Light Duty Work Examples and How to Build the Program
Light duty work examples by role, how to build a transitional duty task bank, write the offer, and cut the cost of an open workers comp claim.
Light Duty Work
Example task lists by role, how to build a transitional duty bank before anyone gets hurt, how to write an offer that counts, and what a modified assignment does to your claim costs and your injury log
A warehouse supervisor once called me about a picker who had strained his shoulder. The provider had cleared him for work with no lifting above 20 pounds and no overhead reach. The supervisor's question was whether we had anything for him, and the honest answer that morning was no, because nobody had ever written down what the alternative might be.
He sat at home for eleven days while we worked it out. In that time the carrier paid time-loss benefits, the claim reserve went up, and a person who wanted to be at work sat on his sofa instead. When we finally put an assignment together it took ninety minutes to write and he did it happily for three weeks.
Every one of those eleven days was avoidable, and the fix was a list we could have made on a slow Tuesday months earlier. This guide is the list I wish we had: what light duty actually is, example task sets by role, how to build the bank before an injury, how to write an offer that holds up, and what a modified assignment does to your claim costs and your injury log. This is practical guidance for operators, not legal advice, and the rules that decide benefit questions belong to the state where the employee works.
What Light Duty Work Actually Is
Light duty is temporary, productive work an employer offers inside the written restrictions a treating provider has set, so an injured employee keeps working while they recover. It does not have to resemble the job they were doing when they got hurt, and in many cases the best version is their own role with one motion removed.
The return-to-work toolkit published by the Washington State Department of Labor and Industries sets out five shapes the assignment can take, and it is a better starting point than the one most small employers use, which is to picture a person sitting somewhere doing nothing useful.
One framing is worth borrowing. The Texas Division of Workers' Compensation frames its work assignment guidance around real work rather than light duty, and insists that assignments follow the doctor's instructions while being productive and useful. That distinction is not decoration. An employee handed obvious busy work reads it as a punishment for getting hurt, cooperates less, and is far more likely to treat the next conversation as adversarial.
The other reason to take the assignment seriously is that somebody else will read it later. A carrier evaluating a disputed refusal, a provider deciding whether to sign, and possibly a state agency all look at the same document. A description that reads like a real job survives that reading. One that reads like a holding pattern does not.
Light Duty Work Examples by Role
The best light duty work is work your business already needs done and has never had time for, rearranged to fit a restriction. That is why the table below is organized by role rather than by injury: the tasks come out of the operation, and the restriction only decides which ones are available.
Read the middle column as a starting menu, not a list of approved assignments. Restrictions are individual, and the same diagnosis produces different limits in two people. Everything here still has to be matched against one provider's written restrictions and approved before anyone starts.
| Role and a common restriction | Modified tasks that carry real value | Tasks that stay off the list |
|---|---|---|
| Warehouse or fulfillment, no lifting over 10 lb | Cycle counting and inventory reconciliation, seated packing of small items, receiving paperwork and purchase order matching, returns inspection, training new pickers from a seated station | Case picking, pallet jack operation, ladder stock, truck loading |
| Restaurant back of house, no standing over 20 minutes | Seated prep such as labeling and dating, inventory counts and vendor order sheets, food safety and temperature log auditing, allergen chart updates, phone and online order handling from a stool | Line cooking during service, dish pit, carrying bus tubs, walk-in restocking |
| Retail floor, no lifting over 15 lb | Register with a stool and an anti-fatigue mat, fitting room and returns processing, price and tag audits, online order pick and pack for small items, click-and-collect coordination | Truck unload, ladder work, fixture and display moves |
| Construction or trades, no climbing or lifting over 20 lb | Tool crib and equipment inventory, jobsite safety audits and toolbox talk prep, material takeoffs and delivery scheduling, punch list documentation with photos, permit and inspection tracking | Scaffolding and ladders, material carrying, two-handed power tool work |
| Home health or clinic aide, no patient transfers | Scheduling and route coordination, chart audits and documentation cleanup, supply inventory and reorder, insurance verification calls, infection control checklists | Patient transfers, ambulation assistance, moving equipment |
| Delivery driver, no repetitive step in and out | Route planning and dispatch support, vehicle inspection and maintenance log review, customer callbacks on failed deliveries, load sequencing, riding along as an observer to train a new driver | Package handling, hand truck work, multi-stop residential routes |
| Manufacturing line, one-hand restriction | Seated quality inspection, first-piece checks and gauge calibration logs, kitting light components, work instruction and standard operating procedure updates, downtime logging | Line work at rate, two-handed machine tending, material handling |
| Landscaping or facilities, no bending or vibrating tools | Equipment maintenance logs and parts inventory, crew scheduling and route sheets, chemical inventory and safety data sheet filing, site photo documentation for estimates, customer follow-up calls | Mowing and trimming, digging, trailer loading |
| Office or admin, no keyboard and mouse with the injured wrist | Phone-based work and vendor calls, dictation for documents and email, meeting facilitation and voice-captured notes, process documentation, filing and scanning with a foot pedal | Sustained data entry, mouse-heavy design or spreadsheet work |
The pattern repeats across every row. Modified tasks come from three places: the person's own job with the restricted motion taken out, work that has been deferred for months because nobody has the time, and a coworker's job the injured employee already knows how to do. The second source is the richest one, and it is the reason a good assignment often leaves the business better off than it was.
