In September 2010 we surveyed the readers of Return to Work Matters to gauge whether we were doing the best possible job helping to make your work easier and more effective.

Thanks to readers, we got a clearer idea of what we were doing well and what could be improved.

This information shaped our content development and gave us confidence content remained relevant to our readers.

After the last survey, we introduced regular webinar and video interviews. We followed your suggestions for a topic to focus on each month. We also increased the number of practical and easy to digest articles - for the time poor RTW Jugglers. A range of time saving tools were also introduced.

This time around

Fast-forward to 2012 and we are pleased to let you know the results of our second Return to Work Matters reader survey.

Asking similar questions as the initial survey (so we could compare our current readership base with the previous group) we quizzed past and present readers for feedback on:

• Their responsibilities/role in the workplace;
• What they struggle to deal with in their roles;
• The sections of the site that are most useful to them; and
• What we are doing right (or not) and ideas for further enriching the site.

So what’s changed in two years?

For one: the sample size. The number of respondents grew from 111 in the first survey to 231 this time around. This is due to a growth in our membership numbers, and perhaps the allure of an iPad 2 for a lucky randomly-selected participant.

Who are you?

‘Jugglers’ were no longer our largest survey group. These people are the RTW coordinators with other roles, who previously made up one-third of our survey participants. In this recent survey, jugglers now account for only 9 per cent of all participants.

Claims/case managers now account for the largest respondent group, at 22 per cent of the total sample. Other larger groups represented included: injury managers (14 per cent), RTW coordinators (13 per cent), and rehabilitation consultants (12 per cent).

The largest industry demographic remains the government sector (16 per cent), followed by financial & insurance (13 per cent), manufacturing (8 per cent) & allied health (8 per cent). Twenty-two per cent of respondents identified as ‘other’, who can largely be attributed to government or insurance. There was also a notable increase in respondents from the aged care industry.

Question time: Number one problem

The first question we asked was:

“What’s the biggest problem in your role that you don’t know how to deal with?

While problems with the employer are still common, they are no longer the number one issue. Issues with the treater/doctor, and the injured employee/claimant themselves have risen as the number one concern. We think this can be attributed to the increase in case/claims managers in our readership.

Other issues

We also asked you to:

“List 2-3 other problems you regularly come up against that make you less effective in your role.”

Some of these included:

• Workers failing to recognise their role in RTW;
• Worker non-compliance, or reluctance to return to pre-injury duties or new role;
• Employer misunderstanding of the value of RTW;
• Lack of employer support for RTW and RTW coordinators;
• Overwhelming nature of admin roles;
• Working within an ‘adversarial’ system;
• Relationship between claims manager and RTW coordinator;
• Doctor’s reluctance to promote return to work;
• Communication between all parties.

RTWM hits

The most popular sections of our site remain the same, with practical articles rating highly. These were followed by feature and research articles.

Members are still most likely to view our content through the newsletter - 84 per cent of respondents use our site this way. People still preferred browsing our site for content (41 per cent) than using the site’s search function (24 per cent).

TIP:
The newsletter is a great way to keep an eye on fresh news and articles.

We encourage you to take one step further and use the search function or “topics” page to find information on the topic of the month or anything else you need answers for. This is a ‘one-stop’ way to find all of our content on a subject.

Feedback

We received some amazing feedback and compliments on our resource, as well as valuable information on the numerous ways you use the site to help you in your role. This is what makes it all worthwhile for us. It was a delight to hear that our information is hitting the spot.

Thanks to the feedback, we’ll soon publish RTW Matters members’ tips on how they make the most of the Return to Work Matters website.

Looking to the future:

We’ve had some great suggestions from readers, including requests for a comments or interactive aspect to our site. As a result, we’ll soon be adding a page called “Your input”, where you can make comments, suggestions for content, and share your tips with other members.

This will extend the valuable dialogue that’s opened up through the reader surveys. All going well with this, we’ll look to add more features to enhance the community interaction between our members.

There was also significant interest in the self-assessment tools and in-person training sessions run by Dr Mary Wyatt. We can now confirm that you’ll have the opportunity in the coming months to access these new services. Stay tuned for announcements.