8.1.4 Return to work following injury and ill health
The draft adds 8.1.4, Return to work following injury and ill health. The public summaries describe controlled follow-up of a person returning to work, support during recovery, adjusted duties and protection from negative treatment or reprisal.
A return-to-work process is not the same as a rehabilitation policy. The draft clause asks for a controlled follow-up: someone owns the return, the duties are adjusted to the person's capacity, the risk assessment is revisited, and the person is protected from disadvantage because they were injured or ill.
The clause sits beside the new 8.1.3 Occupational health and the renumbered 8.1.5 Management of change. Read together, they require the organization to treat a change in a worker's health as a change to be managed, with the same assessment and review as a change to a process.
The audit trail is usually thin here. A fit note is not a return-to-work plan. The evidence an auditor will ask for is the plan, the adjustment, the review and the confirmation that the person was not treated less favourably.
What an auditor is likely to ask for
- A return-to-work procedure with a named owner and a trigger point
- Individual return-to-work plans with adjusted duties and review dates
- Risk assessments updated for the adjusted role
- Records showing the worker was consulted on the adjustments
- Evidence of non-discrimination and non-reprisal in the handling
These are the records this site expects a reader to hold for the new duty. They are our reading, not draft text, and they will be checked against the published standard when it exists.
Where it commonly fails today
- The fit note is treated as the whole process
- No adjusted duties are available, so the person stays off work longer
- The risk assessment is not revisited for the adjusted role
What to do now, while it is still a draft
Do not rebuild the system around a draft. Do the work that will be right under either edition: name the owner, write the process, keep the record, and put the clause reference on a list to update at publication. If the published text differs, the process survives the wording change.
Read the 2018 requirement it comes from Back to the clause map
Source for draft clause 8.1.4: the public DIS contents for the clause title, and the named certification-body summaries for the reported direction. The draft requirement text is not public and is not reproduced. Every source.