Two roles deserve a note. Anything customer-facing needs a quick check that the restriction will not be visible in a way the employee finds humiliating, because dignity drives cooperation more than policy does. And anything involving driving needs an explicit provider comment, since medication that is fine at a desk is often not fine behind a wheel.
Building the Task Bank Before Anyone Gets Hurt
Build the list before the injury, because the day of the call is the worst possible day to invent it. Washington's guidance for employers is explicit on this point: document the physical requirements of every job you have, identify light duty jobs in advance, and mark those descriptions as transitional so they are ready to hand to a provider.
The exercise is smaller than it sounds. Most small businesses have four to eight distinct roles, and each one has a handful of tasks that survive a typical restriction. An afternoon of work produces a document you will use for years.
Keep the bank where the people who need it can find it, alongside the job descriptions it is built from. A task bank in somebody's personal spreadsheet is a task bank that disappears when they take vacation, which is precisely the week the injury happens.
The sheet below is the version I would set up first. Three tabs do the work: the tasks sorted by the restriction they survive, the physical demands of each regular job, and a placement record showing what you actually did and when. A fourth tab explains how to use them.
| A | B | C | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Task | Department or role it belongs to | Why it has value | Max lift required (lb) | Posture required | Hands needed (one / two) | Driving required (yes / no) | Typical hours available per week | Equipment or training needed | Who supervises it |
| 2 | Replace this row with your first task | |||||||||
| 3 | ||||||||||
| 4 | ||||||||||
| 5 | ||||||||||
| 6 | ||||||||||
| 7 | ||||||||||
| 8 | ||||||||||
| 9 | ||||||||||
| 10 | ||||||||||
| 11 |
Restrictions, offers, and provider correspondence are confidential medical information and belong with the claim rather than in the general personnel file. That separation is easy to describe and easy to break, which is one of the reasons I built FirstHR: the employee record, the onboarding paperwork, and the restricted documents live in one place with controlled access instead of in three folders and an inbox.
Writing the Modified Duty Offer
Put the offer in writing, with the provider-approved description attached, before the assignment starts. A verbal offer adjusted in a hallway is the version that produces a dispute, both with the employee and with the carrier, because nobody can later prove what was actually offered.
Washington's employer toolkit lists the elements a light duty job offer letter should carry, and the list is short enough that there is no excuse for skipping it.
Refusal is where the paperwork earns its keep. The Texas Division of Workers' Compensation tells employers in its return-to-work guide that if an injured employee refuses a written bona fide offer of employment, benefits may be reduced or suspended by the insurance carrier, and that all the information required by the state rule has to be present for the offer to qualify. States differ on what makes an offer count, so coordinate the wording with your adjuster before you send it.
Before the offer goes out, the provider has to see something they can actually approve. The document below is that piece: an assignment written in physical terms rather than in job-title terms, which is the only version a doctor can sign, amend, or decline with any confidence.
