Prosperity and welfare in modern societies are highly dependent on educated and qualified workers. In recent years, demographic change and increasing shortage of qualified workers have presented new challenges for both developed and developing economies. Strategies to face these challenges include increased company activity to retain internal labour markets. Disability management (DM) has been established worldwide as a valuable approach not only to improve return-to-work programmes and thereby retaining employees but also to improve working conditions and organisational development. Particularly, the International Labour Organization (ILO), the World Health Organization (WHO) and the International Forum for Disability Management (IFDM), see DM as crucial to supporting workers whose employment is threatened by illness or accident and bringing people back to work. However, despite the widespread adoption of DM, comparative international research among private companies in this area is minimal. Australia, Canada, China and Switzerland were chosen to ensure heterogeneous sample that will allow an analysis of the impact of different welfare systems for DM. The three following questions are guiding this research :