Return to Work
Resources
for Managers

Your Roles 

When you are supporting an employee who is off work, and returning to work from mental ill-health, your roles are, essentially, to  

• Maintain contact with the employee while they are on leave so they feel supported and not ‘forgotten’  
• Work with the employee’s return-to –work co-ordinator, rehabilitation counsellor and injury management team  
• Make adjustments to their work arrangements (also known as job accommodations) to support their health and treatments. For example, you might allow them to adjust their working hours in order to attending medical or counselling appointments.   
• Conduct an assessment of the employee’s work environment to see whether they are any workplace factors (especially related to tasks they perform or people they interact with) which might be contributors to their mental ill-health or potentially jeopardise their RTW  
• Review and adapt RTW arrangements to ensure best fit with employee needs and work requirements  
• Manage communication about the employee’s situation with other people in the workplace  

Understanding Depression and Anxiety

The more you understand about mental ill-health, and depression and anxiety in particular, the more effectively you'll be able to perform these roles.

Understanding Depression

When we think or talk about ‘feeling depressed’, we usually mean feeling low or sad or moody. And that those feelings come and go.

An experience of depression – known specifically as major depression or depressive disorder - is when someone experiences   

• A low mood
• Is not interested in or enjoying things they normally find pleasurable  

AND has been experiencing those feelings

• Nearly every day
• For at least two weeks  

In the graphic below we have detailed some of the common signs, symptoms and impacts of depression. But it’s also important to know that  

• There are several different kinds of depression, and
• They each have different symptoms and impacts.

You can learn more about the different kinds of depression and how people
experience them here:

BeyondBlue | Types of depression

Symptoms, signs and impacts of depression

Thinking

• Feeling overwhelmed 
• Frequently being critical or harsh towards oneself  
• Blaming themselves 
• Feeling worthless  
• Seeing the negative side to everything  
• Thinking nothing good will ever happen    
• Assuming or thinking others see you negatively  
• Difficulties with memory 
• Difficulties with concentration, such as difficulties reading documents, books etc, and difficulties focusing on and processing verbal communication 
• Difficulties with making decisions   
• Feeling guilty about things which are not their fault  
• Thinking about death or suicide 

Feeling

• Sad 
• Anxious 
• Guilt 
• Irritable  
• Anger 
• Mood swings  
• Helpless  
• Hopeless 
• Numb 

Behaviour

• Crying 
• Withdrawing from other people  
• Neglecting responsibilities  
• Less interest and care with personal appearance  
• Difficulties maintaining drive and motivation  
• Difficulties with sleeping, which can include difficulties getting restful sleep, and/ or sleeping too much    
• Losing interest in food, or eating more than usual  
• Using drugs or alcohol , especially to soothe feelings or aid sleep  

Physical

• Tiredness and fatigue  
• Low energy  
• Loss of appetite  
• Weight loss or gain  
• Loss of sexual desire  
• Headaches  
• Stomach or back ache  
• Irregular menstrual cycle  
• Unexplained aches or pains   

Understanding Anxiety

Feeling anxious is a normal and natural response to stressful situations. Anxious feelings usually occur for a particular reason or in response to a specific challenge, and pass once the situation or challenge has ended.

Anxiety is a state in which those anxious feelings

• Don’t go away
• Occur without a specific cause or reason   

Symptoms, signs and impacts of anxiety

Thinking

• Mind racing  
• Mind going blank  
• Difficulties controlling anxious thoughts or worries  
• Difficulties with calming down   
• Difficulties with memory 
• Difficulties with concentration, such as difficulties reading documents, books etc, and difficulties focusing on and processing verbal communication 
• Difficulties making decisions 
• Vivid dreams   
• Thinking a lot about past or future events  

Feeling

• Feeling worried or anxious most of the time  
• Fear  
• Worry  
• Irritability  
• Impatience 
• Anger 
• Nervousness 
• Agitation and feeling on edge  
• Feeling frazzled  
• Feeling tired  

Behaviour

• Avoiding situations  
• Obsessive or compulsive behaviour  
• Feeling distress in social situations  
• Withdrawing from other people  
• Difficulties with sleeping,  
• Using drugs or alcohol , especially to soothe feelings or aid sleep  

