OCC REHAB INDUSTRY HUB
Occupational Rehabilitation Services
Occupational Rehabilitation Services
The industry is suffering from an acute shortage of Allied Health staff because we just don’t have the numbers of Allied Health professionals in Australia to meet the needs of our population. Not only that, NDIS providers are now competing for that same pool of professionals.
Rehab Providers have gone through a lot of changes in the 20 years that Medijobs has been recruiting in the industry. There has been a lot of purchasing of providers by other providers as well as investment groups.
We’ve found the salaries, benefits packages and work arrangements have changed substantially over the years, especially post Covid.
Salaries in the industry for Physical Injury Candidates for OT, Physiotherapist and Exercise Physiologist
Keep in mind that the above are general indicators. There are always exceptions to the rule and unique circumstances e.g. location, industry, role depth, employer salary band-widths, work arrangement etc that also determine the wages offered to job-seekers.
What’s the competition doing? Let’s find out!
Financial:
Tools of Trade:
Admin & Reception Support: Free up time by dictating your reports and let the admin team do the rest.
Travel:
Knowledge & Assessment Suitcase: Subscriptions, both hard- and soft-copy | Professional Development $, comprehensive induction | On-going mentoring and in-services by subject matter experts
Extra Leave: One of our clients is a school and they give their staff 7 weeks leave. Other clients give their staff reservist leave, doona days, volunteer, pet and birthday leave.
Parental Leave: One of our clients gives their staff the difference between their wage and the government mandated parental leave subsidy for the full 16 weeks – Now read that again.
Social and team building: Paid for by the company. One of our clients paid for their whole team to do axe-throwing and a cooking class – not on the same day….
Health, Wellness & EAP: Pool, yoga or gym access or contribution | Confidential EAP to assist you when you need a hand.
Career Mapping: Our clients spend a lot of time and money training and supporting their staff.
So if you’re wondering what other employers are doing to attract talent, it may be time to look at your benefits packages, job-structure or hiring, on-boarding and training protocol.
“Though nobody can go back and make a new beginning, anyone can start over and make a new ending.” – Chico Xavier
Wherever there is an injured worker, a rehab professional will be required.
It’s the law in Australia that every single employee is covered by Workers Compensation Insurance. This translates into a near constant demand for Allied Health staff to manage injured workers.
Some employers have a 3 step recruitment process:
This is not to mention possible psych, probity or technical skills testing. For this to happen, the job-seekers and employers have to match diaries etc.
Some employers still insist on a face-to -ace meeting as a first port of call. Just keep in mind that in an exceptionally candidate short market space and where job-seekers are looking at multiple employers at the same time, it might help to reexamine your hiring process if you keep missing out on candidates as they’ve accepted other offers while you’re still going through the motions of your recruitment process.
The other thing candidates have told us is employers who get shirty if the job-seeker doesn’t accept their offer and then say things along the lines of, OK, you’ve got 24 hours to accept our offer or we will withdraw it. We don’t recommend this generally because it puts pressure on a candidate to make a decision. And once you’ve made that call, you can’t go back, ie say, OK fine, you’ve actually got 3 days to make a decision.
It’s a fine balance we admit, but please reach out to your Medijobs Australia consultant if you’re wondering what candidates are saying about your recruitment process. We’ve been known to not mince words and give honest feedback. We’re also happy to work with you to let you know what’s working and what’s not in terms of best process hiring protocols.
Salaries that reflect their skills and experience for the job that they are doing.
Benefits packages customised to their needs – for instance, they may prefer a novated lease option if they don’t own or have access to a car.
Induction: A comprehensive on-boarding and induction process when they start as well as on-going mentoring, in-services, CPD contributions and shadowing of senior consultants.
KPIs: Graded introduction to KPIs so that the pressure to bill, bill, bill isn’t hanging over their heads from day dot.
Career-mapping: A strategic approach to the next steps in their career as opposed to an ad hoc approach. It’s always good to know what you have to do to achieve your career goals.
Health & Wellness: Employer contributions towards health and wellness, including access to a confidential EAP service.
