The changing face of occupational health

axisus

I've been 28 years working at the same place, a big building with 800 or so employees.

Back in the 90s/00s OH we had just one nurse. She was always very approachable, you could give her a call on the phone and nip up to see her any time. You could lie on her couch if you felt unwell, have a painkiller if you had a headache, or just chat about stuff.

Roll on to the past 5 years - OH is now a team of 4 people hiding in an impregnable fortress (locked door). They no longer care about anyone’s wellbeing, they seem to be there just to make sure that the staff can’t blame the organisation for any health issue that they have. A colleague of mine was expecting a baby a year ago, she came in full of stress and worry after a night of no sleep, rang OH for help and they just said “sorry, nothing to do with us, goodbye”.

Progress!

boogieman

OH’s mission at my last job seemed to be to continuously hound a guy with terminal bowel cancer over the amount of time he was taking off for his chemo treatment. Meanwhile another guy (christened Sicknote) who had no end of minor ailments, but nothing ever serious, was never bothered by them at all despite him hardly ever being at work. 

EricTheWeary

No idea what our company OH is like at work, the whole Personnel bit is contracted out and behind a locked door. I can access anywhere in the building but not that bit.

I had quite a bit to do with OH in a previous job and they were pretty hopeless by and large, put in a position of trying to please the people sat in front of them and the management so they just sat on the fence. When I had to refer people to OH I told them a (true) story about how they’d helped someone. That story got very thin after about ten years.

In my current job I work with an occupational therapist who does specialist work with people with learning disabilities and she’s lovely and people love her and her work. Presumably that’s the kind of job they thought they would do when they went to study it, not sitting in an office trying to help decide if someone needs the sack. 

strtdv

It's all about getting the right letter from your doctor. If you get the letter saying the right things then there's nothing Occ. Health can do about it.

littlegreenman

strtdv said:

It's all about getting the right letter from your doctor. If you get the letter saying the right things then there's nothing Occ. Health can do about it.

Yep. Had a guy in our department who'd regularly take 3 months off work for experimental NHS treatments of his fairly unique condition, nothing so much as a peep from bosses or OH/ HR in over 5 years.

He ignored a few OH and company letters about the usual "come in for a chat" though and boom! Gone.