RETAIN - The Retaining Employment and Talent after Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN)

RETAIN - The Retaining Employment and Talent after Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) is sponsored by U.S. Department of Labor (DOL), Office of Disability Employment Policy (ODEP). RETAIN focuses on Stay-at-Work/Return-to-Work (SAW/RTW) strategies to increase employment retention and labor force participation for individuals who acquire or are at risk of developing disabilities that inhibit their ability to work.

The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration: Evaluation Findings One Year After Enrollment The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration: Evaluation Findings One Year After Enrollment The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration: Evaluation Findings One Year After Enrollment Supplementary Analysis: Exploring the Lives of RETAIN Treatment Enrollees Supplementary Analysis: Predicting Need for RETAIN Services Based on Control Group Outcomes Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Evaluation Prepared for: Social Security Administration The five RETAIN programs successfully identified and enrolled workers experiencing new or worsening health conditions and connected them to SAW/RTW supports.

Programs’ service use data indicate that nearly all treatment enrollees developed an RTW plan and most had repeated contact with an RTW coordinator during the six-month service window. Impacts on employment and earnings varied across programs. RETAINWORKS generated significant positive impacts on employment and average earnings in the first year for treatment enrollees relative to control enrollees.

Three programs (RETAINWORKS, MN RETAIN, and VT RETAIN) had positive impacts on some self-reported health outcomes. In all programs, the costs of delivering services exceeded the monetized benefits observed within the first year after enrollment, reflecting the up-front investment in intensive services and the limited time frame for benefits to accrue.

Although the costs of service delivery were incurred up front, program benefits could continue to accrue in the future, and at least two programs (RETAINWORKS and MN RETAIN) could break even within a reasonable time frame.

The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) demonstration was a collaborative effort by the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) and the Social Security Administration (SSA) to help workers stay in the labor force after they experience an injury or illness.

The goal of RETAIN was to implement and test programs that used early-intervention stay-at-work/return-to-work (SAW/RTW) strategies with adult workers who had recently experienced the onset or worsening of an injury or illness that challenged their ability to work.

In Phase 1, which began in 2018, DOL awarded funds to eight state agencies to develop and pilot test programs to help those who experience a potentially disabling condition stay at work or return to work.

In Phase 2, which began in 2021, DOL competitively selected five of these states (Kansas, Kentucky, Minnesota, Ohio, and Vermont) to fully implement such programs (named RETAINWORKS, RETAIN Kentucky [RETAIN KY], Minnesota RETAIN [MN RETAIN], Ohio RETAIN [OH RETAIN] and Vermont RETAIN [VT RETAIN], respectively).

The five RETAIN programs began enrolling participants in late 2021 and early 2022 and continued enrollment for evaluation purposes through mid May 2024.

The report findings cover a one-year follow-up period and are based on Mathematica’s analysis of programs’ enrollment and service use data, state unemployment insurance wage records, SSA program data, a follow-up survey of RETAIN enrollees that Mathematica conducted about 12 months after enrollment, and program cost data.

The one-year follow-up period reflects data availability, evaluation timing, and a time horizon over which impacts on key outcomes such as SSDI applications could be expected to emerge. An earlier report (Patnaik et al. 2025) summarized impacts on service use, employment, and health outcomes based on an early follow-up survey that Mathematica conducted about two months after enrollment.

More like this from Mathematica The Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration: Impacts Two Months After Enrollment Ankita Patnaik, Isabel Musse, Jillian Berk, Karen Katz, Monica Farid, and Yonatan Ben-Shalom The RETAIN Demonstration: State Programs’ Approaches to Recruiting Potential Enrollees Sarah Croake, Moriah Bauman, Yonatan Ben-Shalom, Jillian Berk, and Meagan Ager The RETAIN Demonstration: Practical Implications of State Variation in SSDI Entry Michael Anderson, Yonatan Ben-Shalom, David Stapleton, and David Wittenburg Process Analysis Report for the Retaining Employment and Talent After Injury/Illness Network (RETAIN) Demonstration Rosalind Keith, Sarah Croake, Meagan Ager, Jayna Jones, Cayla Roby, Will Suh, Catherine Turvey, Moriah Bauman, Imani Williams, Jillian Berk That's Progress Together.

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