Many employers don’t have services in place to ensure total compliance with federal and state disability laws, a new report shows.

That’s despite the fact that virtually all employers feel it’s important to comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the survey results released Wednesday by Prudential Financial Inc.

To stay in compliance with the ADA, Prudential found that 80% of employers have a service in place to identify accommodations to help employees return to work after a disability-related absence — the most commonly adopted service — even though 95% of employers consider it important to offer.

And while 96% of employers said accommodating employees to help them stay at work is important, only 77% have adopted such a service, according to the survey results.

Five percent of employers either do not provide ADA services or are not aware if they do, the survey showed.

The ADA, enacted in 1990, requires employers to provide reasonable accommodations to certain employees with a disability.

Prudential said in a statement that employers are much more advanced in their strategies to comply with the Family and Medical Leave Act than with the ADA, perhaps because the ADA is murky in its requirements.

As such, employer programs to comply with the FMLA, which provides certain employees with up to 12 weeks of unpaid, job-protected leave, have moved beyond compliance and now focus on administration and implementation, according to the statement.

Outsourcing compliance services

Many employers are outsourcing FMLA and ADA compliance services to third-party administrators, insurers, and payroll vendors, Prudential said. Fifty-three percent of employers report outsourcing FMLA services, and 44% said they outsource ADA services, according to the survey.

About 40% of employers expect the importance of outsourcing these services to increase because of factors such as the regulatory environment becoming more complex, Prudential said.

“The complexity and nuances of disability and leave laws can be overwhelming. And as employers grapple with competing priorities, and limited resources, it can be challenging for them to fully outline and implement plans to keep them in compliance,” Jake Biscoglio, vice president of absence and disability with Prudential’s group insurance segment, said in the statement. “It has reached a point where many employers say they are willing to outsource all or a portion of the administration of their compliance programs to ensure their employees have the best support available to them.”

The survey of 341 employers with at least 500 workers was conducted by Washington-based market research firm Mathew Greenwald & Associates Inc. in February.