Good morning—Amber here! Winter is fast-approaching, and with that comes cold and flu season on top of COVID-19. This period is even worse for those with long COVID, a debilitating chronic illness that has already cost between $170 to $230 billion in lost wages. Here's what my colleague Paige McGlauflin has to say in an article out this morning about the business implications of long COVID and best practices for helping affected employees return to the workplace:
“If you're an employer, and you have somebody on long-term sickness absence, that's very costly,” Clare Rayner, a retired consultant occupational physician in England who developed long COVID, tells Fortune. “But what's different with COVID is that we've got multiple people off sick for a long time, all at once. That's never happened in my experience.”
But there are solutions. Suppose a long hauler struggles to stand upright for long periods but works on their feet for hours. Employers can vary the worker’s time standing and sitting and allow adequate breaks and changes in position. ”If you want to get this person back in, you've got to ease them in gradually and make adjustments,” Rayner says. The likelihood of a worker on medical leave returning to work drops by 50% by their twelfth week of absence. “You can't leave it until someone's 100% because they'll never get back in.”
Despite the havoc long COVID and the pandemic wreaked on the workforce, there’s some good news: workforce disability participation increased in the last two years thanks to remote and hybrid work offerings. Those same flexible arrangements can help retain long haulers.
Read the full story here.
Amber Burton
amber.burton@fortune.com
@amberbburton
