1. Quick access to treatment
Depending on the case, it can take between one and three months to set up the Return To Work assistance, and the average programme lasts four and a half months. Participation is on a purely voluntary basis. In other words, your staff members will systematically be given the opportunity to participate but are free to accept or reject the offer at any time.
2. A multidisciplinary approach
To meet the specific needs of your staff members, AG works with four specialised Return To Work care partners. All of the experts assigned by our partners (psychologists, physiotherapists, career counsellors, personal trainers, etc.) guide your staff members every step of the way on their road to recovery.
Since the initial launch in 2017, our assistance and guidance programmes have been hugely successful. AG has offered no less than 5,000 programmes in the past five years. This result also reflects the growing interest in Income Care income protection insurance. In a survey conducted by the Vlerick School in collaboration with AG, more than 90% of the respondents wanted their employer to include income protection insurance in their salary package.
In addition, our Return To Work solution has clearly met the expectations of our insureds.
Roughly 70% of completed assistance programmes are successful, and a staff member on long-term sick leave for a stress-related disorder will be back in the workplace after six to eight months. This is a major achievement, as 50% of staff members on sick leave due to a mental disorder and who do not have access to an assistance programme are still not well enough to return to work two years later.
It's obviously very important to get your staff members back to work as soon as possible in order to keep the cost of absenteeism under control. Nowadays, however, this is no longer enough: we need to be proactive in how we address absenteeism and put a 360° approach in place that covers everything from prevention to return-to-work assistance. To bring us closer to this goal, AG has just developed a new service to top up its Income Care offer: the Return To Work dashboard.
As a caring employer, you understand the importance of having a solid wellbeing policy at your company. Nevertheless, it can sometimes be a challenge to justify your wellbeing initiatives to your various stakeholders (management, prevention consultants, etc.)
When you log in to the Return To Work dashboard, you'll find a range of information on the programmes your staff members are participating in. The dashboard results also give you hard evidence about the importance of Return To Work programmes as well as the value of providing your staff members with this kind of assistance. With the dashboard results, you can easily track and monitor the initiatives you've put in place. If your results are positive, it means you're on the right path. Likewise, if your results are negative, you can adjust your wellbeing policy to make it more effective.
On the Return To Work dashboard, you'll find:
information on claims filed against the Income Care plan
the results of your staff members' programmes
a comparison of your results with other companies
information on your staff members' satisfaction with the programme and the care partner
At AG, we're sticklers when it comes to confidentiality: to preserve the anonymity of your staff members, the dashboard results will only be visible if your company has a minimum number of participants in our Return To Work assistance programmes.