What You Need to Understand About Rehabilitation in Occupational Health in the UK

As an employer, you have a legal duty to ensure that your staff are safe and healthy in your workplace. In addition, this is commercially beneficial as healthy employees are likely to be more productive. As part of your policy for managing sickness absence in your business, you may wish to consider rehabilitation to help with ill health. This article will explain what you, as an employer, need to know about rehabilitation in occupational health in the UK. It will explain what rehabilitation in the workplace is, when you should offer it, and its benefits.

Occupational Health Service

An occupational health service offers tools and methods to help keep your employees safe and healthy whilst at work. It also allows you to manage workplace risks that could result in work-related ill-health. 

Occupational health services can help your business in terms of your employee’s health and safety in different ways, and they can provide preventative measures and measures such as rehabilitation. An occupational health service will comprise of healthcare specialists such as doctors, mental health practitioners, physiotherapists and nurses.

Rehabilitation in Occupational Health

Rehabilitation in occupational health is where you give your employees support to aid them in recovering from poor physical or mental health where they have been absent with it for some time. It can also be a suitable method of retaining your employees in the workplace, preventing the need to take sickness absences from the workplace where they have chronic health conditions. 

Rehabilitation is also termed vocational rehabilitation. It helps you to make changes to enable your employees to carry out their roles and, therefore, function well in your business and return to work sooner than they might have done. It can help:

• improve your employee’s tolerance to activity and their work;
• prevent behaviour relating to their illness;
• ease deconditioning;
• stop chronicity from occurring; and 
• decrease the pain and the effects of their ill health.

Each individual employee will require various types of support depending on their circumstances. Rehabilitation in occupational health can be in the form of a return to work plan and may include:

• programmes to help your employees stay at work once they return;
• advice for you on making workplace adjustments for employees returning to work after sickness absence;
• physiotherapist assessments and treatments;
• occupational therapist assessments and treatments
• reduced hours when returning to work with hours increasing gradually over a few weeks; and
• the support of a therapist when at work to help the return.

Should Your Business Offer Rehabilitation?

Offering rehabilitation in occupational health is not something your business has to offer. However, it is likely to benefit both you and your employees if you do. For example, businesses incur significant costs when employees take long-term sick leave. Thus, by having employees return to work sooner, your business will save money and increase workplace productivity. 

Occupational rehabilitation is ordinarily suitable when your staff have been off work on sickness absence for two weeks or more. However, long-term sick leave can be considered four weeks or more. You may wish to consider rehabilitation in the workplace once your employee provides you with a note stating they are unsuitable for work, such as a fit note. 

Additionally, you should have a workplace policy on rehabilitation that should form part of your policy on managing sickness in the workplace. As with all your workplace policies and procedures, you should communicate this to staff and ensure it is easily accessible. 

What Are the Benefits of Rehabilitation?

Rehabilitation through occupational health is beneficial for your business. It can ensure good productivity and allow you to retain skilled employees in whom you have invested.

Furthermore, they may conduct a job demand analysis that looks at what your employee has to do for their role. This looks at the physical, psychological and cognitive demands and accompanies a transferable skills analysis where an alternative job role may be possible if their previous one is no longer suitable. Rehabilitation can be beneficial as it can:

• reduce business costs by getting your employees on sickness absence back to work sooner;
• aid communication;
• support the process of your employees returning to work;
• monitor the process of your employees returning to work;
• guide how your employees return to work;
• help you implement mandatory reasonable adjustments; and
• identify and resolve issues preventing your employees from returning to work.

Key Takeaways

Whilst you are not legally required to offer rehabilitation in the workplace, it can be beneficial to do so and is well worth considering. Where your employees are suffering from a chronic illness, it can prevent them from taking sickness absence. Also, where your employees are on long-term sickness absence, this can aid their return to work. An occupational health service can provide workplace rehabilitation for you. This can save you from carrying out, for example, a worksite assessment to see what may be required for your employee and can offer physiotherapy treatments. Additionally, an occupational health service can help with adjustments for your employees to return to work, such as suggesting fewer hours when returning to work with a gradual increase later.

If you need help understanding rehabilitation in occupational health in the UK, our experienced employment lawyers can assist as part of our LegalVision membership. For a low monthly fee, you will have unlimited access to lawyers to answer your questions and draft and review your documents for a low monthly fee. So call us today on 0808 196 8584 or visit our membership page.

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