Two habits make the rest of it work. Reissue the description every time the restrictions change, because an assignment approved against last month's limits is not approved against this month's. And brief the supervisor on the specifics rather than on the headline, since most restriction breaches happen because the person running the shift knew someone was on light duty but not what the limit actually was.
Pay, Hours, and Wage Loss on a Modified Assignment
Pay the rate that fits the work actually performed, and check your state rules before you reduce anything. Most workers' compensation systems pay a partial wage-loss benefit when a modified assignment earns less than the regular job, which is why a lower rate is not automatically unfair, and also why it is not automatically safe.
| The question | What usually happens | What to check first |
|---|---|---|
| Does the employee keep their regular rate? | For a short assignment most employers keep the rate and let reduced hours carry the difference, which is simpler and avoids an argument | Whether your policy or a collective agreement already commits you to a rate |
| What if the modified work is genuinely lower paid? | Many states allow the lower rate and pay a partial wage-loss benefit against the shortfall | The state benefit name and formula, and whether your offer has to state the rate |
| Can hours be reduced? | Yes, and a short schedule that grows week by week is one of the most effective forms of the assignment | That the provider approved the hours, not only the tasks |
| What about an exempt employee? | Cutting salary because of a medical restriction can put the salary basis test at risk and endanger the exemption | Your classification and the rules in exempt versus non-exempt before you touch the salary |
| Do benefits continue? | Health coverage normally continues at the same level, and the offer letter should say so explicitly | Whether reduced hours drop the person below an eligibility threshold in your plan documents |
| Does overtime still apply? | Non-exempt employees earn overtime on modified work the same way they do on regular work | Whether the restriction rules out the overtime the role usually carries |
The exempt case catches people out. If a restriction reduces an exempt employee to three days a week, docking salary for the missing days is a decision with consequences beyond the claim, and the safer path usually runs through the rules covered in exempt versus non-exempt classification rather than through a quick arithmetic fix.
One more thing worth saying out loud to the employee: a modified assignment is not a demotion and not a performance signal. People assume the worst when their pay or title moves, and a single sentence in the offer letter confirming that the change is temporary and tied to the medical restriction removes most of that worry.
How Light Duty Controls the Cost of a Claim
Every day an injured employee works is a day the carrier is not paying time-loss benefits, and those benefit days feed both the reserve an adjuster sets on the claim and the premium you pay afterwards. Washington's employer toolkit states the mechanism directly: providing return-to-work opportunities for employees injured on the job reduces the financial impact on your workers' compensation premiums.
The connection runs deeper than arithmetic. Washington's employer toolkit points to occupational health research linking the duration of a claim to long-term loss of earning power: the longer someone stays off, the harder it becomes for them to return to their original job and income. Speed is not only a cost control, it is part of the recovery.
Two mechanics are worth understanding before your next renewal. Reserves are set early and revised slowly, so a claim that looks likely to run long gets priced that way months before anyone knows the outcome. And the payroll you report is classified by the work performed, which is one of the details a workers comp audit examines, so tell your broker when someone is on a modified assignment for an extended period.
The short version for this page is that claims closed quickly cost less twice: once in benefits paid, and again in the renewals that follow.
What a Modified Assignment Does to Your Injury Log
A recordable case where you place someone on modified work is normally logged as restricted work or job transfer, and the days are counted. This surprises employers who assume light duty keeps a case off the log, and the assumption sometimes tempts people into the wrong decision for the wrong reason.
Do not let the log drive the medical decision. A case entered with a restriction check is a case handled correctly, and the alternative, sending someone home to keep a column clean, costs more in benefits and looks far worse if anyone examines the pattern.
The practical detail is the date. Write down the first day of restricted work when it happens, because it is the field nobody can reconstruct nine months later, and it is the one that determines every count that follows.
Where the ADA Changes the Answer
Workers' compensation light duty and ADA accommodation are separate obligations that regularly apply to the same person at the same time. Meeting one does not discharge the other, and the differences are specific enough to be worth learning once.
EEOC enforcement guidance on workers' compensation and the ADA settles the questions employers ask most. An employer that creates light duty positions for employees with occupational injuries does not have to create such positions as a reasonable accommodation for employees with disabilities who were not injured on the job. An employer is free to decide that light duty is temporary rather than permanent, and one that provides light duty only on a temporary basis need only provide it temporarily.
