Director Disability and Absence Management

About the Role

Lead with heart. Deliver with excellence. We're looking for a compassionate, strategic leader to guide our disability and absence management programs across multiple claim teams. You'll support operations for STD, FMLA/Absence, Paid Leaves, LTD, and integrated programs—ensuring exceptional service, strong client relationships, and consistent performance.

Responsibilities

• Facilitates the implementation, continuous improvement and integration of all disability and absence management programs/processes within the assigned group of teams.
• Represents the face of the claim operation to assigned national clients.
• Provides proactive leadership in developing a continuous improvement culture within the assigned group of teams.
• Ensures that all aspects of the department's operations are meeting corporate guidelines, federal, state, and local law and are in accordance with professional standards and confidentiality.
• Concurrently, assessing the various programs ensuring they meet their defined objective and are meeting the needs of our clients.
• Manages, hires, trains, develops and motivates qualified individuals including identification of succession planning candidates.
• Maintains up-to-date knowledge of industry trends in integrated disability and absence management to ensure that the various programs and processes are truly best practice.
• Manages business unit to budget to meet corporate revenue objectives.
• Works with the reporting and analytics team to ensure our key metrics are current and measures that allow a view of the day to day efficiency and effectiveness of the operations as well as the higher level business impact that can be benchmarked.
• Participates in sales presentations and meetings with prospects and current accounts in support of corporate revenue objectives.
• Performs other related duties as required.

Qualifications

• Bachelor's Degree or equivalent work experience required.
• Minimum of eight years progressive experience in managing integrated disability and absence management programs with preference for employer-based experience.
• Leadership role in a disability/absence insurance carrier claim operation or third party administrator claim operation.
• Six years in an increasing supervisory or leadership capacity required.
• Expertise with disability/absence best practice benchmarking and metrics.
• Demonstrated ability to establish critical relationships at all levels of the organization and with external partners.
• Exceptional communication skills, change management skills, and customer focus.
• Strong organizational and time management skills.
• Excellent oral, written, and presentation skills.
• Demonstrated experience in building high performance teams - ability to inspire a shared vision and empower and motivate a team.
• Experience in a broader integrated health and productivity model including healthcare, on-site clinics, wellness, and EAP.
• Experience interfacing and supporting complicated, middle to large national client companies.
• HR or Disability certifications.

Preferred Qualifications

• Current membership/leadership in professional organization critical to the field.
• Must complete continuing education requirements as outlined by Crawford Educational Services.
• Nationally accredited certification in a related profession such as Certified Disability Manager Management Specialist (CDMS) or Certified Case Manager (CCM).

Benefits

• Competitive base pay
• Bonus/Incentive Pay and other Performance-Based Rewards, if applicable
• Medical, Dental and Vision Plans
• Prescription Drugs
• HSA, HRA, and FSA Accounts
• Paid Holidays, Vacation and Sick Leave
• 401(k) Retirement Plan
• Tuition Assistance
• Paid Parental Leave
• Supplemental Health Benefits
• Enhanced Mental Health Support
• Virtual Physical Therapy
• Caregiving Services
• Life Assistance Program
• Training programs that promote continuous learning and career progression while enhancing job performance
• Sustainability programs that give back to the communities in which we live and work
• A culture of respect, collaboration, entrepreneurial spirit and inclusion