About > History

It all started in 1985 when Norm Peterson was working as a workers’ compensation vocational counselor. His one client, Southwest Forest Plant #3, was a mill experiencing a high incidence of injuries. Hardly a day went by without a call to the employer or a visit to the plant. The company’s HR Manager, Dwayne Pont, was concerned about his employees and this motivated him to improve plant safety conditions, but injuries continued occurring.

Many mill workers were off work for an extended time and were participating in work hardening programs at rehabilitation centers. These centers attempt to duplicate the actual work setting of the injured worker. Mr. Pont visited a center because he wanted to know what took place at work hardening. When Mr. Pont saw his employees going through the motions of working at their old jobs, he saw there was no need for the rehabilitation center. Instead, he could provide his injured employees with work that approximated their jobs at injury. After this visit, Mr. Pont challenged Norm Peterson to come up with a better way to help injured workers return to work and save him time from the abundant paperwork involved in handling claims.

Norm approached the problem using a systems analysis technique he had learned while working at Lockheed. He realized that by using the history of injuries, it is possible to determine how many as well as what kind of injuries are going to occur in the future. It is also possible, within a range, to determine temporary residual physical capacities. In summary, it is possible to know before the injury what jobs an injured worker could do after the injury. In the first part of the Return-to-Work process, this conceptual approach can be simplified by identifying temporary work that eliminates all physical activities of the injured body part.

Mr. Pont agreed with Norm’s analysis and contracted a number of temporary job descriptions. In the first year workers’ compensation performance at Southwest Forest Products #3 went from one of the worst 100 mills in the United States to one of the top ten. There were both indemnity and medical savings. Due to these astounding results, the mill and Norm Peterson received national attention.

A Matrix was developed which cross referenced written available temporary job assignments with injured body parts and a range of physical capacities. This demystified and simplified the Return-to-Work process, allowing new employees, supervisors and doctors to quickly grasp and respond to the needs of individual injured workers. Later we called temporary job assignments “Bridge Assignments,” to emphasize the healing process from little to no physical capacities to regular work.

Norm copyrighted the program as the OUR System® — standing for Optimal Utilization of Resources. This name reflects his belief that 97% of injured workers want to be at work and maintain productivity. Norman Peterson and Associates (NPA) was then formed capitalizing on the name recognition of a character from the then popular TV show Cheers. Since its establishment NPA’s focus has continued to be on assisting employers with returning injured workers to work as soon as possible.

We challenge the idea that early Return-to-Work might hurt morale or productivity. By utilizing onsite implementation by our Return-to-Work Specialists we demonstrate how it‘s a win-win-win proposition for employees, management and doctors. It is also a simple, flexible program for management due to a variety of financial arrangements and operational agreements available with NPA.  One example is a contract where there are no up front fees and we bill directly to the claim file. Our mission is to continue to do what we enjoy which is improving, promoting and implementing the best early Return- to-Work system in the United States today.

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