“If we do a good job preventing workplace injuries, we can spend less time on the work of returning injured workers to the workplace,” said Gina Vahlas, prevention field services manager with WorkSafeBC, during the Workplace Injury Virtual Summit on Jan. 30.

The event, presented by Talent Canada and OHS Canada, drew more than 500 attendees from across the country to explore practical strategies for preventing workplace injuries and supporting injured workers during their recovery and return to work.

The workplace as a system

During her talk, Vahlas explained that the workplace is a system where three different elements interact: facilities, equipment and the environment; the organization; and people. Human factors (sometimes referred to as ‘ergonomics’) is a discipline that seeks to understand how humans interact with other elements in the system to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

“What we find is that by optimizing both human and organizational performance, we have an improvement in performance and quality, as well as a reduction in injuries, so it truly is a win-win process,” Vahlas said.

She stressed that management commitment and worker participation are key elements needed to optimize human well-being and overall system performance.

Recovery-at-work and return-to-work

Even in the most safety-oriented systems, workers will occasionally get hurt. When it comes to recovery-at-work and return-to-work programs for injured employees, Shelagh Robinson believes there are two major components that employers must plan for: the operational aspect and the mental health aspect.

“If we address the operational demands that come from a workplace injury and we discuss the mental health of the worker, we’ll be in a far better position to support that worker and the business as a whole,” said Robinson, owner of IMS Group.

Throughout the recovery-at-work or return-to-work process, communication is essential to ensure the injured employee, their supervisor and other leaders share common expectations around duties, workload and roles and responsibilities. Just as important? What you’re communicating to other workers through your words and actions.

“Every worker is watching us and how we handle the workplace injury, but more importantly, how we treat that injured worker, how we talk, what we say, and how we demonstrate concern are in full view,” Robinson explained.

Understanding the demands of the job

Nicole Gorman, Sysco’s director of environmental health and safety for Eastern Canada, advocated for pairing functional assessments with physical demands analysis, sometimes referred to as job demands analysis, to determine what a role physically demands of an employee.

“This provides a quantitative review of how the human body interacts with the work they are doing. It will tell you, on average, how much time an employee spends in their shift lifting, pulling, pushing, and what weights the employee is exposed to on a frequent and an occasional basis. This analysis sets the standard for what the treatment of an injured worker should achieve to return them to full duties.”

Gorman said sharing this analysis also helps an employee’s healthcare provider understand what their job entails, taking some of the guesswork out of the recovery process and allowing for a timelier return to work.

“In my experience, I’ve seen workers come back to their full duties quicker and in better condition because they received targeted treatment to their position,” Gorman noted.

The employer’s duty to accommodate

“Ultimately, the core responsibility that employers have is to provide reasonable accommodations up to the point of undue hardship, and that’s a very contextual thing both in terms of what would be reasonable in the circumstances and what things the employer doesn’t need to do because they constitute undue hardship,” said Mark Wolfe, an associate with Hyde HR Law.

More broadly, this duty has two key components. One is procedural: considering an accommodation request in good faith, seeking medical information when necessary to determine an employee’s limitations, and weighing all the opportunities to accommodate the worker. The other component is substantive – offering the employee reasonable accommodations up to the point of undue hardship.

Wolfe stressed that there’s no single definition of undue hardship. “An employer can be required to do things that create some operational challenges or disruptions and have some costs, but there’s a line, and it’s a line drawing exercise that needs to be done on a case-by-case basis.”

One of the most common mistakes Wolfe sees, from both employees and their employers, is delay in moving through the accommodation process. “One of the components of reasonably accommodating a worker is doing it in a prompt fashion,” he notes.

On the employer side, another common mistake is seeking medical information above and beyond that which is required to determine the employee’s limitations, if the employee is receiving treatment, the anticipated duration of that treatment, and whether the employee can safely perform the essential duties of their job.

Sometimes the answer to that final question is ‘no’, which raises new questions about accommodating the injured worker.

“Do we have to think within the confines of their job description, or can we be more creative and find something else to do, whether it’s filing paperwork or doing something else that’s outside of the regular job scopes,” said Melissa Manion, director of sales and customer success with Medcor Canada.

Employees, too, can be unsure about how they can be accommodated. “Workers don’t always know what their accommodations are and what might be available after they seek care, so they just follow what the doctors say and right now, especially in our healthcare system, we’re seeing a lot of doctors saying ‘here, just take some time off and get better.’”

To help keep injured employees at work, Manion recommends sitting down with them to review their functional limitations and agree on modified work together, then reconvening later to review the modified arrangements as the employee’s condition – and their health care provider’s recommendations – change over time.

The injured employee’s perspective

This process is a familiar one to keynote presenter Dan MacQueen. When a hemorrhage in his brain left him unable to walk or talk at age 28, MacQueen worked closely with his rehabilitation team and his employer at the time, Hootsuite, to create a phased-in return-to-work process.

“When I came back to work, my occupational therapist worked directly with Hootsuite HR to ramp up back at work,” MacQueen explains. He started working two half days per week, gradually building to up to four half days per week before transitioning into full days. “We capped it at four full days; I needed a fifth day to kind of re-charge the batteries. Fatigue is a big issue with the brain.”

Hootsuite created an environment where MacQueen felt comfortable asking for the accommodations he required to succeed in both his role and his recovery. But, MacQueen notes, the company began offering support well before his return-to-work was imminent.

“I had friends at work telling me ‘You’ve got a spot here, D. Come back when you’re ready; don’t rush,’” he said, noting this gave him a goal to pursue during the early stages of his recovery. “I had a job to go back to, a life to press play on. That made all the difference to me when I was in the dumps in the hospital.”

Bill Howatt, founder of Howatt HR Consulting, holds advanced degrees in counselling psychology and organizational psychology. He agreed that maintaining connections with employees during their recovery is important.

“When someone goes off work, one of the big things is being mindful that they’re still human beings,” Howatt said. “Loneliness is a factor.”

He also stressed that recovery is a very personal thing. “I think what people sometimes forget is the fallibility that your mind and your body are very connected.”

Howatt gave the example of an individual who suffers a back injury and, because of their injury, experiences more stress in their life. The stress can cause physical tension, shortening their back and producing further strain in the injured area.

“I think what people sometimes forget is that your mind and your body are very, very connected,” Howatt added.

The Workplace Injury Virtual Summit was made possible through the generous support of Gold Sponsors Sun Life and Medcor, and Bronze Sponsor the Canadian College for the Certification of Professional Ergonomists.

Missed the Workplace Injury Virtual Summit? Catch the sessions on demand at https://www.ohscanada.com/virtual-events/workplace-injury-summit/.