Workers' responsibilities in work disability prevention, should they? Employer norms (part I)

Description

Background
Employers increasingly point at the workers’ own responsibility in tertiary work disability prevention, i.e. sick leave (SL) and return to work (RTW). This responsibility is anchored in Dutch legislation, which requires workers to cooperate with their employers during two years of SL. However, we do not know exactly what employers expect of their workers. Therefore our research question was: ‘In what ways do employers expect workers to take responsibility in tertiary work disability prevention?’

Methods 
In-depth interviews (8 Dutch employer representatives, i.e. HR professionals) were conducted in 2009 and analyzed using an interpretative approach.

Results
First, employers considered it the workers’ responsibility to seek treatment for their health problems. Second, they expected workers to aim for RTW during (instead of after) medical recovery. Some employers noted to tell workers about their intentions to ask the social insurance office for permission to stop wage payment if the workers would not put more effort in RTW after one year of SL. Third, employers expected workers to participate in the employers’ initiatives for cooperation such as planning meetings between the workers and the employers. They used legislation to convince workers of the necessity of these meetings. Employers also expected workers to inform them about RTW possibilities. Finally, when workers had not yet resumed work after one year of SL, employers considered it their own (and not the workers') responsibility to decide about RTW. In this case, the employers expected workers to accept their decision.

Conclusions 
The employers expected workers to actively pursue RTW (besides medical recovery) and used legislation to convince workers of doing this.

Other contributors to this work: 

de Rijk A¹ and Houkes I¹ 
1 Maastricht University, the Netherlands

Period	29 Sept 2014
Event title	Scientific conference on Work Disability Prevention and Integration (WDPI)
Event type	Conference
Degree of Recognition	International