The qualification matters more than the rule. If you reserve vacant positions for employees injured at work, the guidance says you must consider reassigning a non-occupationally injured employee with a disability into such a vacancy as a reasonable accommodation. A reserved bench of light duty jobs is therefore not a closed shop.
| Question | Light duty under workers’ comp | Accommodation under the ADA |
|---|---|---|
| What triggers it | A work-related injury and a provider’s written restrictions | A disability and a request for a change at work, occupational or not |
| Must you create a position? | No legal duty to create one, though many employers do and some state incentive programs reward it | No. Creating a new position is not required as a reasonable accommodation |
| Temporary or permanent? | Almost always temporary and tied to the recovery period | Can be either. Many accommodations are open-ended, and some are time-limited by design |
| Who decides the limits? | The treating provider, through the work status report | The employee and employer together, through the interactive process, with documentation only where the need is not obvious |
| Refusal by the employee | May reduce or suspend benefits, depending on the state and whether the offer qualified | An employee may decline an accommodation, though declining an effective one can affect whether they remain qualified |
| Past injury as a reason to say no | Not a basis by itself | Not a basis by itself. Refusal requires a direct threat analysis, not a general concern about reinjury |
Return the person to their regular job as soon as the restrictions allow, and treat a restriction that is turning permanent as the trigger for a different conversation. At that point you are running the reasonable accommodation process rather than a recovery plan, and the analysis moves to essential functions and undue hardship under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
Two adjacent frameworks show up in the same situations. A serious health condition can run the clock on federal leave at the same time as a claim is open, and a pregnancy-related limitation has its own federal standard under the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act that does not depend on the ADA disability test. Run each analysis separately rather than assuming one answer covers them all.
Duration, Review, and Ending the Assignment
Set a review date rather than an end date, and tie it to the next appointment with the treating provider. Restrictions change when the medicine changes, not when the calendar does, so a review pinned to a fixed number of weeks is a review that lands on the wrong day.
Three things end an assignment: a full release to regular duty, a permanent modification of the job, or a medical conclusion that no further improvement is expected. Each has a different next step, and the third one is where employers stall, because it is the point where a temporary arrangement has to become either a permanent job change or a different conversation entirely.
Keep the whole sequence in the claim file rather than scattered across email. Restrictions and provider correspondence are confidential medical information, so they belong under the same restricted access as any other medical document you hold, and separate from the general employee folder.
Mistakes That Make Light Duty Backfire
The failures here are rarely disagreements about medicine. They are process failures: an offer nobody wrote down, a supervisor who never learned the limit, an assignment that quietly became something else. Every item below costs nothing to avoid.
| Mistake | Why it costs you | The fix |
|---|---|---|
| Offering the assignment verbally | Nothing proves what was offered, so a refusal cannot be documented and an accepted assignment cannot be defended | Written offer, approved description attached, signature line with accept and decline |
| Inventing the tasks on the day of the call | Delay while you think, and an assignment that looks improvised because it was | Build the task bank in advance and sort it by the restriction each task survives |
| Handing over obvious busy work | The employee reads it as punishment, cooperation drops, and the arrangement fails for reasons nobody records | Write the business reason for each task. If you cannot, pick a different task |
| Telling the supervisor only that someone is on light duty | The specific limit is what prevents a reinjury, and the headline does not carry it | Brief the numbers: the weight, the posture, the reach, the hours |
| Letting the assignment drift past the restriction | A breach that causes a second injury is both a new claim and a documented failure to follow medical direction | Review at every appointment and reissue the description when limits change |
| Avoiding light duty to keep the injury log clean | You pay more in benefits, the claim runs longer, and the pattern looks worse than the log entry would have | Record the restricted days and treat the log as a record, not a scoreboard |
| Explaining the benefit consequences of refusing | It reads as pressure and edges into a determination that belongs to the carrier | Make the offer, note the response, send both to the adjuster the same day |
| Treating a permanent restriction as a longer recovery | The accommodation analysis never starts, and the delay is the part that creates exposure | When improvement stops, switch frameworks and run the interactive process |
The last row is the one I would put on the wall. Light duty is a recovery tool with an expected end, and the moment the medicine says there is no further improvement coming, you are in a different process with different rules. Employers who miss that switch usually do so gently, by extending a temporary assignment one more month at a time.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is light duty work?
