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Posted By andrew bryan
Hello all,
Please can you advise me, We have currently several members of WH staff who are on "Light duties" as identified from their own doctors medical advice. The issue we have is that there are not any "Light duty" jobs available in the WH (We mainly move boxes on short distances around the WH for example from a roller conveyor system to a pallet)Has anyone any advice on how we can provide the workforce with a safe working environment and also keep senior management happy (Impossible I know)as they are complaining about doctors signing them back to work for light duties.
Rgds
Andrew
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Posted By MT
Do you have access to an occupational health service? They would be in a far better to assess the person's abilities in relation to their actual job and tasks.
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Posted By Mitch
Rightly or wrongly, probably wrongly as someone will shortly point out we have no "light duties" so we refuse to accept employees back until full fit.
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Posted By Pete Longworth
Assuming that you have done everything reasonably practicable to minimise the amount of manual handling in the warehouse then I would say your alternatives are:
Investigate the possibility of relocating the employees affected to other areas of your organisation where more suitable work may be available eg clerical or administrative areas.
Or inform the employees that there is no suitable work available and therefore they cannot return to work until they are passed as fit for normal duties.
Ultimately your HR dept may have to consider whether their contract has been frustrated but that would be a last resort and your company would have to show that they have explored every possibility before they arrive at that point.
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Posted By William O'Donnell
With the Governments plans to have GP's give notes detailing what work can be carried out, rather than sickness absence notes, do you think this will make the problem better, or worse?
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Posted By Mitch
Worse, how can a Doctor possibly have the knowledge required to judge what any one individual is capable of in any job?
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Posted By Glyn Atkinson
Specialists can be worse than doctors - we had to have one of our machinists given a thorough eye sight test amongst other parts of a medical to return to work.
He stated that he was a full time VDU user, not the guy who has to clean, adjust and line up the loading of his very large table saw, with the assistance of a labourer at all times.
After we got the results of the medical and his eyesight pooved to be a problem for safe working, we video'd the work being done, but the specialist refused to change his viewpoint as he could only go on given information from "his client".
Actually, we were the client who was paying for the consultation in the first place, but he dealt with the person as the client instead.
So we now have a guy who cannot see properly doing permanent light duty work with full time extra assistance that no one else would get from the result of a specialist's advice done from wrong information submitted at the time of examination.
Very annoying when you are only trying to prevent the guy from hurting himself by being at work.
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Posted By Caroline Whittaker
I am always very disappointed when a doctor puts "light duties" as there is no such thing. Med 3 sick notes are advisory only. Managers require explicit advice about what the employee can or can't do. It is always difficult to advise not knowing the "medical" condition however, may I suggest that you review the risk assessment and then write back to the GP providing him/her with further information from it and clarification about the exact task that the employee is doing. This will demonstrate how you are supporting the employee ie Trolley to move pallet; Will not be lifting above shoulder height etc.
At the end of your letter put "hope this is helpful and if I don't hear from you then I take it you are happy with the arrangements that I have made to support Mr......to undertake his job". This has worked well for me.
You could call it a rehabilitation programme so the employee and GP feel a sense of ownership and with all of these programmes there needs to be a clear start and finish date. I take it you haven't an Occupational Health department to support you?
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Posted By andrew bryan
All,
Thank you for all of your advice, Doctors have a lot to answer for. It sounds like this is a common practice for a Doctor to sign someone to "Light duties" while I sympathies wholly with someone who is genuinely suffering from a MSD related injury and cannot afford to be away from work "Light Duties" is a reasonable short term option, I can't help feel that certain people would complain to a doctor regarding a MSD injury just because they know the doctor will sign them to "Light Duties" without any knowledge or their working environment.
Many Thanks
Andrew
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