Alistair Jackson

Category nine – Best individual contribution to rehabilitation and return to work

In May 2017 Alistair stepped into a national injury management role that had long been outsourced by the company and poorly managed by the third party. This had included all incident reporting, triaging and ongoing return to work and case management.

The role covers 105 stores across all states and territories. There was no existing return to work processes, resources or infrastructure available to managers or staff and the company was going through internal upheaval.

Alistair started a wide-ranging project of culture change, education and process improvement. His priorities were to address the large number of open cases (many of which were complex, long-term claims) and to develop open, consistent, communication with a strong focus on caring for the staff.

He developed and implemented a return to work process that brought caring for staff back into the control of line managers. We worked with managers individually and through education programs.

The benefits have been:

• average first return to work days dropped from 8.3 to 4
• stay at work increased from 45.71 per cent to 63.33 per cent
• final return to work increased from 95 per cent to 100 per cent
• average paid days (statutory) decreased from 17.29 (above industry average) to 7.94 (below industry average).

Alistair Jackson - The Good Guys