Does Your Workplace Have an Effective Return-to-Work Strategy?

More than 500,000 people a year in Australia experience a work-related injury or illness, at an estimated national cost of $6.18 billion. The massive impacts can be felt on both individuals and their families, while workplaces face costly fallouts with the after effects flowing through the whole economy

How does your organisation place?

Central to an injured worker’s recovery is their company’s return-to-work strategy. Whether your organisation’s strategy is proven and effective, needs tweaking, or is clamouring for an overhaul, this post is for you, for even the soundest of programs can benefit from a health check.

Best for workers

Our mental and physical well-being thrive on us being positively employed. It’s grim enough being injured or unwell, but a resultant lengthy workforce absence:

• Fuels isolation and depression
• Erodes financial position
• Damages long-term employability
• Disrupts family life and social networks
• Strikes self-esteem
• Increases the chance of sustaining other health conditions, some possibly fatal

The longer an injured worker remains out of the workforce, the lower their chances of ever returning. Furthermore, an injured worker needs to see a path forward for their return, and those workers with whom doctors shared a back-to-work date, proved three times more likely to return.

It’s important to keep in mind that a worker doesn’t have to be completely well to return to work. If returning is safe for them, then it needs to be encouraged and facilitated. Being part of the workforce, and contributing again, can accelerate recovery.

Best for organisations

Businesses recognise that by reintegrating an injured employee into their workforce as soon as is safely possible to do so, they reap benefits such as enhanced workplace morale, restored productivity, and reduced compensation costs.

The ‘when’ of a return-to-work conversation

Broaching return-to-work with an injured worker is a conversation that needs to commence as early as possible in the injury timeline, ideally on the first day after an incident. You might want to check out our Communication Tips for Managing Workers Compensation post for more information.

Physical vs psychological injuries

Survey results show significant differences in the way organisations respond to physical injuries compared to psychological ones.

Comcare reports that following a physical injury, 59% of employees were contacted by their organisation versus only 33% following a psychological one. 

Workers with psychological injuries are typically let down by employers dropping the ball in terms of supporting and assisting them during their recovery, providing them with information on rights and responsibilities, treating them fairly during or following the claims process, and making an effort to organise appropriate employment for their return.

You may wish to look up our Create a Safe & Healthy Workplace for Everyone and our Managing Mental Health injuries in the Workplace posts for more information.

An action checklist

Drawing on Safework Australia’s 10 Guiding Principles behind a positive return-to-work experience, we put together an action checklist for the optimal return-to-work program. If your organisation’s sound then it should:

• Promote and support early reporting of injury and illness
• Provide early tailored support and intervention
• Prepare to effectively respond to, and manage, injury and illness
• Inform workers of their rights and responsibilities
• Assist workers to navigate the claims process
• Support workers to be proactive and positive towards recovery and return-to-work
• Promote and support best possible recovery, and timely, positive and productive work re-engagement for all
• Ensure the return-to-work process doesn’t aggravate existing conditions or create new ones.
• Ensure the workplace to which a worker returns, is physically and psychologically safe and supportive
• Ensure stakeholders recognise the positive impact of good work on health and recovery, and put its principles into practice

• Ensure stakeholders share information and work collaboratively
• Use data and evidence, to measure success, share lessons, and drive innovation and improvement

Let our Solv platform support your return-to-work program

Good communication and keeping injured workers informed, are two areas that underpin successful return-to-work.  Solv helps clients implement an effective communication schedule by allowing them to:

• Set up within the system, an injured worker’s nominated communication preferences and frequencies
• Add alerts and reminders for communication, for updating return-to-work plans, and for obtaining documentation, such as medical certificates, as required
• Log communication details so that all important information is properly stored for easy reference
• Communicate directly from the system, by emails or SMS messages, all of which are logged for easy management and retrieval

Solv helps clients keep their injured workers informed by

• Facilitating the storage of up-to-date workers compensation and return-to-work support documentation for quick access, and prompt dispatch
• Monitoring details and dates of information sent
• Providing for calendar reminders for information dispatch.

The road from injury to workplace return can be a rocky one, for the worker and for their company. We can help ease the way.