Sickness Absence Management
Reduce employee absence and presenteeism in the workplace with early assessments and work focused reporting to identify and tackle any barriers for a return to work.
Healthy, productive employees are a company’s most valuable asset. Ill health and sickness absence can have a damaging knock on effect within your organisation, causing a loss of working hours, productivity, sick pay, temporary cover and staff turnover costs. Our occupational health management team can handle your employee absence, provide quick access to treatment, deliver return to work care and support businesses to perform at their optimum.
From stress to musculoskeletal pain, most work-related ill health conditions can be effectively managed using our in house, qualified healthcare practitioners.
In the UK, an estimated 118.6 million working days were lost due to sickness absence in 2020. Ill health absence is a major cost, accounting for around 2-16% of payroll.
Managing sickness absence with Occupational Health referrals
Encouraging employee attendance at work comes with the internal structure, procedures and occupational health support. Taking care of your employee’s health both physically and mentally will have a huge impact on your business and its success. Response Occupational Health supports clients with the management of employee absence by providing the right support at the right time. We perform timely assessments and detailed reports that provide clear, meaningful and actionable advice to employees, line managers and business owners.
Management referrals to our service are triaged to our OH healthcare team. We provide solution focused, clear, concise and evidence-based support to help employees return to work or remain at work.
How our sickness absence management service works
When a member of staff reports they are unable to perform their job role due to illness or injury, we can provide early access to expert advice and in most cases, treatment for their condition. NHS waiting times and appointment availability is an ongoing issue in today’s world; our readily available services will help your employee return to health, and to work, as quickly and realistically as possible.
We can also help to improve your health & wellbeing strategy and management as a preventative measure for absence, which may involve adapting internal procedures, adapted work duties, training, health surveillance, mental health support and ergonomic services.
Return to work support
By the use of adapted work duties and support, we can create a tailored return to work plan that allows the individual to return to work with realistic work duties they can manage. We often find that employees are only restricted from performing part of their job role e.g., driving, lifting or sustained walking, but under a GP assessment this is classed as total absence from the workplace.
Using functional assessments and not pain-based assessments, we can provide feedback and recommendations that line managers can understand and use to resource plan e.g., sitting tolerance, standing tolerance, lifting capabilities and ability to work high and low. The line manager can then be actively involved in setting adapted duties, to ensure operational targets are met.
How can sickness absence management affect my business?
- Lower costs - Absence management reduces the significant losses caused by the cost of Statutory sick pay, occupational sick pay, overtime, temporary work cover and staff turnover.
- Higher productivity - Staff who call in sick or turn up to work ill and don’t concentrate, impact workforce productivity. Effective management leads to higher work output, less delays in projects and more consistency within teams.
- Positive morale - Staff will often have to cover for absent colleagues causing their workload to increase leading to a morale drop. Effective sickness management will make staff feel appreciated and cared for.
- Less mistakes - If staff are having to do more work, or are turning up to work ill, it can lead to mistakes in work or production - which can not only be dangerous but jeopardise client relationships.
What is the process for managing sickness absences?
Once a line manager or HR professional completes a referral via our portal, our support team will ensure your employee reaches the ‘Right Clinician, First Time’. Your employee will be assessed by one of our specialist occupational health physiotherapists who has completed specialist training and will provide advice and recommendations to your business. We do not complete non-added value assessments to only triage an employee to another healthcare professional.
Virtual / Telephone
Remote consultations can be delivered by an experienced occupational health specialist at a time that suits the employee. You can talk with the clinician over the telephone, or via video link which allows you to complete some physical assessments by the camera.
For musculoskeletal conditions, approximately 40% can be managed remotely with expert advice and the prescription of appropriate exercises. Your clinician will talk you through each exercise and you will be sent a tailored programme with instructional videos showing you how to complete each one correctly.
Onsite
If you can provide the room, we can provide onsite appointments at your location. Our face-to-face clinics provide your employees’ with rapid access to occupational assessment and treatment.
For high reports of musculoskeletal conditions, our onsite physiotherapist can visit areas of your business where work related issues have been reported, such as computer workstations, production lines and storerooms. Onsite visits are more convenient to staff who are discouraged by attending and travelling to appointments off-site.
Network of clinics
We have a national network of state-of-the-art physiotherapy clinics located within David Lloyd health clubs and other private clinics that can provide face-to-face assessment and treatment for musculoskeletal issues.
Our specialist occupational health physiotherapists can assess your symptoms and physical ability to carry out tasks similar to that of your normal job role. This functional testing allows us to see what areas we need to rehabilitate to resolve the problem and how to support the return to work.
Training
Training and education should form a significant part of your company’s physical and mental wellbeing strategy. We deliver targeted training to prevent and reduce the number of injured and absent employees with reported injuries sustained at work.
We provide tailored training sessions in manual handling, back care, musculoskeletal injury management and how to keep yourself fit for the future. All sessions are delivered onsite or remotely by expert physiotherapists who will be on hand to answer questions.
How sickness absence management services can save your business money
At Response Occupational Health, we can provide regular cost benefit analysis to your business as evidence to the success of your occupational health strategies. We work with clients to provide bespoke reporting, including evidence of clinical and non-clinical outcomes. For instance, we can show you the percentage of employees returned to full work duties after a period of absence. Using this data, businesses can focus their management of sickness absence in a more informed way and optimise their operational staffing.
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What our customers say
A great partner to have for all of our Occupational Health needs. They are very efficient in dealing with any of our queries and we have built up an excellent rapport. I am excited to see what the future holds for our continued partnership.
Haidee Bentham-HR Adviser FUJIFILM Diosynth Biotechnologies
Our clients
Get in touch
If you would like to enquire about any of our services or receive a no obligation quote, please get in touch with our team