Helping staff return to work
Maintaining contact and a flexible approach are key factors in getting staff back to work. Hopefully you have maintained contact during their period off work and they have already started the process of rehabilitation back to full fitness, in which case coming back to work is just the next stage.
Too often employers get stuck in the traditional, and out-dated approach of waiting until the employee is pain free before return to work is considered. This approach is particularly inappropriate for low back pain.
Key factors in getting staff back to work early are:
- Using phased returns
- Grading exposure
- Agreement between employee and employer
- Risk assessment
- Return to work interviews
- Access to work
Using phased returns
The use of phased returns to work is becoming gradually more widespread. There are two aspects to a phased return; the working hours, and the work activities. Both can be phased. Phasing is allowing time for the employee to get back to normal hours and normal activity.
The time that this takes will be different for different people. It is better to have someone back at work on reduced hours performing modified duties than to have them off sick where barriers develop.
Grading exposure
In this context graded exposure means a gradual return to full activity. It is a concept that compliments a phased return. As the employee is getting better they should do what they can and gradually, over time, increase their exposure to more demanding activities.
Agreement between employee and employer
Return to work is, in many ways a negotiation between employer and employee. If all the factors covered on these pages have been addressed than there is likely to be trust on the part of the employee; if they have not then the situation may be difficult to resolve. An employee needs to be confident that a return to work fits in with their overall rehabilitation. This is more likely to happen if there are consistent messages from all the various parties involved in the rehabilitation. This is an important objective of this website.
Risk assessment
Linked to an agreement between the employee and employer is the risk assessment. Employers have a statutory duty to protect employees, after they return to work, if they have become more vulnerable to risk because of illness, injury or disability (Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974) the risk assessment provides a tool for this to be achieved.
A return to work risk assessment should identify and rate all the foreseeable risks to the individual employee, other employees and members of the public. It should also specify the control measures that have been agreed for each identified risk.
All too often when return to work assessments are done following conditions like low back pain one vital risk relating to the individual employee with the back pain is omitted. This is the fact that their return to work is beneficial to their recovery whereas prolonged absence is their biggest risk. This fact must not be seen out of the overall context of safety, for example, it might be in an individual's best interest to operate some machinery although they have back pain, but it might be assessed that this imposes bigger risks on the rest of the workforce. As with all risk assessments a balanced decision making approach is required
Return to work interviews
A return to work interview gives the employer the chance to welcome the employee back, agree the duties and hours and go over the risk assessment. It is important to actively listen to what the employee is telling you and to be as objective as possible. Offer the employee the chance to have a friend, colleague or union representative with them. If you make return to work interviews standard practice for all episodes of sickness absence, whatever the reason there will be less anxiety for staff attending them.
Access to work
Sometimes it is the employees access to and from work that is the limiting factor. If this is the case consider some of the alternatives:
- Assistance with transport eg taxi, lift share
- Altered hours to avoid peak travel times
- Alternative work location
- Working from home - if you choose this make sure that there is sufficient support and contact as home working can lead to isolation.
It might seem expensive to do this but always balance the cost of doing something against the risk of long term absence.
