
Ready to Partner with Local Industries? First, Get Your Foot in the Door!
August 10, 2026Use Pre/Post-Hire and Job Readiness Assessments to Get Your Foot in the Door!
Pre/Post-Hire Functional Assessments, aka Job Readiness Assessments, are an excellent first service to offer Employers. Accurate detail of ability levels of job candidates and new hires is critical for decision making during hiring and preparation for placement on the job. They allow the Employer to make decisions that are in the best interest of all parties .. the new Employees and their families, Employers, current Employees, and management in HR, Safety, Workers’ Comp, and Medical. These tools, offered by therapists, facilitate a company’s ability to make hiring, on-boarding and placement decisions based on clear and accurate data.
For Employers, this becomes a practical tool for reducing preventable injuries and improving job placement. For Therapists, it provides an opportunity to demonstrate your expertise without requiring a complicated transition into the Employer’s Workers’ Compensation system. For Employees, it assures that not only they can do the job, but all other Employees can as well.
GREAT NEWS: There is no need to change medical providers, become involved in Workers’ Compensation billings, or begin with complex legal agreements.
A simple conversation and follow up can be enough to get it started: “Try us with your next 20 hires.”
Employers have an opportunity to see the value of your services while you are establishing credibility and demonstrating measurable results. Within a short time, outcomes data shows a significant reduction of lost workdays with new hires compared to prior-to-implementation hires.
Build on that Relationship with Return-to-Work FCAs!
Once you’ve established a relationship with an Employer, you have the opportunity to service stack with any number of Industrial Therapy Worker Care Spectrum services. Return-to-Work Functional Capacity Assessments (FCAs) are an easy next-step.
The questions to the Employer who is bringing a worker back from an injury but is afraid of the possible complications of a re-injury: Are your returning workers now physically capable of doing their job? How would you know? WE DO!
The questions to the Physician who has to release an injured patient for Return-to-Work, but of course has no idea what they can physically functionally do: Do you know your patients are physically capable of returning to their jobs? How would you know? WE DO!
Once we know what the capability is, we move forward with: Is there a job fit? If not quite, would specific body-part job-readiness conditioning be helpful? Can the job be temporarily modified to accommodate current abilities?
Get Your Eyes on Their Environment … Welcome Their Eyes on You:
Industrial Therapy is ultimately about relationships where testing, observation, and practical problem-solving with functional application of our medical knowledge into non-medical environments is a cost-cutting and pain-saving tool.
When you visit an Employer’s worksite, you put “knowing eyes on the environment”. You see what Employees functionally do rather than relying on a 2-sentence job description. At the same time, the Employer’s management team and eventually Employees get to put “eyes on you” and see how your expertise can benefit their organization.
For therapists looking to expand beyond the traditional clinic model, Industrial Therapy can become more than just another service. It can lead to long-standing Employer partnerships, re-strengthened physician relationships, ongoing referrals, a broader professional role, and a significant additional revenue stream.
The first step is simple: get out of the clinic, learn what your patients do, visit their workplaces, and start the conversations. Ready to get your foot in the door? Contact us keymethod.com or gkey@keymethod.com to learn more about how. The KEY Method. Step into a new phase of your business and career.

