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We provide independent specialist advice that will help you understand how health may be affecting your employee’s performance or capacity to attend work.
Referring your employee to Occupational Health Desk is easy. We provide telehealth assessments throughout NZ. No matter how small or large your organisation, we can assist.
Why should I seek health advice?
- Duty of Care – manage risk associated with ill health
- Ethical responsibility – because you care about your workforce
- The bottom line – employee ill-health or absence is costly – affecting organisational productivity, workforce morale and turnover. Non work-related illness is responsible for 3-4 times more absence than injury.
Dr Mike Causer
Occupational Medicine Specialist
With over 25 years of experience in workplace health both in New Zealand and overseas, Mike has set up Occupational Health Desk to fill a gap – providing easily accessible health advice for managers. He leads a small team of occupational health nurses, each bringing their own skills and knowledge from many years of providing advice to NZ workplaces. Outside of work, Mike tries to keep fit, takes on too many landscaping projects and is still working on his backhand.
Our Services
Intervention service for short or long-term absence/ performance issues due to injury or illness. Advice is provided on the reasons why an employee is unable to work normally, whether there is an underlying reason for short-term absence, timeframes and what you can do to help employees back to work. Facilitates early intervention, expectation setting and workplace planning.
Benefits:
- reduces HR and manager burden of day to day management of sickness absence.
- communication between health providers and the workplace is established, which is one of the most successful methods of achieving good outcomes
- shows the employee that you care and support their recovery
- helps establish a workplace culture where absence is taken seriously
- assists with risk management
- provides information to help guide employment decisions
Employee with health issues? Concerned about risk? Wish you could speak to an expert? We provide a range of solutions including:
- Initial advice on what medical certification means for the employee’s ability to work and to help you identify if you should seek further medical advice.
- Review of concerns and advice relating to an employee’s health issues/ absence/ performance.
It can be very frustrating and challenging for a business to have employees absent, without knowing why or when/if they will return. We can interpret the ACC process, helping you and your employee understand the process. Our team help navigate complex scenarios by identifying what issues and barriers are present, formulating a management plan to support a return to work in conjunction with their ACC case manager where there is one, and provide you with information to help guide your decision-making and risk process. We can sign post and facilitate access to ACC funded care where cover and entitlement are appropriate.
Remote monitoring of how an employee is coping with a graduated return to work e.g. following a cardiac event, surgery, or prolonged absence. We can provide advice to the employee and their manager on progress, and troubleshoot.
We can provide advice to employees and managers on workplace hazards as they relate to pregnant or lactating workers.
Help support your disabled workers by ensuring you have advice to enable them to perform their role effectively and safely.
Our team will contact your employee who has identified that they are struggling with their wellbeing e.g. mental health difficulties (either work or non-work related), stress, physical problems or sleep issues.
This can be a useful service following identification of mental health concerns at pre-employment, or where an employee has disclosed that they are struggling. We can check how they are coping with their work, whether they are receiving effective treatment, if they are improving, whether alternative treatment is indicated (we can signpost them to this or refer where required), and of course we can help managers understand any assistance they could provide.
Useful to help embed new employees sustainably into your workplace, to provide confidence and support for managers supporting workers with mental health concerns, and helps manage/ reassure regarding any associated risk.
Not sure if your employees require or would benefit from immunisation over and above the NZ schedule? We can advise on policy or individual cases.
For cases where workplace stress has been raised as an issue, and the way forward is unclear. Our team will interview your employee, help them identify what the stressors are and provide a report for management. We provide a template for a further discussion between the manager and employee. In our experience this can help where communication has stalled.
We can assist with systems to improve management of workforce health. A light consulting engagement can be very effective.