Physical

• Increased or rapid heart rate  
• Pounding heart  
• Blushing  
• Rapid/ shallow breathing  
• Shortness of breath  
• Dizziness   
• Headaches 
• Sweating  
• Choking  
• Restless ness  
• Tremors, shaking,  
• Stomach pains, nausea, vomiting, diarrhoea   
• Muscle aches and pains (especially neck, shoulders and back)   

Your Legal Responsibilities  

You also have important roles to play in ensuring that your organisation meets its legal responsibilities and obligations responsibilities related to supporting mental health in the workplace, and supporting people who are experiencing mental ill health (Australian Human Rights Commission 2010). We have summarised them below, and discuss in Topics 2, 3, and 4 how you can ensure that the practices you are using when supporting your employee’s return to work meet these legal obligations.   

Occupational Health and Safety legislation specifies that you need to ensure that your workplace is a safe and healthy environment for everyone, and does not negatively impact people’s physical or mental health by causing ill-health or by aggravating existing health conditions. From January 2023, under the new Model Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial hazards in the workplace, you are also responsible for proactively managing hazards that arise from, or in relation to: 

• The design or management of work 
• The working environment 
• Plant (equipment) at a workplace, or,  
• Workplace interactions or behaviours 

and, may cause psychological harm. We talk more about managing safety risks and hazards in Topic 4.

You can find out more about occupational/workplace health and safety regulations here:

New WHS Regulations 2022

Disability discrimination legislation (such as the Commonwealth Disability Discrimination Act 1992) specifies that you must ensure that people in your workplace who are experiencing mental illness – or have experienced it in the past -   

1. are not harassed or treated in ways that are “reasonably likely to humiliate, offend, intimidate or distress the person”. This could include demeaning comments, physical or verbal threats, or any other actions intended to humiliate someone. It’s important to note that such behaviour could be harassment even if it only occurs once – it does not have to be repeated or ongoing.   
   
2. are not discriminated against either directly or indirectly. Direct discrimination occurs when someone is treated less favourably - or given less access to opportunities or support - than other people because of their health situation. This could include, for example, refusing to employ someone, or ending someone’s employment, because they have, or have previously, had a mental health issue. Indirect discrimination occurs when it is assumed that everyone has the same access to opportunities or capacity to do things, which may not be the case for people experiencing mental ill-health. For example, a shift commencement time of 7am might indirectly discriminate against someone who is taking medication for their mental ill health which makes them groggy and less alert at that time of the morning. Indirect discrimination often results from people being unaware of how a particular policy or practice might influence someone experiencing mental ill-health. 
   
3. Are provided with reasonable adjustments (also known as providing reasonable accommodations) in the workplace. This might include providing someone who is required to work an 8-hour shift with extra break times when required. Or allowing someone who is experiencing anxiety to work part time if this has been requested as an accommodation to support their management, treatment or recovery. We talk more about reasonable adjustments in Topic 4. 
   
4. are not victimised for asserting any rights for themselves or for someone else. This means that as a manager you are responsible for ensuring that treating people are not treated unfavourably, or threatened with unfair treatment, for asserting those rights. It also means you are protected by this legislation if you are asserting rights for your worker.  

You can find more information about disability discrimination here:

Disability discrimination - Tasmania Legal Aid

Privacy legislation (such as the Commonwealth Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) specifies that you cannot provide or disclose information about a worker’s mental health to anyone else unless the worker has consented. This includes, for example, telling anyone else that the worker has a particular mental health issue, how that is affecting them, or that they are receiving treatment for that. Generally speaking, if they provided that information for a specific purpose – such as to have reasonable adjustments made to their work arrangements – then that is the context in which you can use it. But there are exceptions, such as  

• when you need to use that information to “prevent or lessen a serious and imminent threat to the life or health” of that worker or of someone else, or  
• when the information “is required or authorised by law”

You can find more information about legal requirements related to privacy protection and protection of personal information here:

Ombudsman Tasmania

Workers compensation: There are also specific responsibilities and processes that apply if your employee has made a claim for, or is receiving, worker’s compensation related to their depression and/ or anxiety. You can find more information about that here:   