Light duty work is temporary, productive work an employer offers an injured employee inside the written restrictions their treating provider has set. It goes by several names, including transitional duty, modified duty, and restricted duty, and the label matters far less than whether the tasks actually fit the medical limits. Light duty does not have to resemble the job the person was doing when they were hurt. It can be their regular role with the restricted motion removed, a shorter schedule, tasks borrowed from elsewhere in the business, or the same job made possible by a piece of equipment. What it should never be is idle time or invented busy work, because an assignment that has no value stops being credible to the employee, the provider, and the carrier.
What are some examples of light duty work?
The best examples are tasks your business already needs done and never has time for. In a warehouse that usually means cycle counting, receiving paperwork, returns processing, or training new pickers from a seated station. In a restaurant it is seated prep, inventory and order sheets, food safety log checks, and phone orders. In construction it is tool crib inventory, jobsite safety audits, material takeoffs, and permit tracking. In an office with a wrist restriction it is phone-based work, dictation, vendor calls, and process documentation. Across every setting the tasks come from three places: the person’s own job minus the restricted motion, work that has been deferred for months, and a coworker’s job the injured employee is already trained to do.
Can an employer require an employee to accept light duty work?
You cannot physically compel anyone to work, but a refusal usually has consequences inside the workers’ compensation claim, and those consequences are set by state law. Texas is a clear example: guidance from the Texas Department of Insurance states that if an injured employee refuses a written bona fide offer of employment, benefits may be reduced or suspended by the insurance carrier. What makes an offer count varies by state, and the tests commonly turn on whether it was in writing, within the medical restrictions, reasonable, and geographically accessible. The practical rule for an employer is to coordinate the wording with the claims adjuster before sending anything, keep the offer strictly inside the restrictions, and leave the benefit consequences to the carrier rather than explaining them yourself.
Do you have to pay the same wage for light duty work?
Not necessarily, but reducing pay is the part employers most often get wrong. Many states let you pay the rate that fits the modified work, and most workers’ compensation systems then pay a partial wage-loss benefit to close some of the gap. Two cautions apply. If the employee is exempt from overtime, cutting salary because of a restriction can put the salary basis test at risk and jeopardize the exemption. And a pay cut that looks like a response to the claim rather than to the work invites a retaliation argument, which is a far more expensive problem than the wages you saved. The safest default for a short assignment is to keep the regular rate and let the hours carry the difference.
How long can light duty last?
There is no universal limit, and the right answer is a review date rather than a fixed number of weeks. Tie each review to the next appointment with the treating provider, since that is when the restrictions realistically change. An assignment ends in one of three ways: the provider releases the person to regular duty, the job itself is permanently changed to fit the limits, or treatment reaches the point where no further improvement is expected. Two pressures argue against letting it drift. Federal recordkeeping rules cap the days you have to count for a single case at 180 calendar days, and an assignment that runs for a year starts to look like the employee’s actual job, which changes the analysis if a permanent restriction later needs to be accommodated.
Does light duty have to be recorded on the OSHA 300 log?
Usually yes. For a work-related case that is already recordable, federal rules treat restricted work as occurring when the employer keeps the employee from performing one or more routine job functions, or a provider recommends they not perform them, and routine functions are the activities the employee regularly performs at least once per week. That case is entered on the log with a check in the job transfer or restriction column, and the days are counted the way days away from work are counted. A partial day counts as a full day of restriction, except on the day the injury happened. You may cap the count at 180 calendar days for a single case, and the count stops when the modification is made permanent.
Does the ADA require an employer to create a light duty job?
No, in most cases. Under EEOC enforcement guidance on workers’ compensation and the ADA, running a light duty program for people hurt at work does not oblige you to invent equivalent positions for employees whose disabilities came from somewhere else. One important qualification follows. If you keep vacant positions reserved for employees injured at work, you have to consider reassigning a non-occupationally injured employee with a disability into one of those vacancies as a reasonable accommodation. The same guidance lets you set light duty as temporary rather than permanent, and an employer whose program is temporary by design owes only a temporary placement.