HR and compliance teams in highly regulated industries such as Public Sector, Utilities, Higher Education & Healthcare, Oil & Gas, Mining, Manufacturing, Retail and Transportation are facing growing workforce challenges across health & safety and employee relations and labor relations.
From job accommodations, disability management, Return-To-Work (RTW) programs and the Return-To-Office (RTO) mandate, these demands place pressure on HR managers, legal teams and operations leaders to avoid escalations.
This is the reality for many companies in these sectors: Organizations need to prepare job accommodation plans and RTW programs for employees with medical conditions, religious beliefs, functional limitations or disability-related restrictions.
Today, the process they usually have is the following:
- Difficult to scale as caseloads increase.
- Error-prone, increasing legal and compliance risks.
- Inconsistent because different specialists may interpret restrictions differently.
- Dependent on individual expertise, creating a knowledge gap for new case managers.
- Lacking the use of historical accommodation patterns, which could dramatically improve accuracy, consistency and speed.
- Highly manual and time-consuming, as case managers need to read long medical notes, restrictions, absence data, etc., which are all scattered.
This is why Sodales joined SAP Hackathon – Hack2Build, an innovation challenge designed to empower SAP partners to build transformative solutions for real-world business problems using SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP) and Joule, the latest AI SAP innovation.
Hackathon – Hack2Build provided Sodales with the opportunity to demonstrate how innovative and flexible our platform is to allow third-party agents, such as SAP Joule Agentic AI, to integrate it into health, safety, employee relations and labor relations workflows.
Sodales has been awarded Hackathon Finalist and recognized as a first mover SAP partner in this space, as we are one of the few companies worldwide that has successfully launched an agentic AI user experience for health and safety through an HR platform layer.
In this article, we’ll explore Sodales’ AI Job Accommodation & Return to Work Program Generator as a solution to a global growing problem.
Job Accommodation, RTW & RTO Current Challenges
Sodales AI Job Accommodation & Return-to-Work Program Generator, powered by Agentic AI, solves the most urgent and growing health and safety challenges across North America and Europe:
North America
- RTO Friction: While many organizations, especially in the public sector, have an RTO mandate, employees have complained of a lack of a suitable plan and organization to properly accommodate all employees in the office. This adds up to the fact that at least half of the employees prefer flexibility in this matter.
- Job Accommodations: According to the Job Accommodation Network (JAN), 58% of job accommodations don’t cost extra money to implement, but employers hesitate because they perceive the process as highly complex. However, the EEOC indicates “Failure to Accommodate” as a top charge in disability discrimination cases, with thousands of claims annually.
- RTW Programs: The National Safety Council indicates that effective Return-To-Work programs can significantly reduce indirect costs that are associated with injuries, as delayed RTW is one of the major drivers for claim costs. When organizations intervene early, it shows a more successful reintegration.
Europe
- Job Accommodations: According to the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, musculoskeletal disorders and work-related stress are two of the most common health issues which require robust job accommodation plans by employers. Also, the European Commission notes that the employment rate among people with disabilities is still significantly lower, which highlights the importance of closing this gap with effective and compliant job accommodation processes.
- RTW Dynamics: According to the European Foundation for the Improvement of Living and Working Conditions Eurofound, while telework increased during the pandemic, in sectors such as manufacturing and transportation, where physical presence is always required, it created different scenarios that require careful management to avoid perceived bias.
This is the reality that HR managers, CHROs and HR leaders need to deal with, while ensuring compliance and efficiency at lower costs.
Sodales’ Hackathon – Hack2Build Proposal
Sodales understands the seriousness of these challenges from both the business side and the HR side. This is why Sodales proposed the AI Accommodation & RTW Program Generator, which is a custom AI agent built in Joule Studio that is capable of:
- Analyzes the full case file: From restrictions, job duties, absence history, and Return-To-Work readiness.
- Extracts key restrictions: For example, no lifting, no bending, must use crutches, limited standing time, ergonomic devices needed, etc.
- Understands key data: Duration, start date, end date, and medical device requirements.
- Generates a fully customized Accommodation Plan or RTW Program, aligned with organizational policies and legislation.
- Uses historical accommodation data to recommend proven solutions used in similar cases.
- Capable of drafting the full template and plan after case managers’ input, simple keywords or uploading documents.
This comes packaged in a platform that has built-in industry best practices, with pre-design workflows that follow specific required regulations, which allow us to have a quick implementation. We’re not talking about months, but weeks.
The platform supports HR Managers, Disability Managers, Safety Officers, Employee or Labor Relations Managers and has capabilities to cross collaborate with the legal and compliance team, while being compliant with privacy standards.
In the words of Kathrin Hettel, Vice President for Strategic Cross‑Portfolio and AI Partnerships at SAP and who played a pivotal role in supporting Sodales’ early AI initiatives:
“The Sodales platform powered by Joule AI can truly empower all of our clients across industries and sizes to build a culture of proactive safety, driving intelligent decisions and saving lives at scale.” – Kathrin Hettel, VP for Strategic Cross-Portfolio and AI Partnerships at SAP
But this goes beyond. The benefits of this AI Accommodation & RTW Program Generator in Sodales’ platform are transformative and empower HR leaders to:
- Drive consistency across all HR advisors, even if there’s new staff
- Have access to better data-driven decision-making using past successful plans
- Reduce administrative burden with high cost and time savings by reducing manual review time.
- Shorten disability durations and assimilate the employee back to work instead of incurring the costs of hiring new people.
- Reduce absenteeism with faster employee reintegration and faster and safer RTW processes that improve productivity and morale.
- Enhance Compliance: Minimal legal and audit risk with standardized and compliant documentation that adheres to unique regulations.
Sodales’ commitment to innovation with agentic AI
Sodales is fully committed to continuing to innovate compliant HR technology to enhance customer experience and product functionality. With our platform’s ability to connect with different systems and third-party agents, such as SAP Joule, our clients can connect all data and have Sodales’ functionality.
Sodales’ leadership is excited to continue our innovation journey with Joule and Agentic AI to help our clients get the latest market innovations:
“We truly wanted our clients to have a seamless experience between core SAP systems and Sodales, and we realized quickly that Joule could provide that functionality.” – Sana Salam, Founder and CEO of Sodales Solutions
Our journey hasn’t ended. We’re excited to share that Sodales has been invited to present our latest learnings at the SAP Partner Summit for Americas in Las Vegas this March.
During our session, we’ll showcase this successful use case, demonstrating how Sodales seamlessly connects agents, people, processes and data to drive safer and more compliant workplaces.
Join us at the SAP Partner Summit for Americas to see this innovation in action. Discover how Sodales is redefining health & safety, job accommodations and RTW programs through agentic AI, and learn how your organization can adopt these capabilities with Sodales.
