As an HR professional, you do everything you can to hire the best possible people. You want to help your company grow and thrive. You also want to protect it and its employees. That’s why it’s so frustrating when new hires injure themselves on the job, or quit because the job turned out to be more physically demanding than they expected.

As you screen and select applicants, you worry, “Am I hiring our next worker’s comp case?”

If only you could predict which applicants are an “accident waiting to happen.” You know not every applicant is up to the job’s physical demands, but you must also respect ADA and EEOC hiring guidelines.

There is a Better Way: Post-offer Employment Testing

Adding post-offer employment testing (POET) to your hiring process can make a profound difference in the quality and longevity of new hires — directly helping to reduce workers’ compensation claims. With POET in place, you can make a hiring offer contingent upon successfully completing the test. Instead of hiring people who seem able to do the job, you can hire those who demonstrate through unbiased, valid testing that they are able to perform the job’s required essential functions. 

The workforce is aging, and that means some candidates may present a higher risk. One in 10 workers are not physically able to do a particular job, and they may not even know it. Furthermore, most new hires aren’t always fully aware of the actual physical and positional demands of their new job. This underscores the need for up-to-date, specific and accurate job descriptions. POET helps you address both issues. It lets you test for physical capability and gives you data and metrics to improve job descriptions. 

Fit-to-Work Assessments Bring Multiple Benefits

Highly-respected scientific studies conducted across a broad spectrum of industries prove POET works:

• 1% injury rate with costs of $6,500 per year, compared to a 23% injury rate and costs of $2 million (Scott).

• 47% lower injury rate, plus tripled retention when workers passed the test (Anderson).

One study (Gassoway) showed 20% of pre-screened candidates failed some component of the test. Stop and consider this: if you could avoid hiring one in five potential workers’ comp cases, how much would your company save? 

POET screening saves much more money than what it costs, and it provides additional advantages, for any size company in any industry:

• Reduced turnover – with POET, candidates know what will be expected and you know they’re physically capable of doing the job. Turnover is expensive and slows productivity because you’re constantly training new people. High turnover can also leave you chronically short-staffed, threatening sales and customer relationships.

• Reduced risk and liability – when people can perform their job tasks safely, that protects your employees and your company. No one wants to be injured trying to do their job, so your ability to identify their inability to perform a job’s essential functions benefits your prospective employees as well.

• Reliable baseline – if a worker is injured, you can determine if there was a pre-existing limitation, develop an individually-tailored plan of care, and measure when the worker has recovered to pre-injury status so they can return to work.

Every time you’re able to uncover potential problems before finalizing the hiring process, you save time, money, and frustration. 

Be a hero. Transform your hiring process from frustrating to efficient and cost-effective. Implement post-offer employment testing and reduce workers’ compensation claims by hiring the right person, the first time.