Balancing the right way to help employees either return to work or stay at work and be productive can be easier with the right disability carrier.

Organizations are impacted every day by employees' health conditions. Whether an employee is experiencing chronic pain, or an individual needs time off to treat a mental health issue, you are being challenged daily to provide ways to properly support an employee while ensuring the business remains productive. Balancing the right way to help employees either return to work or stay at work and be productive can be easier with the right disability carrier.

May is Disability Insurance Awareness Month, making it a great time to take a critical look at the way your disability insurance program addresses employee absences and disabilities. Is your program reactive? Does it require employees to prove they are disabled before providing help? Does it treat health conditions with a siloed approach?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may want to rethink how your program handles employee absence and disability. A good disability carrier should try to help you address these questions, while also trying to help prevent delayed recovery, or the lengthening of an employee's medical condition, which can often hinder a return to work. Delayed recovery can be caused by treatments not going as expected, comorbid (or multiple) conditions being present at the same time, financial concerns, complex family issues, or child- or elder-care concerns.