Vocational rehabilitation and return to work planning
The Vocational Rehabilitation Society defines vocational rehabilitation as, “a multidisciplinary intervention offered to those with physical, psychological and/or social difficulties enabling a return to work or preventing loss of work.” In simpler terms the definition of vocational rehabiltation is “whatever helps someone with a health problem to stay at, return to and remain in work.”
Work is variable and broad, so the concept of rehabilitation must be the same even when roles within an organisation vary in intensity or working hours. For example, an IT technician required to carry monitors and cables compared to desk worker who is typically more sedentary. For this reason, we cannot look at vocational rehab generically as job demands will vary and everyone’s capability will vary.
The same principles can apply to people with identical injuries or illness as well. If we take a calf strain picked up over the weekend as the injury, this might mean up to 12 weeks rehabilitation for a lifeguard or heavy lifter, but it might be that an office worker with minimal daily activity can continue working within a week.
The above scenario demonstrates why vocational rehabilitation must be specific. Although the two employees have identical injuries, the demands of their roles require various levels of fitness. This is in line with previous research done, which states that whilst work is good for people, it must be the right type of work for the individual.
An estimated 27,000 people permanently leave work each year due to a workplace injury, with more than thirty million working days lost each year at a total cost of around £20.7bn to the British economy in 2021/22.
Return to work planning
Planning an employee's return to work is key to a successful outcome, this is particularly important when it comes to long term sickness absence. According to the UK government website, "evidence shows that people are more likely to get back to work when they talk to their employers during periods of sickness and make plans for returning to work.” As mentioned on the NHS website, for some people it's not necessary to be 100% fit or recovered to return to work, and actually work can help with recovery and support overall wellbeing if returning from a long term condition.
Creating a return to work programme
When it comes to creating a plan for returning to work, there are phased approaches and graded approaches in doing so, both have the end goal of getting an employee back to work full time but take different steps in achieving this.
A phased plan will take the approach of gradually increasing working hours over a specific period of time, for example working an extra two and a half hours a week (30 minutes a day) for six weeks or until the full time hours have been achieved.
A graded, or graduated, plan will be similar, however will be more task focused and will see someone potentially working full time hours straight away but with their work duties gradually increasing over time until back to normal.
Keeping constant communication
It's recommended that management conduct weekly reviews with the employee, to ensure that they are meeting the demands of the role but equally that they feel supported and able to meet those demands. There are com indicators of employees being unable to meet required workload or working hours, such as an increase in fatigue or pain, or a reduction in their productivity later on in the day or week or even the ability to manage things at home.
Ideally there would be allowances for flexibility in these plans, which will allow for short extensions to the plan if difficulties arise.
How do Zurich help facilitate recovery
With the support of the Zurich Rehabilitation Team, 86.2% of employees worked with returned to work in 2023, with an average cost of under £500 and a consistent reduction in the number of working days lost compared to the average of 90.
There may be times when an employee has more complex injuries or requires a prolonged period off work. When this happens, the following may occur:
- It becomes unclear whether or not the employee can safely return to the pre-injury job role.
- The benefit of rehabilitation is in question and there is a need to identify what might be appropriate to improve overall function and work ability.
- The employees physical, cognitive and/or mental functional capacity for work is unclear.
A functional capacity evaluation can be useful tool to evaluate an employee’s overall functional capability and specifically for work. This will include (but, is not limited to) an evaluation of mobility, tolerances, upper limb function, fitness and endurance for work and cognition.
