Disability insurance experts with the Guardian Life Insurance Company are in the final stages of developing an index for measuring and predicting the success of companies’ absence management programs in conjunction with their short-term and long-term disability. Guardian’s Andrew Hutchison, assistant vice president of group life and disability products, and Judy Buczek, manager of group disability products, are taking the opportunity to encourage small and mid-size employers who haven’t yet implemented absence management to do so.
“Absence management is not new, but it’s really kind of a large-case concept,” Buczek says. “Larger employers understand the importance of managing absenteeism, but it’s just as important for mid-size and smaller employers. And actually, they’re usually the folks who don’t have access to the type of tools they need to manage a program. … We’re trying to help employers recognize the need for absence management programs, and also to help bring some of those programs downstream to the smaller employers.”
