It’s Time to Finish What We Started: The Case for Workers’ Recovery

Thirteen years ago, in 2012, I had what seemed to me at the time to be a fairly simple idea: What if we stopped calling this industry “workers’ compensation” and started calling it “Workers’ Recovery” instead?

Now, before you dismiss this as merely semantic navel-gazing from an industry blogger with too much time on his hands, hear me out. The idea was never about slapping a new label on an old product, like putting racing stripes on a Buick and calling it a sports car. The belief was – and remains – that a fundamental shift in language could drive a fundamental shift in focus. Words mean things. They shape how we think, how we act, and ultimately, what outcomes we achieve.

In workers’ compensation, the focus is on the money – the transaction, the payment, the settling of accounts. It’s about making whole through financial means. In workers’ recovery, the focus is on the person – their healing, their return to function, their quality of life. It’s about making whole through actual restoration.

And for thirteen years, I’ve been banging this drum at conferences, in articles, and to anyone who would listen – and even a few who were merely trapped in an elevator with me.

Here’s the good news: We’ve made progress. Significant progress, actually.

The biopsychosocial approach that was once considered fringe thinking has become much more prevalent. Industry professionals who once would have looked at you sideways for suggesting that psychological and social factors impact physical recovery now nod knowingly at conferences. Concepts like “claim advocacy” and attention to “Social Determinants of Health” have entered the lexicon. Multiple carriers have adopted recovery-focused approaches internally. Washington State named their vocational program the “Vocational Recovery Project,” kindly crediting my efforts at the time. And a recently released white paper about the successful results of a worker-focused claim advocacy system at the University of Texas shows that the recovery philosophy works; and is just not an ethereal idea of the mind.

At WorkCompCollege.com, we now have several hundred people who have enrolled in or completed our Workers’ Recovery Professional (WRP) certification. Several hundred professionals who have committed to learning a whole person approach to claims management. Several hundred people who understand that an injured worker is a recovering worker – a partner in the process, not just a claimant to be processed.

The groundwork has been laid. The seeds have been planted. The proof of concept exists.

And yet.

Here’s where I have to deliver the less comfortable news: Until this change is embraced at the legislative and regulatory level, it will remain a movement rather than a transformation. We can have pockets of excellence scattered across the industry landscape. We can have forward-thinking carriers and enlightened employers implementing recovery-focused programs. We can train professionals by the hundreds.

But as long as the statutes say “workers’ compensation,” as long as the regulatory agencies are titled “Workers’ Compensation Division,” as long as the official forms and filings and legal framework all use the old terminology, we’re playing at the margins. We’re a counterculture within a system that remains fundamentally oriented around a different philosophy.

I’m not naive enough to think that changing the name changes everything overnight. Slapping “Recovery” on a statue doesn’t suddenly make everyone in the system care more about outcomes. But language matters. Official language matters more. When a state declares through legislation that its system is about recovery rather than compensation, it sends a signal. It creates an expectation. It shifts the frame through which every participant views their role.

Think about what happens when a worker enters the current system. They become a “claimant” filing for “compensation.” They interact with an “adjuster” whose job title suggests they’re there to adjust something – presumably downward. Every piece of terminology positions the parties as adversaries in a financial transaction.

Now imagine a system where that same worker becomes a “recovering worker” supported by a “recovery specialist.” Where the stated purpose of the entire apparatus is to restore function and return people to productive life. Same injury. Same medical treatment. But an entirely different psychological framework.

The research on biopsychosocial factors in recovery tells us that mindset matters enormously. A worker who believes the system is trying to help them recover actually does so faster than one who believes the system is trying to deny them benefits. This isn’t hippy-dippy wishful thinking – it’s documented, studied, measurable reality.

So here’s my ask – the same ask I’ve been making for more than a decade, but perhaps with renewed urgency:

We need one state. One jurisdiction willing to be the pioneer. One legislature brave enough to look at their workers’ compensation statutes and rename them “Workers’ Recovery.” One regulatory body willing to change their signs and their letterhead and their official communications to reflect a recovery-focused philosophy.

I’ve written before about making an open offer to any state regulator willing to take this on. That offer stands. WorkCompCollege.com and our team would be honored to assist any jurisdiction looking to make this transition – not just with the PR and messaging, but with the training and education that would need to accompany such a shift.

Because here’s the thing: The industry has evolved. The science has evolved. The understanding of what makes claims successful has evolved. But the legal and regulatory framework? In most jurisdictions, it’s still built on a 20th-century model that treats injured workers as problems to be solved rather than people to be healed.

We’ve spent twelve years proving the concept works at the carrier level, at the employer level, at the professional development level. We’ve trained hundreds of recovery professionals. We’ve watched as related concepts like claim advocacy and biopsychosocial approaches have moved from the fringe to the mainstream.

It’s time to take the next step.

Is there a state commissioner or department head out there reading this who wants to be a pioneer? Is there a legislature willing to lead? Is there a jurisdiction that wants to be known as the place where workers’ compensation finally became what it always should have been – a system focused on restoring workers to their fullest possible function and returning them to productive life?

We’ve laid the groundwork. We’ve built the proof points. We’ve trained the professionals.

Now we need someone to help us finish what we started.

The invitation remains open. My email hasn’t changed. And my stubborn insistence that this matters hasn’t diminished one bit in thirteen years.

Some ideas are worth being persistent about. This is one of them.