Aged Care Provider Finalist in Employee Return to Work Award

In their submission for the awards, the organisation stated they had been working on a variety of strategies over the last two years to help their injured employees return to work faster.  As a result the aged care provider has seen their claims incident rate drop from 6.39 per cent in 2008/2009 to 0.77 % in 2012/2013, resulting in a decrease of total claim cost from $371,785 in 2009 to $75,968 in 2012 and 2013.

The provider described a range of strategies that had been employed over the last few years to encourage injured employees to return to work, including the development of a Health & Wellbeing program to raise awareness and educate workers about the importance of physical and mental wellbeing.

Specific programs included Worker Health Checks, Health & Wellbeing Expos, free immunisation for staff, laughter therapy and healthy eating initiatives including fruit boxes at all sites.

The provider used a recent example of a Personal Care Attendant who sustained a shoulder injury in 2012, Catholic Homes arranged for a manager to consult with a doctor and physiotherapist to provide the employee with interim duties that avoided manual handling.

However after a year her injury required surgery, after the surgery the employee felt she had no choice but to resign.

“However, because we had made the effort to use her experience as a receptionist to do that type of work at Catholic Homes. She is really pleased that we gave her both modified duties at the start and have now offered her a permanent receptionist role. The worker has now had surgery and is starting the role in June, 2013” wrote Catholic Homes in their submission.

When asked what their secret was to the success of their return to work initiative, Catholic Homes replied “communication. We are transparent and we work together with the injured worker to support them back to work right from the start. To move forward, we focus on the positive, acknowledging the fact that returning to work for injured workers is important.”