with her coworkers outside of work, or participating in social media.”

If Jacobs were recovering from a work-caused shoulder injury, the employer would be at risk of violating ADA if it focused its RTW decisions only on the shoulder problem and refused to address Jacob’s anxiety disorder.

For an ambitious workers’ comp pro drawn to solving RTW problems, this particular scenario spells career growth. But the really big chance to flourish is in job accommodation cases without a work injury element. For employers overall, for every work injury return-to-work decision, there are many more nonoccupational return-to-work decisions. The same problem-solving skills apply to all.

I asked Marti Cardi, vice-president of product compliance at Matrix Management, to describe the new world of multiple federal and state job protection mandates. She worked up an example for me.

Larson, Cardi narrated, has worked for 10 months as a line supervisor for Oregon-based Widgets Inc. His job duties include walking the production line up to six hours per day to oversee his workers on two floors. He breaks his leg severely during a weekend rollerblade outing. He is out for surgery and initial recovery for 8 weeks, then is able to return to work 4 hours per day for 4 weeks in a wheelchair, then full time but with walking and standing limited to no more than a half hour at a time, 2 hours total per day. He is expected to have a permanent limp.

At the time of his accident, Larson will be entitled to job-protected leave of absence, full or part time, for up to 12 weeks under the Oregon Family Leave Act. Once Larson has been employed for 12 months, he is entitled to leave under the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, for up to 12 weeks – some overlapping with the Oregon protected leave but some extending beyond.

When he returns to work, Widgets must analyze whether Larson’s condition constitutes a disability under the Americans with Disabilities Act or its Oregon counterpart. If it does, Widgets will need to consider accommodations to help him perform his job, such as building a ramp for Larson to access the two levels of the production line while he is in a wheelchair and modifying when or how he supervises the line if his limp presents a problem. 

Workers’ comp is gradually shrinking, as I pointed out in Seismic Shifts. Nonwork-caused absences are growing as a voluntary benefit (such as Silicon Valley firms’ parental leaves) and as federal-, state- and even municipal-mandated benefits.

The Disability Management Employer Coalition, at its annual conference in San Francisco in early August, broadcasted the ever-widening scope of employee protections. The
Annual Workers' Compensation Educational Conference in Orlando barely mentioned it. But the upcoming National Workers Compensation and Disability Conference in Las Vegas in November, in response to participant requests, is offering a series of sessions on integration of absence management.

The path to career growth today for workers’ comp pros includes this extraordinary expansion of employee protections.