Injury and illness management
Injury and illness management starts before your organisation employs someone. It begins with recruitment.
Schools must report, record, and investigate all incidents accurately and promptly and identify trends to their health and safety representative and WorkSafe where appropriate.
Near misses with potential outcomes of serious injuries and illnesses are reported to their health and safety representative and WorkSafe.
These are investigated, and corrective actions are taken.
Keep reading to learn more.
What are your board’s responsibilities?
- Notify all notifiable illnesses, injuries, or events to WorkSafe New Zealand.
- Monitor workers’ health and workplace conditions to prevent illness or injury.
- Support injured or unwell staff as a good, fair, and reasonable employer.
“We do not make people better in order to get them back to work; we get people back to work in order to make them better.”
– Richard Pimentel, Return to Work expert based in the US.
How should illness and injury be managed in the workplace?
Having documentation provides transparency.
It serves as a framework for all your employee and employer responsibilities, for your injury and illness management activity, and indicates to your staff that this is a process you take seriously.
The policy document is a “refer to” document when employees or employers are uncertain of their responsibilities and aids with the consistency of process application – it sets clear expectations.
- Procedures – ensure everyone knows the game plan and that it is clear.
- Consistency – do it the same every time so everyone knows what to expect.
- Subject Matter Expert – some workplaces have a Return to Work (RTW) coordinator (one point of contact), and some have managers or supervisors managing the RTW. Both have advantages, so do what is best for you, but ensure you set people up to succeed. Both have a person who manages injury and illness management, and both have someone as a point of contact for managers to go to for support.
- Roles and responsibilities – decide who does what and when and stick to it. Make sure everyone is clear on what they must do.
- Monitor and review – keep an eye on workers as they return and learn from experience.
Questions your board could ask
- Does our board have assurance that all incidents and any trends are reported, recorded, and investigated promptly and accurately?
- Are near misses with potential outcomes of serious injuries and illnesses reported to the health and safety representative and WorkSafe?
- Are there clear policies on how illness and injury are managed in the workplace?
- How do we monitor and review injury and illness management?
Templates, resources, and references
Click on the link(s) below to access the templates, resources, and references related to this topic.
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Ministry of Education
- Health and Safety responsibilities for schoolsopen_in_new
- Respond at school to an emergency or traumatic incidentopen_in_new
ACC resources
- What to do when an employee is injuredopen_in_new
- Income for your employee while they recoveropen_in_new
- MyACC for Business (Manage your business account online)open_in_new
- Preventing injuryopen_in_new