Unique to Purple Co is our Psychological Functional Demands Analysis tool.
Do you have an employee who is experiencing a mental illness; mental health issue; or has a psychological injury. Do you remain confused as to why they are not upgrading at work; or even how to plan what is or is not safe for them to do?
With over 17 years experience in workplace based rehabilitation, I have remained frustrated by the lack of objectivity in determining how an injured employee is able to function in their job role following a period of psychological injury. There remains a lot of confusion and misinformation between employers; claims officers; injured workers and their treating health professionals in determining what must occur to demonstrate the ability to work, or psychologically upgrade in a workplace.
To address this confusion, I have developed a Psychological Functional Demands Analysis tool. Simply, this assessment analyses the key psychological demands of a job/ task.
The strength of the Psychological Demands Functional Analysis is that it provides an objective context to often subjective presentation. It normalizes the job- person fit for an individual who has experienced psychological injury and reduces the expectation that an individual must be cured before they can safely return to the workplace
The following outcomes have been delivered in the use of the tool:
- Objective analysis of pre injury job demands from psychological and psycho social perspective
- Objective information provided to treating medical and health practioners
- Objective basis to discuss with claims officers/ medical assessors an injured employee’s ability to perform a role or components of a role.
- More effective job matching of a person to a job.
- More effective upgrading of psychological diagnostic information to functional task performance
The results of the effective use of the tool are:
- More useful medical information being obtained from health and medical practioners
- Treatment plans being tailored to the functional demands of a job/ task
- Identification of issues that are NOT work related impacting upon return to work progress and success.
The Psychological Functional demands assessment provides benefits to all parties, including:
- The employee who gains an understanding of the functional expectations of their job rather than how they “ feel” about their job and role
- Employers who are alerted to important individual factors that need to be considered to support successful and durable return to work.
- Case Managers who gain a base line of information allowing them to ask a more appropriate question of a treatment provider offering insight into the issues that may present as barriers to recovery and return to work.
- Doctors who receive objective information of the influential psychological and psychosocial factors and can consider these in treatment planning and patient monitoring.
- Treatment providers who can tailor treatment to achieve specific functional outcomes.
- Purple Co’s consultant who is able to immediately challenge unhelpful beliefs; and address the functional expectations of a diagnosis in terms of what a job/ role actually requires an individual to perform.
The strength of the Psychological Functional demands analysis is that it provides an objective context to often subjective presentation. It normalizes the job- person fit for an individual who has experienced psychological injury and reduces the expectation that an individual must be cured before they can safely return to the workplace.