Victoria Harris is an enthusiastic Injury Management Advisor at Energy Queensland (EQ). EQ employs over 9200 people with a diverse range of work including 24-hour shift rosters, emergency response, extended work away, projects and planned after hours work.
The geographic distribution of work can create challenges for injury management and the COVID-19 pandemic brought substantial changes to policies, procedures and standards in place. Victoria was able to quickly adapt and move to consulting with injured employees over video conferencing, without disrupting the injury management and return to work processes.
Victoria strongly believes that active and early intervention is the key to improving injury management strategies and involving injured workers in the process gives them input into their return to work plan.
She takes a dedicated and personal approach to managing EQ’s rehabilitation and return to work by:
- engaging with regional staff to make sure local concerns or challenges are acted on
- weekly meetings with injury management advisors to understand workload, but also the impact of cases on individual advisors
- communicating updates to area managers and actively involving managers in planning and providing support to injured workers.
These rehabilitation and return to work efforts have resulted in a reduction in Energy Queensland’s workers’ compensation premiums and its return to work rate continuously sitting above 90 per cent.
