Tool Box
Issue No. 13 - October/November 2003
Back to Normal
How the Right Mix of Tactics put Effective on the Rehabilitation Map
There’s no shortage of evidence that preventing workplace injuries can have a big impact on the bottom line. Healthy workers make for a healthy business in more ways than one.
Effective Consulting and Rehabilitation is in the business of making that point. According to principal, George Hallwood, Effective is also “helping Adelaide businesses to shift their paradigms from seeing effective rehabilitation as a cost penalty, to a position where they see it as a mechanism for higher productivity and dramatically reduced costs”.
Seven years ago, George and partner David Steventon, together with Netty Heinrich (then their receptionist, now their administration manager), set up a rehabilitation business in a small cottage on North Terrace, Kent Town. The focus was specifically on rehabilitation outcomes and as well as working closely with injured workers and their doctors, Effective also worked with insurance agents, WorkCover, and employers to reduce the financial and social costs of workplace injury.
“Effective’s approach was quickly accepted by many larger employers that were able to measure the benefits of reducing costs associated with work injuries” George says.
“People injured at work also found benefit in Effective’s rapid delivery of services aimed at achieving the best practical levels of physical and mental recovery and restoration to the workplace and the community.”
Since 1996 Effective has grown to the stage where its Beulah Road, Norwood, office bulges with 25 staff, including 19 professionals.
Effective operates in four areas of specialisation. The occupational rehabilitation section focuses on assisting people that are injured at work to return to their pre—injury employer, where this is possible. The vocational rehabilitation section finds new employment opportunities for people who are injured and cannot return to their pre—injury employer. The occupational ...
