Navigating an employee’s return to work after a disability leave can be complex for your clients. There can be many unknowns, including what questions an employer can ask the employee about his or her condition, what needs to be put in place for a successful return, and, the No. 1 thing: when can an employee actually be expected to return to work.

Your clients might also not be aware of the proper course of action for determining when or how to help an employee return from a leave of absence. Making things even more complex are the multiple pieces of legislation that affect the way these situations need to be handled. Primarily, these include:

• The Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) requires employers with more than 50 employees to grant an employee with a serious health condition up to 12 weeks of leave to deal with a medical issue.
• Alternatively, the Americans with Disabilities Act Amendments Act (ADAAA) requires an employer to provide accommodations, which may include extended medical leave, to an employee with a disability to help them in the workplace.

Although both laws need to be considered when navigating an employee’s return to work, it can still get tricky. When an employee who is on leave approaches 12 weeks of protected leave, the employer has to make some decisions: Do I approve an extended leave? How are reasonable accommodations established? Just how does the employer proceed?

As a broker, you can help put your clients on the right path to navigating an employee’s options for a return from a leave of absence by encouraging them to work with their disability carrier. Educating your clients on how a consultant from their disability insurance can help them determine a course of action to put the right solution in place for an employee’s successful return to work.