Nabenet Health offer a range of consultations and assessments for workers in Victorian workplaces, including workplace health checks and a variety of education and interventions sessions. For more information, see Nabenet Health.

Conducted by a Physiotherapist, Occupational Therapist or Exercise Physiologist, ergonomic assessments ensure that employees’ workstations are ergonomically appropriate. This assessment ensures optimal work practice, improves productivity and minimises the risk of injury.

The Ergonomic Assessment involves assessing the worker’s posture or injury, understanding the demands of their role, and provides recommendations on ergonomic aids and self-management techniques.

Brief assessments can also be completed for employees who are not currently reporting discomfort but wish to minimise their risk of injury.

Nabenet conducts manual handling training sessions for employees, to provide guidance on:

• What constitutes proper manual handling, the physics and biomechanics of lifting
• The most common injuries associated with poor manual handling (muscle strain, joint injury, disc injury)
• The biomechanical causes of these injuries
• Anatomy of the cervical and lumbar spine and associated soft tissue structures
• Self assessment of strength and flexibility
• How to prevent injuries
• Exercises that improve correct strengthening pattern around the spine
• General exercise and healthy living (stretching and strengthening)
• Practice of these exercises and stretches.

Nabenet provides customised workplace manual handling solutions ensuring that the training is applicable not only to the individual worker’s role but to the organisation as a whole.

The Return to Work Management Toolkit includes:

• A specific information pack for your injured employees
• A toolkit for your supervisors and managers, and
• A toolkit for the designated RTW Coordinator with the key purpose of implementing sound injury management processes and providing additional support to you and your injured employees.

In addition to providing return to work and vocational services, Nabenet provides a range of private employer and workplace services including:

• Private Worksite Assessments at an employer’s site, including an assessment of duties and measurement of forces/demands required in a particular role
• Return to work assistance: including weekly / fortnightly contact with all parties (via phone / email as requested by the referrer), workplace meetings where required, development of return to work plans, liaison with medical practitioners and regular reporting
• Workstation Assessments including assessment of ergonomic setup and recommendations regarding provision of equipment.
• Vocational Assessment and Labour Market Analysis: including interview of the injured individual to assess previous education, training, experience and transferable skills, completion of labour market analysis and identification of “real” jobs, liaison with the pre-injury employer throughout this process and the completion of a comprehensive report.
• Vocational Counselling and Job Seeking Assistance: four to six face-to-face meetings over an eight-week period. Activities during these counselling sessions include:
  • Identification of suitable employment options and investigation of current labour market
  • Review of applications and current resume, and the provision of advice regarding appropriate modifications
  • Sourcing potential positions
  • Interview discussion and mock interviews to explore strengths and weaknesses
  • Marketing and networking with potential employers
  • Research into suitable employers and organisations for new positions

Nabenet can analyse the tasks conducted throughout your workplace, which can be used for risk assessment, pre-employment screenings, and to help your injured employees return to work.

Nabenet’s health professionals can help create a detailed job library to reference individual workplace roles, descriptions of each physical job demand, and pictures of tasks associated with each role.

The job library can also be further developed by Nabenet to create a suitable duties register. This register identifies alternate and modified duties that are associated with each role that employers can draw upon during an injured worker’s return to work process. The register can also assist in explaining return to work roles with treating health practitioners.

Workplace supervisors play an integral role in the return to work process. Actions taken by a supervisor from the moment a workplace injury occurs can have a lasting impact on the recovery of an injured worker. To help achieve the best possible outcomes, Nabenet offers supervisor training, covering the following areas:

• What to do following an injury (frequently asked questions)
• The supervisor and manager role, highlighting areas of responsibility under Worker’s Compensation legislation
• 0-10 day checklist for supervisors so they understand how to best make and maintain contact with an injured individual
• Examples of return to work proposals
• A return to work proposal checklist that aligns with legislative updates
• Explanation of weekly payment entitlements, and potential financial impacts
• The role of occupational rehabilitation providers
• Ensuring return to work information is available to the employee
• A return to work ‘monitoring’ form to ensure that the process runs smoothly

Nabenet provides specialised vocational assessments for a number of WorkSafe legal panel firms. Each assessment and report is completed by a Psychologist and Occupational Therapist, to ensure its robustness in common law court proceedings. Our consultants are highly skilled clinical practitioners with strong backgrounds in occupational rehabilitation.

A workplace health and safety management system is a set of policies, procedures, and plans put in place to minimise the risk of employee injury and illness from workplace operations. Your people, the nature of the work they carry out, and OHS legislation change rapidly, so it’s important to regularly check for any gaps in your management system.

Our safety consultants conduct audits and gap analysis to ensure your business is complying with current WHS/OHS legislation and providing a safe work environment. Our OHS audits can be tailored to suit your workplace – whether you’re looking for a simple fine tune of your safety compliance via an online appointment, or a fully comprehensive on-site review to check for any gaps in the management of your workplace health and safety.

Through on-site reviews, our safety consultants can assess the specific OHS needs of a business and provide a report on the support required.

Our Safety Audits and Gap Analysis benefit workplaces by:

• Ensuring gaps in OHS compliance are not overlooked, reducing risks to employees and the likelihood of prosecution and fines.
• Making sure your safety management system is evolving and continually improving using feedback.
• Integrating reports with other management systems.
• Providing more informed decision-making, strengthening corporate culture and demonstrating due diligence.
• Providing peace of mind that your workplace complies with OHS legislation and regulations.

Our OHS consultants can provide end-to-end support to fully manage your workplace health and safety policies, procedures and plans, or simply help you to get a part of your safety program up and running.

We can integrate our services into your existing business operations to enhance your existing systems – whether you use a paper-based safety program, or a digital solution. For those wanting to move to a fully automated safety management system, our OHS consultants can also work with businesses, small and large, to onboard them with OHS Compliance Management Software.

Our focus is on ensuring legislative compliance and providing a safer working environment for employees, with expertise that benefits your business by:

• Ensuring compliance with OHS legislation and regulations.
• Managing the contents of safety documentation within the system.
• Making sure your management system is effective in protecting people from harm and minimising claims.
• Checking the system includes mechanisms to continually improve using feedback.
• Helping businesses to integrate their OHS system with other management systems.
• Developing a system that strengthens corporate culture and demonstrates due diligence.

Businesses have a primary duty to safeguard their employees against psychosocial risk. Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work and situations that may cause a stress response, which in turn can lead to psychological or physical harm. They may include such factors as role overload, poor support from managers, remote or isolated work, exposure to traumatic events or workplace violence, bullying and harassment.

Nabenet will conduct an assessment that is focused on identifying and evaluating psychological hazards and risks within the workplace, and report on the findings or areas recommended for continual improvement. Our team of OHS experts, organisational psychologists, and allied health professionals provide an integrated approach to identifying psychosocial risk and providing tailored solutions to address the source of the risk.

When organisations manage psychosocial hazards proactively:

• They can reap the benefits of employee engagement and morale, improved performance and productivity and a reduction in worker turnover.
• They’ll comply with OHS regulations and successfully navigate workplace inspections by OHS regulatory bodies (such as Safe Work Australia).
• It reassures employees that your organisation’s OHS policies and procedures have their best interests at heart.
• Claims associated with work-related mental health conditions will be reduced.