Return to Work
Resources
for Managers

Welcome

This set of online resources has been developed to help you develop your knowledge, skills, and confidence about supporting an employee to return to work safely and successfully after time off to deal with depression and/ or anxiety.

They were written by Dr Megan Woods and Dr Kelly Broughton (with help from Dr Michael Quinn) and digitally created by Mr Mark Thompson at the University of Tasmania, with funding from the WorkCover Board Tasmania.

Contents

These resources will help you understand, and work through, the processes and stages of developing a formal return to work plan, which we guide you through by exploring Topics 1 to 6.

But they can also be used to informally support works who need support with mental ill-health

In Topic 6 you can apply what you have learned about return-to-work to develop a draft return to work plan. You can develop one for your employee, you own job, or you can use one of the 4 fictional case studies of return-to-work situations that we have provided. Each situation features people with different mental health situations, support needs and job requirements. So you might find it useful to review them and see what ideas they might give you about the support someone could find beneficial.

To create a resource that is relevant and useful to you, we have interviewed Tasmanians with lived experience of returning to work after managing anxiety and depression.

We've included their examples and quotes through the resources to show you the different ways people approach returning to work. We've made sure these resources address the issues and challenges they said were important for supporting a safe and successful return to work. We've also used insights from workers, mental health professionals and other researchers, to make sure the help we've provided is the best it can be.

Throughout these pages, we've also provided additional information, resources and activities you can use to deepen your knowledge, and to access extra support for yourself and your worker when supporting a return-to-work process.

You may also like to review the complementary Return To Work Resources for Workers for additional information, and so you can use them yourself if you ever need to.