Return to work is not a single event at the end of a claim. It is a staged process that starts in the first weeks of an injury, and it works best when the employer is an active participant rather than a bystander waiting for a doctor to sign someone off as “fit.”

Under the NSW scheme, both the worker and the employer are required to participate in return to work planning (section 48 of the Workplace Injury Management and Workers Compensation Act 1998). In practice, that obligation lands mostly on the employer, because the employer is the one party who controls the thing that actually gets someone back to work: the availability of suitable duties.

What “suitable duties” actually means

Suitable duties is not a fixed list. It is whatever work a treating doctor and a workplace rehabilitation provider negotiate with the employer that sits within the worker’s current medical capacity. The Certificate of Capacity sets the ceiling (hours, lifting limits, standing tolerance, cognitive load), and the rehabilitation provider’s job is to find real tasks inside that ceiling.

Typical examples we see across our caseload:

The employer’s obligation is to offer suitable duties where they are reasonably available. “Reasonably available” is doing some work in this sentence: an employer with 300 staff and a large admin function has more room to move than a five-person trade business, and the return to work plan should reflect that difference rather than pretend it does not exist.

The four stages of a typical return to work

Stage 1, assessment (weeks 1-2): the focus is on treatment and an accurate first Certificate of Capacity, not on getting someone back on site.

Stage 2, modified role: the worker returns in a restricted capacity, reduced hours, modified tasks, no heavy lifting, seated work. This is where most of the negotiation between doctor, rehabilitation provider and employer happens, and where most claims stall if the employer cannot or will not identify real tasks.

Stage 3, graduated return to work: hours and duties increase as capacity improves, reviewed against updated certificates roughly every 28 days.

Stage 4, full duties or redeployment: either a full return to the pre-injury role, or a decision that a return to that role is not realistic and a retraining or redeployment pathway is needed instead.

Why early suitable duties change the outcome

The data is consistent across every injury category we track: workers who return to some form of work early recover faster than workers who stay completely off duties. This is not simply a financial incentive built into the scheme design (weekly payments do step down over time), it reflects something clinical: prolonged absence tends to reinforce disability behaviours, reduce confidence, and disconnect a worker from the workplace relationships that support recovery.

The reverse is also true. A poorly designed “suitable duties” role, one that is obviously make-work, disconnected from the worker’s actual skills, or physically inappropriate, does more harm than good. It signals to the worker (and often to the insurer) that the employer is going through the motions rather than genuinely accommodating recovery. Suitable duties has to be real work, even if it is temporary and modified.

What a workplace rehabilitation provider adds to this process

An accredited rehabilitation provider does three things an employer usually cannot do alone: a workplace assessment to identify what modifications or equipment are needed, a structured negotiation between the treating doctor’s restrictions and the employer’s actual operations, and ongoing liaison so the plan adjusts as capacity changes rather than staying frozen at the first certificate.

Where a return to the pre-injury role is not realistic, either because of a permanent restriction or because the workplace itself is not safe to return to (a pattern seen more often in psychological injury claims), the same rehabilitation process shifts into vocational assessment, retraining referrals, and a new-employer pathway. Weekly payments continue through that transition; the measure of success is durable, sustainable employment, not speed.

What this means for your portfolio

• Return to work planning that starts in week one, not week thirteen, produces measurably shorter claims.
• Suitable duties only works if it is genuinely matched to the worker’s skills and the employer’s real operations, not a token administrative task.
• Employers who engage early with the rehabilitation provider avoid the two most common failure modes: no suitable duties offered at all, and duties offered that do not survive contact with the worker’s actual restrictions.

How 365 Rehabilitation supports this

We coordinate the return to work plan from the same file as the treatment plan, working directly with the treating doctor, the employer, and the insurer so the suitable duties conversation happens once, properly, rather than as a series of disconnected phone calls. Our workplace assessments are conducted on site wherever practical, and our recommendations are written to reflect what a workplace can actually deliver, not a generic checklist.

Ready to set up a return to work plan for a current claim, or want a workplace assessment scoped before a worker’s first Certificate of Capacity expires? Contact us at info@365rehab.com.au or call 1300 742 365.

Sources:

• Workplace Injury Management and Workers Compensation Act 1998 (NSW), s 48
• SIRA, Recovery at Work: Employer Obligations and Return to Work Planning
• SIRA, Workplace Rehabilitation Program Evaluation and Economic Analysis, July 2025