What to do with a workers compensation claim

Support For You

Supporting someone through a return to work from mental ill-health can involve a range of different issues, challenges and experiences. Managers we’ve interviewed have described feeling overwhelmed and a bit lost about how to deal with the process, feeling anxious they might ‘do something wrong’ or ‘make the situation worse’, and feeling uncomfortable with getting involved with an employee’s private business. But they have also described feeling proud of being able to help someone successfully recover and return to work, of dealing successfully with a difficult situation successfully, and of seeing their team rally around their employee. Some also reported being glad they had learned more about the employee’s mental health issue, and being able to be more understanding and empathetic as a result.

So you may find that, when you are supporting an employee through their return to work from mental ill-health, you experience a lot of different things and it’s important that you have support with that. Getting support from professionals who the appropriate skills and knowledge to advise and support you is key, but getting support from people around you is also important. We suggest you think about, and access, two key forms of support:

Support with navigating the return to work process

As we discuss in Topic 4, a lot of managers supporting an employee with mental ill-health, especially through the return to work process, feel pressure to have all the answers or come up with all the solutions for their employee by themselves. But it’s actually really important that you don’t try and solve everything yourself. Accessing information and advice about return to work processes from

• external sources such as Work Safe Tasmania, Safe Work Australia, and ComCare, or
• your organisation’s human resources manager or team means you can draw on more support and creative thinking about options, but also feel less like the responsibility is all on you.

Support with challenges and stressors you may experience

Dealing with mental health issues, in any situation, requires sensitivity and protection of the employee’s privacy. This can mean you may sometimes feel a bit isolated from other supports, especially when you can’t discuss confidential matters with other people in your organisation. So you may find it helpful to get support from:

• Your GP, your counsellor, psychologist or psychiatrist or your organisation’s Employee Assistance Program so you can confidentially debrief about your experiences, discuss any stressors you are encountering and develop strategies to support yourself.
• Support organisations such as BeyondBlue, Sane, The Black Dog Institute.
• Your organisation’s human resources manager or team, so you can get advice about options for supporting your employee and yourself. This could include discussing changes to your own role and responsibilities to give you more time and space to be responsive to your employee’s situation.

It may also be helpful to let people around you, such as your partner, family or other support people, know that you are dealing with a challenging work-related situation. While you can’t discuss the specifics of the situation with other people, letting them know that you are dealing with something potentially stressful provides and opportunity for them to be supportive even if they don’t know the details.

You may also find it helpful to set up some additional self-care strategies for yourself and drawn on strategies which you already know are helpful for you in challenging times.

Finally, it’s important that, if you feel that supporting your employee is starting to impact your mental health, it’s important to be kind to yourself. This is especially important if you find yourself thinking you ‘should be’ stronger, more resilient or ‘better’ able to handle the situation, or your own mental health. These types of thoughts, known as self-stigma, can make people reluctant to let people know they need support, and to get help. But the sooner you get support, the better!

Knowledge Check

References

Material for this section adapted from:

• Kitchener, B. A., Jorm, A. F., & Kelly, C. M. (2017). Mental Health First Aid Manual (4th ed.). Melbourne: Mental Health First Aid Australia.
• Beyond Blue. (n.d.). Depression.
• Beyond Blue. (n.d.). Signs and symptoms of depression.
• Beyond Blue. (n.d.). Anxiety.
• Australian Human Rights Commission. (2010). Workers with mental illness: A practical guide for managers. Australian Human Rights Commission.
• Work Safe Tasmania. (2023). Psychosocial hazards. Retrieved from https://worksafe.tas.gov.au/topics/Health-and-Safety/hazards-and-solutions-a-z/hazards-and-solutions-a-z-pages/p/psychosocial-hazards2.
• Martin, A., Woods, M., & Dawkins, S. (2018). How managers experience situations involving employee mental ill-health. International Journal of Workplace Health Management, 11(6), 422–463.
• Martin, A., Woods, M., & Dawkins, S. (2015). Managing employees with mental health issues: Identification of conceptual and procedural knowledge for development within management education curricula. Academy of Management Learning & Education, 14(1), 50–68.