Vocational Rehabilitation - the business case for retaining newly disabled staff

A new report has been published by RNIB that aims to establish the business case for retaining a single employee who develops a long term health condition.

Vocational rehabilitation is described as being whatever helps someone with a health problem to stay at or return to and remain in work. It is an idea or an approach as much as an intervention. Employment retention is the process whereby a newly disabled employee or one with a long-term health condition benefits from an assessment to determine their capacity to work and interventions in or out of the workplace that may be needed to enable them to adapt to their impairment or health condition within the work context.

There are three key recommendations made:

1) Businesses should adopt an employment retention policy in line with current best practice and guidance. RNIB asks that they signal this by signing the employment retention charter and returning this to us so that we can monitor the impact of this
report.

2) The Government should add its own support to the voluntary adoption of the policy of employment retention. Pending a satisfactory evaluation of the “Fit for Work” pilots, the Government should manifest its support through a national vocation rehabilitation programme.

3) The policy of employment retention should be more widely understood and promoted amongst employers and those they employ specialising in human resources.

A pdf copy of the report is attached.