Suppose that a good long-term employee at your practice is unexpectedly injured on the job and laid up for weeks. Then months. Then indefinitely. Your business and your people now face a mountain of decisions, and how they are made not only affects morale but also top- and bottom-line revenue.

We all know how difficult good staff members are to come by and how, over time, compatible co-workers begin to feel more like a family than employees. And when a member of the "family" goes out on any protracted leave such as long-term disability or workers' comp, the remaining staff members feel there is a piece missing.

The practice owner in this example is caught between a rock and a hard place. What he would really like is for his worker, Mrs. Hurt, to just heal and return, but that looks increasingly unlikely over time. So Dr. Owner is in a terrible situation: He is racking up an ever-increasing workers' compensation premium, is down a worker and may or may not be having success finding someone to fill in.

There are also moral and legal obligations Dr. Owner has to Mrs. Hurt. Because she was a key staff member when she was working, Dr. Owner opted to pay her while she was out. However, he didn't expect her to be out for a year and counting. How does Dr. Owner tell Mrs. Hurt that he just can't afford to be so magnanimous indefinitely? And does he tell her that before or after he mentions that he can no longer pay for her family health insurance because he has to give that benefit to the young replacement worker?

Ouch! It's enough to make Dr. Owner want to go back to being an associate! Good thing he isn't a lawyer, too, because then he would worry himself to death considering the possibility of a lawsuit by Mrs. Hurt on the basis of either age discrimination (Mrs. Hurt is 50 years old), an EEOC violation (her maiden name was Lopez), or non-compliance with the Americans With Disabilities Act (she offers to do reception work as long as she was brought file folders and didn't have to stand or walk on the job). Although I have never seen this many potential problems arise from a single long-term comp claim, this example is an amalgam of many instances that I have seen arise in other workplaces.

Get it in writing

So how do we address the potentially serious problem of the long-term medical leave case?

As with any other employee problem, making a habit of maintaining employee performance records saves a company a lot of hassle later. It also doesn't hurt if there is at least a summary issued by the clinic to all employees covering hospital policy on continued employment for long-term medical-related leave.

This degree of organization and preparedness may seem overly onerous to the small veterinary hospital, but it really doesn't need to be. A brief handout covering what the practice can and will do if a worker is laid up for more than a few days is much better than nothing at all. If such a document is prepared—doing so only really requires a few hours of work—it helps eliminate the key issue in nearly all potential lawsuits, administrative claims and criminal prosecutions involved in letting go of a long-term workers' comp claimant after a lengthy absence from work.

The fact issue in this case? Simple. Discrimination. Has Mrs. Hurt been singled out and treated differently than other employees for any reason?

Discrimination really just means treated differently, and it is the issue around which virtually all employee claims against their employers revolve. If the veterinary practice has a written policy that it can only keep a worker's job open for six months while that person is on leave for any medical reason, that is the rule. It applies to everyone from new hires to employees with 20 years' experience, whether you were born in San Francisco or San Juan, and whether you left making twice as much or half as much as your replacement.

Based on this information, you should now go out and, with an hour or two of good input from a business attorney, put together a long-term leave policy. You will then need to pass it out and get a signature on paper from each employee stating that it was received. And all future problems will be minimized.