As well as offering a range of healthcare benefits, including private medical insurance (PMI) and group income protection (GIP), PWC’s health and wellbeing team works with people managers if an employee is on long-term sick leave to offer support tailored to their needs.
Rosie Garfield, health and wellbeing leader, says: “Every individual who is off for a length of time will be supported by their people manager, and their people manager will have this specialised support, which comes from my team.”
Garfield’s team will liaise with an employee’s people manager and provide information about where they can go for further advice and refer the situation to PWC’s occupational health team, if necessary.
“When recommendations come back from occupational health, we will work out how we can get the person back into work,” says Garfield. “Do we need to make any adjustments to technology or to logistical things around the building? Do we need to look at changing the individual’s duties for a length of time while they get back into work? Do we need to look at adjusting their hours?”
PWC works closely with its health insurance providers, particularly its GIP provider, through which it has access to rehabilitation processes, which can include assessment of an individual’s eligibility for cognitive behavioural therapy.
“While it’s about getting people back into work, there’s a very big piece about how we communicate with them while they’re off and supporting them,” says Garfield.
“Once we get outside the benefits themselves, it’s about tailoring to the individual situation to make sure people still feel very much included in the workforce.”
