It takes someone pretty special to catch the eye and keep the attention of a jaded superhero like myself. However, there’s a researcher in the US, one Dr Bill Shaw, who has managed to do just that. His special charm? He brings a practical perspective to bear on the management of work injuries. Practical perspective—Ah, the words are music to my super-ears!

My favourite study of Bill’s compares the expectations workers have about their supervisor’s role in managing a workplace injury with the supervisor’s own understanding of his or her responsibilities.

There is a huge discrepancy.

While workers expect supervisors to be responsive, show empathy and concern for their welfare, accommodate them with meaningful modified duties, act as an interface between the workplace and medical care, communicate with all relevant parties, involve injured workers in shared decision making and obtain co-worker support, supervisors’ expectations about their role are quite different.

Supervisors perceive their RTW role to consist primarily of completing the injury report, assessing the validity of the claim and protecting the company. Right down the bottom of their list of important activities are communicating with the worker and including the worker in the process.

Given such mismatched expectations, the one thing you can count on is that things will go wrong between workers and supervisors.  And when they do—as I’m sure you’re all aware—boy, do they ever.

Some companies try to help by transferring the responsibility for managing return to work elsewhere. Big organisations often have a case manager or coordinator whose primary role is to coordinate the injury management process.  Unfortunately, regardless of who is officially responsible, the primary RTW relationship is always between the worker and their supervisor. Attempts to diminish the importance of this relationship result in vital knowledge being lost: knowledge about the job, the personality traits of the worker and the history of the situation. 

It’s not only the worker who suffers the consequence of this; the supervisor is also left struggling with modified duties, trying to accommodate the worker and yet maintain productivity.

As Bill Shaw points out, there is a simple, yet under-utilised way to remedy this situation: up-skill your supervisors.

The key issue is to help supervisors learn how to listen to the worker and have the worker understand that they’re concerned about their needs. Teaching supervisors how to support, reassure and maintain contact with injured workers is not difficult. As an added bonus, when supervisors are trained in these issues they’re more satisfied and have better outcomes. 

Teaching supervisors some basic ergonomics is another RTW super solution. Ergonomics training helps them deal proactively with situations and reduces lost time injuries and long-term work disability. The training only takes a couple of hours and can be undertaken by someone with a modest level of understanding of the issues and experience in training.

Bringing supervisor and worker expectations into line, activates the power of partnerships. Don’t let a supervisor skill deficit derail RTW. Learn from Bill: we all can!