Why Every Business Should Know About Vocational Rehabilitation

A Closer Look at Vocational Rehabilitation and Employee Benefits

Research has shown that providing early support to an absent employee can have a significant positive impact on their health and ability to return to work.

By notifying an insurer’s vocational rehabilitation service early on in an employee’s absence, it enables the service to identify ways to improve their health and wellbeing. This could include helping the individual employee access NHS or funded treatments and general support to get them back to work.

Chris Morgan
Chief Marketing Officer at Ellipse

Vocational rehabilitation is a programme of support, guidance, advice and treatment which has the sole aim of helping the employee back into the workplace. It can help employees recover from all sorts of injuries, illnesses and conditions by giving them access to a range of medical experts.

These experts can support those who are absent from work due to illness and help them back to work in a safe and structured way. The programme itself is unique to each individual employee, as each employee’s circumstances will be different.

How Do They Work Together?

The objective of early intervention and vocational rehabilitation is to identify and work with absent employees who would benefit from support and treatment as early as possible, to help them recover and return successfully to the workplace.

An Example of How it Can Work

Jim had been absent from work for 3 weeks due to stress. He was referred via his insurer Ellipse to a vocational rehabilitation service. He was contacted by a specialist and an initial assessment was conducted whereby the bigger picture was assessed, and not just Jim’s reported symptoms. The key factor this highlighted was Jim’s reported inability to deal with pressure, which lead to his absence.

Based on the triage assessment, Jim was a strong candidate to undergo a short course of Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT). This was aimed at helping him understand the difficulties he was experiencing in more depth and to provide techniques to help him in pressurised situations.

After three weeks Jim felt ready to look at return to work options and a return to work forum was arranged to include Jim, his employer and the vocational rehabilitation specialist. It was agreed that a graduated return to work programme would slowly increase Jim’s hours over the course of three weeks. After which point – all being well – he would resume his full hours and duties.

Having first returned to work on a reduced hours basis after six weeks of absence, Jim subsequently returned to work on his full hours and duties after a total of nine weeks absent from work.

Vocational Rehabilitation in a Nutshell…

Employers need to consider how they would deal with a prolonged absence in the workplace and the support services they need to help the business and individual at this time.

Every employer should therefore consider the value of vocational rehabilitation, provided alongside a Group Income Protection policy, to offer immediate medical and practical support to help the employee make a speedy and successful recovery.

Not only does this benefit the employee, but the employer benefits too because the financial and practical impact on the business that can arise from employee absence is mitigated.