Health impacting on work:

• An employee reports that they are having difficulty with an aspect of their role due to a disability or an acute health problem.
• An employee has either repeated or long-term sickness absence with a physical or mental health condition.

Work impacting on health:

• An employee reports that their high workload is causing them sleepless nights. 
• An employee with an underlying health condition reports that workplace exposures are having an adverse impact on their health. For example, an employee with a back condition reports increase in pain with manual handling or computer use.   

Personal factors impacting on work:

• An employee going through a difficult divorce reports difficulty coping with their work.
• An employee has difficulty juggling carer responsibilities with work.

Discussion with employee and contacting your HR Advisor

It is essential that you, as a line-manager, involve the employee in the management referral process and that the situation is approached in a sensitive and confidential manner.

Once the discussion has taken place between you and there is agreement on the referral, you should contact your HR Advisor who will facilitate the referral on your behalf. (If the employee declines the referral, you are still able to request further advice from your HR Advisor.)

The HR Advisor will send you a management referral template for you to complete with the employee. Once completed to both party's satisfaction, send the form back to your HR Advisor who will check its contents before forwarding it on to Occupational Health.

Once Occupational Health are in receipt of the referral, we will make contact with the employee to book an appointment to speak to an Occupational Health Advisor

Occupational Health Report

After receiving the referral and meeting with the employee, the OH/Disability Advisor will request consent from the employee to produce a report for you and HR. The report will include an opinion on fitness/prognosis/disability and recommendations for support/adjustments. It will also respond to any specific management questions raised in the referral.

The OH report is advisory and it would be for you to decide if recommendations for adjustments are reasonable and workable. You can seek further guidance from HR if required. You are encouraged to contact the OH report’s author if you require any clarification or you have further queries.

Managers should initially contact their HR Advisor.

Completed referrals should be sent by the HR Advisors to the confidential Management Referral inbox.

For informal queries regarding Management Referrals, from either the employee, manager or HR, please email the confidential OH inbox and we will reply by email, Teams or telephone.