Has Anyone Asked?

You can step into any medium to large-sized office in Western society and find a wide variety of personalities working there. The language may be different, but you're still bound to find the introvert who desperately tries to build a little exclusion barrier around themselves — especially from the office clown who has already sent the IT guys into fits of laughter by 9am. Norris down the hall has already ensured that there is enough coffee and biscuits in for the boardroom for a meeting about his project, which will really help him step into the limelight and finally get that promotion he's been looking for. And no matter what the weather is like outside, Jill is always the last one rushing through the door with excuses of buses running late.

The office cooler is as busy as always... In fact, that's where this story starts. In her hurry to get to her desk, Jill hasn't noticed the puddle made by an absent-minded employee and, before she knows it, is sprawled across the floor in a crumpled heap.

Norris gasps! No! He needed Jill to help him with the presentation this afternoon — she was going to be a key team member in his project! She can't be hurt...

HR arrives — "Jill, you need to tell us what happened so we have a record". "Does anyone know who spilled the water?" Jill remains dazed and, having just clambered up off the floor.

Eventually, someone realises they need to help Jill up and get her to the company doctor — he'll be able to reassure her that she's fine and will be back in a day or two...

But two weeks went past and Jill hasn't returned. The office water cooler is now a place to discuss why she isn't back yet...

Not that anyone has asked.

"Of course, she never liked working here... that's why she was always late. I bet she's just holding out for a compo". Norris is seething — he trusted Jill to be there for him when he needed her — and now he has her number — some co-coworker she is. At least he feels better now about speaking up to the management to tell them her heart wasn't in it anyway. They haven't asked Jill if there were any issues with her being involved in the project.

Of course, had anyone even bothered to speak to Jill or her husband directly, they would have found that problems are a lot deeper than that. But no one asked.

For Jill, there could have been a number of underlying scenarios. She may have already had some issues with a bad back since having her last child (but hadn't told the boss in case he thought her special demands for an ergonomic chair were over the top) and this injury has made things much worse. Maybe she was always rushing in late because she had to tend to her elderly mother every morning before work and now that she can no longer look after her, is feeling quite low, thinking she may have to go into a nursing home after all.

But has anyone asked?

Jill used to enjoy Sundays. That was her time when she could get away and have some 'me' time. An hour at the gym, meeting the girls for lunch and a bit of window shopping. Things that Jill now only dreams of — even if she had the energy or the pain-free time to enjoy them, she's not sure if she could pick up her mood to do so. From what little interaction she's had with HR since the incident, she has picked up that everyone thinks she has let them down. She knows she's been ousted from the project and will never be recognised as the one who did  the most research for it, not Norris! She remembers what it was like when Mike had to take some time off after a bout of depression — how that water cooler bubbled then with gossip (and ahamedly she remembers how she put her two cents' worth in as well).

The doctor keeps telling her she will get better after a few more painkillers and some more time off. But Jill hasn’t asked why she isn’t feeling better already.

The doctor knows his reports are considered to be too patient focused, and for buying into Jill’s other non-work-related issues – but no-one has really asked what those issues may be about.

Having worked within the framework of the Bio Psycho Social (BPS) model of rehabilitation for 20 years, I have determined that the disability is rarely about the injury.  It’s rarely about the body part that was injured; the treatment required and the anticipated recovery time. In fact, in my experience, this is the easy bit. 

If that’s all we are dealing with, we would achieve phenomenal RTW rates and people would be leading healthier lives with their financial expectations intact. Really, the injury and the diagnosis are rarely the problem. It’s all the other stuff – the psycho-social stuff like Jill is now experiencing that is the problem.

We engage rehabilitation professionals to get the injured employee back to work. We demand that they not discuss childcare; finances; out of work sporting and other activities and only focus on work-related issues.

But perhaps things would be so much better if we stopped to find out what’s really motivating clients to stay at home and away from work. My guess is that it is not to stay sick. People generally don’t go to work for the sake of going to work. People work because of what work brings to them. Fundamentally, this is money: money to do the things they would rather be doing than working. When those non-work things are threatened, we see people remaining more “sick” and disabled than we might have expected. A talented rehabilitation professional will be able to tap into the things that make a person’s life feel full and worth living, and help them figure out how work can factor into – even enable – these activities.

What questions can we now ask our clients to help them understand that work really is

good for their health?