Admin support: Who doesn’t love the admin team where you have access to voice to text services and the admin team takes care of the rest. Report writing becomes ever so less of a chore then.
Extra leave: Any extra leave that employers can offer is welcome. Be that “no reason needed days off”, Reservist’s Leave, pet leave, volunteer leave. You can call it anything but what the job-seeker sees is that this employer is amazing as they recognise the need for a day off sometimes.
Parental Leave and flexibility: Most job-seekers will eventually start a family at some stage of their working life. It helps if the employer can give additional benefits, e.g. One of our key employer partners offers their staff the difference between their company wage and the government mandated parental leave payment – for the whole 16 weeks. And guess who gets the candidates when it comes down to that being the final difference if all the other benefits and salary between competing offers are the same. Bingo! And they also offer their staff the option of a combination of WFH and part-time hours when they return to work after their parental leave.
Pool car access: We’ve found over 20 years of recruitment that job-seekers don’t want wear and tear on their personal vehicles for work purposes. So they LOOOOVE pool-car access as this means they can take public transport to work and still do their job.
Over promise and under deliver: There is absolutely no gain in over-selling the role only for the job-seekers to start and find out that the reality on the ground floor is very different. If you have a high rate of candidates leaving your employ in a short space of time, then it’s a good idea to conduct exit interviews to see where you are letting them and yourself down.
Lack of or no on-boarding and induction: Do this at your own peril. Enough said.
Travel: A lot of candidates don’t like to travel long distances if possible. Sometimes it can’t be helped. But then the employer needs to recognise that their billable targets might need adjusting to account for the time spent travelling. It’s important to put yourself in your employees shoes. Would you feel extra pressure if that was what you had to do? Then rest assured, they are too. Unrelenting pressure = a good reason to start looking for a new job. You do the maths.
Lack of clinical work: A lot of candidates miss the clinical, hands-on aspect as Case Managers. A lot of employers in Occ Rehab have recognised this and have either introduced hybrid roles where the consultants can perform both clinical and case management duties or have allowed their team to work part time so that they can work clinically elsewhere.
Insurer pressure: Some consultants who work at providers have indicated that they feel undue pressure from the Insurance companies to resolve the case. Just saying. Don’t shoot the messenger.
Non compliance by injured workers: In the same breath, this can be an issue too that a lot of consultants tend to struggle with. The employers giving training to their teams to manage these challenges can be super helpful in reducing staff turnover.
Show me the money: If you are not keeping up with the industry in terms of salaries and benefits to match what your competition is doing or what job-seeker expectations are, then please be prepared to lose staff or not be able to attract them to begin with.
Job structure: Candidates have told us time and time again that as they progress through their career, the demands on their time change. They may have a family or want to work in a more flexible capacity for their own self actualisation. An employer who doesn’t work with their staff on this (only if the employer has the capacity to accommodate the employees demands) risks losing them to one who can offer them the flexibility that they seek.
On-boarding: Have you conducted all your checks and balances that you need to do before the candidate starts? Do they have all the paperwork that they need to fill out for you prior to starting on day dot? Please make sure they do.
Induction: Do you have your poo in one pile with a structured induction process? A scatter gun approach at the start ensures that a new employee is not going to know if they’re Artha or Martha. The more you can support, train, mentor and assist them with settling into their role, the better.
We have noticed that a lot of clients in the Occ Rehab industry have exceptionally comprehensive induction and training processes to support their new starters. If you tend to have an ad hoc approach in this area, we highly recommend addressing that situation, pronto.
Shadowing a senior: This has proven to be a very popular strategy with our new starters in the industry. It means that they see excellent modelling and there’s nothing better than learning from the best of the best of what your company has to offer. Not to mention the social aspect of being mentored by an in-house senior team member.
In-services: Subject matter experts, both internal and external can be utilised to share their knowledge with your team members. These can be delivered remotely as well as face to face. Who doesn’t like the idea of learning as part of their work team or sharing their knowledge with their colleagues? As the Dalai Lama said, “Share your knowledge. It’s a way to achieve immortality.”
CPD: All we can say is that the more generous you are here, the more likely you are to be able to support your staff through various stages of their career-map with you.