Intervene early

What is early intervention?

Early intervention is about recognising and responding to early warning signs of injury or illness. It can form part of an organisation's overall strategy for preventing harm and injury at work.

By acting early, employers can help reduce the impact and duration of emerging symptoms of injury or illness. Early intervention can support employee health and wellbeing, improve recovery outcomes and reduce costs for an employee and an organisation.

How early intervention works

An early intervention program offers access to appropriate interventions from when you first become aware of an employee's symptoms, illness or injury. Interventions could include treatment, rehabilitation and other supports and services.

The employee may have told you about the issue formally or informally, or you may have noticed early signs or changes in behaviour. Read more about the signs and effects of Psychosocial hazards and Physical hazards.

Early intervention:

• should be voluntary for an employee
• may be used for injuries and illnesses that are work related or non work related
• can include treatment and rehabilitation costs
• can happen whether or not an employee has lodged a workers' compensation claim
• doesn't affect an employee's ability to make a claim.

Getting started with early intervention – what to consider

How will the funding work?

Consider how you will fund an early intervention program. For example, the program could fund a fixed number of treatments or supports or provide a fixed amount per employee, or both. A fixed amount per employee can give more flexibility in how the money is spent.

You will also need to plan for how the payment or reimbursement process will work.

What supports will be offered?

Consider what types of supports to fund to achieve the aim of assisting recovery at work or minimising time away from work. Early intervention supports should be based on an employee's individual circumstances. These could include access to medical and allied health treatment, a rehabilitation case manager and workplace rehabilitation services.

Your early intervention program could also offer employees:

• flexible work, work adjustments, suitable duties, ergonomic equipment and rehabilitative costs and aides
• access to miscellaneous leave if appropriate and not already covered in your enterprise agreement
• encouragement to use the employee assistance program for support
• access to health coaching, financial, family or counselling services.

You could also consider signing up to existing support programs as part of your early intervention offerings, such as the Before Blue early intervention mental health program.

Consider what will not be funded – for example, costs associated with an illness or injury already covered by an accepted workers' compensation claim. Be careful not to be too restrictive, as the flexibility to provide a variety of supports to help an employee stay in the workplace can have a big impact on recovery and wellbeing.

Information and training

Consider how and when you will give employees information about what funding and support is available and how to report an injury or illness.

Also consider what training managers might need to help them discuss early warning signs of injury or illness with employees and support them to raise issues and engage in an early intervention program.

Resources for implementing early intervention programs

Developing an early intervention framework

You can use our guidance to develop your own early intervention framework to suit your unique organisational environment:

• Act early to support your workers: Developing a framework for early intervention (880.15 KB)
• Early intervention systems checklist (337.72 KB)

Comcare’s early intervention pilot

Read about Comcare’s early intervention pilot:

• Early intervention service pilot evaluation executive summary (393.58 KB)
• Early intervention service pilot evaluation factsheet (222.94 KB)
• Early Intervention report (1.14 MB)