Disability management is a critical component of workplace health, safety and compliance, especially for organizations operating in high-risk, labor-intensive or unionized environments. Whether injuries or illnesses are occupational or non-occupational, organizations must manage return-to-work plans, accommodations and workers’ compensation (WCB) claims effectively to maintain compliance, mitigate risk and protect employee well-being.
For organizations using Workday as their core HR system, integrating Sodales for Enterprise Health, Safety and Employee Relations’ disability management module offers a seamless and powerful extension to your existing ecosystem, bringing incident-to-resolution tracking, optimized workflows and regulatory compliance together in one user-friendly platform.
Let’s explore how Sodales supports smarter disability management and complements Workday environments to reduce risk, streamline operations and put employee safety at the forefront.
What Is Disability Management and Why Does It Matter?
At its core, disability management is about enabling employees to recover and return to productive work safely, promptly and with the appropriate accommodations, while ensuring the organization remains compliant with labor laws, workplace safety regulations or union requirements. When done right, disability management reduces the duration and cost of disability claims, improves employee engagement and minimizes lost productivity. It also protects organizations from costly consequences such as inflated WCB premiums, regulatory penalties, prolonged staff absences and reputational harm in cases of non-compliance or perceived lack of care.
Yet without a connected, digital system that ties together incident tracking, time and attendance data, claims management and communication across departments, many organizations fall short, especially when juggling multiple systems or managing employees across multiple unions and locations.
That’s where Sodales comes in, offering a unified platform with integration capabilities for Workday, that simplifies the entire disability management process from incident to resolution.
From Incident to Resolution: Connecting Disability Management to Workplace Safety
Disability management doesn’t start with a claim form, it starts the moment an incident occurs.
With Sodales, organizations can move beyond reactive claim handling and instead adopt a proactive, integrated approach to workplace health and safety. Our disability management module works hand-in-hand with incident reporting, medical services and return-to-work planning, offering a seamless end-to-end experience, built specifically to complement platforms like Workday. Using prebuilt workflows that align with your industry’s most common risk scenarios, Sodales helps organizations streamline everything from the initial report to investigation and resolution. Whether you’re managing incidents like motor vehicle collisions, slip/trip/fall injuries, ergonomic issues or even near-miss events, Sodales gives you the tools to respond swiftly and in compliance.
Here’s how it works in practice:
- Report incidents in real time (e.g., falls, injuries, equipment damage, personal injury, etc.) using Sodales’ mobile-friendly interface
- Auto-populate employee and shift data using the integration with Workday Time and Attendance for accurate claims and reporting
- Initiate investigations using built-in root cause analysis tools like fishbone (Ishikawa) diagrams and 5 Whys
- Trigger disability claim workflows, including short-term, long-term, occupational and non-occupational claims
- Generate WCB, WSIB, OSHA, CNESST forms with Sodales’ built-in regulatory templates
- Manage work restrictions (temporary or permanent) and accommodations using Sodales’ restriction management tools
- Launch return-to-work and modified duty plans through the RTW template builder
- Enable collaboration across HR, legal, unions and safety teams with automated notifications, notes and electronic signatures
For instance, if a police officer is injured during a night shift, using Sodales, the employee can log the incident which triggers an investigation and begins the disability claim and return-to-work process, all while pulling shift data from Workday. At the same time, relevant teams like HR, legal and union reps are automatically notified, helping ensure compliance and avoid communication breakdowns.
By connecting the dots between incident management and disability resolution, Sodales allows organizations to identify risks earlier, respond faster and reduce the likelihood of costly claims, all while improving employee outcomes and organizational performance. And this integrated flow is just the beginning, because managing risk also means proactively preventing it.
Smarter, Safer, Seamless: Proactive Disability Management with Sodales and Workday
Disability management is most effective when it starts before a claim is filed and continues through resolution with coordination, compliance and care. Here’s how it all comes together:
Preventing Incidents Before They Become Claims
In high-risk sectors like healthcare, law enforcement and transportation, substance-related incidents are a large cause of workplace injury and disability. Sodales helps mitigate this risk with built-in drug and alcohol testing as part of its OHS medical services module.
With the ability to integrate directly with Workday core HR and time and attendance, Sodales provides features for:
- Randomized testing and restriction management
- Real-time incident reporting and root-cause analysis (Ishikawa, 5 Whys, etc.)
- Automated shift data population for WCB compliance
- Notifications to HR, legal and union stakeholders (no more manual handoffs)
Smarter Return-to-Work Planning
With Sodales’ RTW template builder, organizations can manage return-to-work plans based on job role, union agreements and medical needs. Integrated with Workday, these plans sync across scheduling, time tracking and core HR, ensuring a smooth, compliant reintegration. If a hospital builds a modified duty plan for a nurse post-surgery for instance, the plan is tracked in Sodales, synced to Workday for payroll and scheduling and visible to HR, supervisors and the employee, all from one connected workflow.
Designed to Work with Workday, Not Replace It
In short, Sodales is purpose-built to extend your Workday environment, not replace it. When a disability claim is submitted, shift data, role descriptions and reporting hierarchies can be automatically pulled from Workday, saving time and ensuring consistency. This integration enables auto-population of claim fields, faster resolution and fewer errors, clear visibility into compliance requirements and accurate reporting for safety audits, unions or board reviews.
Supporting Your People While Staying Compliant
When employees experience health challenges, your response sets the tone for their recovery, trust in the organization and likelihood of returning to work. Sodales empowers HR and health and safety teams to take that responsibility seriously, with the tools they need to act swiftly, compliantly and with care. For Workday customers, Sodales delivers a natural extension to your HR ecosystem, specifically tailored for disability management and built with compliance, safety and employee support in mind.
Let Sodales help you turn incidents into opportunities for recovery, compliance and long-term success. Let’s power a safer tomorrow, together. Book your free industry-specific demo with Sodales today.
