Client Success: Baw Baw Shire Council’s Leading Return to Work Practice

Several of our clients are in the spotlight for awards across Return to Work program solutions, Safety, and commitment to the continuous improvement of safety initiatives. These awards are amazing for organizations to be recognized for their success in taking a proactive approach to employee and organizational health and safety. 

Organizations being recognized have one thing in common, they are using Donesafe! Donesafe has been assisting organizations for just over six years to continuously improve employee health and safety whilst helping organizations develop a strong safety culture.

WorkSafe announces Baw Baw Shire Council as a finalist in Leading Return to Work Practice by an Employer.

In recent weeks, Baw Baw Shire Council has been announced as a finalist for the annual Victorian WorkSafe Awards in the category Leading Return of Work Practice by an employer. 

What is the WorkSafe Awards? 

This year, WorkSafe Awards celebrates 31 years of the awards, recognizing Victorian businesses and individuals whose innovation, initiatives, and commitment have made an outstanding contribution to workplace health, safety, wellbeing, and return to work in their fields.

What led Baw Baw Shire to this success?

Baw Baw’s successful nomination was based on the Council’s supportive and proactive approach to managing injuries and illness in the workplace through the return to work programs such as Early Intervention and Supported Work Programs.

Delivered by the People and Culture team, these programs are designed to provide immediate assistance to staff for both work-related and non-work related injury or illness.

In the event of a work-related injury or illness, Council will offer for the injured team member to take part in an Early Intervention Program, bypassing the standard 28 days for a WorkCover claim. In most cases, injuries are treated, and employees make a full return to work well before a WorkCover claim is submitted.

Otherwise, if the injury was sustained outside of the workplace, Council provides an opportunity for team members to undertake a Supported Work Program, meaning the team members can either remain at, or return to, work in a suitable and meaningful manner while undergoing necessary treatment. This program ensures that team members are not at risk of exacerbating or aggravating their injury in the workplace. 

Out of 219 applicants for this particular category, Baw Baw Shire Council will be one of three finalists eagerly awaiting the outcome when winners are announced on Thursday 31 October.

We’d like to wish Return to Work Officer Ella Sharp, OHS Advisor Jackie O’Neill, and the rest of the team at Baw Baw Shire Council good luck from the Donesafe team. 

Donesafe and Baw Baw Shire Partnership

“Wow – Now I know why it is called the people’s software.”

“The software is exceptional but the support team are just as exceptional. Nothing has been too much trouble for Glenn, Louise, Jason and Clive. We have had so much support and Monica our project lead is a true Donesafe magician. Monica has done a fantastic job in making our user interface reflect us and our needs at Team Baw Baw!”

Baw Baw Shire Council, OHS Advisor

“Team work really did make the dream work on this one. Ella is brilliant and dedicated SME who partnered with us to achieve something incredible. It was absolute pleasure collaborating with Ella and Jackie to build a Return to Work system that will help them support the broader team into the future. Well done Team!”

Monica Sullivan, Service Delivery Manager at Donesafe

Donesafe worked with the team to configure a personalized Injury Management Knowledge Base, including an intuitive dashboard that allows the Return to Work Officer to monitor all open injury management cases. The team at Donesafe worked exceptionally hard on Baw Baw Shire Council’s Injury Management Knowledge Base to make the Return to Work Officer’s vision of the software come to life.

The software’s ability to assign actions to relevant team members has assisted the team to excel in injury management. Supervisors and team members receive a reminder to provide updated medical certificates to develop an appropriate and meaningful return to work plan. This ensures that all cases continue to receive support and does not leave room for human error.

Prior to the implementation of Donesafe, the team would record all injury management cases within individual spreadsheets. This was an extremely time consuming and disorderly process. If a historical case would require review, the team would need to sift through the local drives and interpret the spreadsheets to obtain an overview of the injury/illness.

Now that the Donesafe database has been adopted, injury management cases are recorded in a consistent and clear manner. Donesafe provides the ability to extract an overview report of all injury management cases and attach files to the relevant sub-forms for later review.

Overall, Donesafe has both simplified and improved the record-keeping for Baw Baw Shire Council by saving an estimated five hours per injury management case, and six hours per quarterly report. This has allowed time to be better spent on managing injuries and illnesses in the workplace.