Getting the team onside > Committed employees: Key principles for involving workers

Getting senior management on board is a pre-requisite for attaining employee commitment to injury management systems. Once this is achieved, worker involvement is best encouraged by:

•	Ensuring that management’s commitment to the program is visible;

•	Educating workers about the health, social and family benefits of early return to work and good injury management;

•	Involving employee representatives (for example trade union and health and safety representatives) at the beginning of the process;

•	Asking employees and their representatives to help evaluate problems with the current system;

•	Involving employees and their representatives in working out solutions; and

•	If improvements to the injury management system will only apply to a limited section of the organisation, giving serious thought as to how best inform other employees.

Getting senior management on board leads to middle
management being involved.

Supervisors then pay attention, and their awareness trickles down to
the rest of the workforce.