Abstract
Introduction Early return-to-work (RTW) after sick leave is considered to support employees’ quality of life. Successful RTW requires adequate cooperation between absent employees and their supervisors. This study assesses the effectiveness of an intervention for COoperation regarding RTW between Sick-listed employees and their Supervisors (COSS; i.e. ‘conversation roadmap’, monitoring of cooperation and, if necessary, extra occupational physician support). Methods In this field study, employees on sick leave for 2–10 weeks, aged 18 up to and including 60, and performing paid labour for at least 12 h per week were included. Terminally ill were excluded. Multivariate regression (correcting for baseline quality of life) was used to compare 6-months follow up data regarding quality of life between the groups. Using Cox regression analyses, time until first-, full-, and sustainable RTW was compared between groups. Results In total 64 employees received COSS or common practice. No significant group differences were found regarding all study outcomes. The COSS group had a higher chance of work resumption than the common practice group. The hazard ratio was 1.39 for first RTW (95 % CI 0.81–2.37), 1.12 for full RTW (95 % CI 0.65–1.93) and 1.10 for sustainable RTW (95 % CI 0.63–1.95). Conclusions COSS has no significant effects. Yet, the results regarding work resumption show a tendency towards effectiveness. Therefore, COSS can be further developed and applied in practice. Researchers should try to prevent some limitations of the present study in future research, for instance by finding a more common research setting.
Highlights
Return-to-work (RTW) after sick leave is considered to support employees’ quality of life
To address the bottlenecks in cooperation regarding RTW, we developed a generic intervention that is provided at an organisational level
The curves show that between about 50 and 100 days as well as after 100 days and between about 100 and 200 days there was a smaller proportion of the employees in the COSS group on sick leave compared to the common practice group
Summary
Return-to-work (RTW) after sick leave is considered to support employees’ quality of life. Examples are national legislation (e.g. in the Netherlands, [6]), regional or local policy (in Canada, [7, 8]), or interventions for individual employees An example of the latter is the workplace intervention by Karlson et al [9, 10] to support communication between the employee and the supervisor, which successfully enhanced RTW at 1.5 year follow up for all participants and at 2.5 year follow up (the latter only for younger participants). Such interventions are typically developed for employees with specific health complaints (e.g. low back pain) and accessible through healthcare providers or insurers
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
