Management Referral to Occupational Health

Health impacting on work:

• An employee reports that they are having difficulty with an aspect of their role due to a disability or an acute health problem.
• An employee has either repeated or long-term sickness absence with a physical or mental health condition.

Work impacting on health:

• An employee reports that their high workload is causing them sleepless nights. 
• An employee with an underlying health condition reports that workplace exposures are having an adverse impact on their health. For example, an employee with a back condition reports increase in pain with manual handling or computer use.   

Personal factors impacting on work:

• An employee going through a difficult divorce reports difficulty coping with their work.
• An employee has difficulty juggling carer responsibilities with work.

Discussion with employee and contacting your HR Advisor

It is essential that you, as a line-manager, involve the employee in the management referral process and that the situation is approached in a sensitive and confidential manner.

1. Once the discussion has taken place between you and there is agreement on the referral, you should contact your HR Advisor who will facilitate the referral on your behalf. (If the employee declines the referral, you are still able to request further advice from your HR Advisor.)
2. The HR Advisor will ask Occupational Health to set up an account for you with OPAS-G2, the system the OH team uses to track cases. The portal is accessible online via single sign on (SSO) which means that you will use your University login in details to access it. (Please refer to the OPAS-G2 Managers' Guidance - Management Referral for details on how to login and complete a referral.)
3. The employee will not be able to access the referral while you are completing it so we suggest you set aside some time with them to go through it together.
4. Once completed to both party's satisfaction, and ensuring you add your HR advisor to the additional contributors, save the form.
5. The HR Advisor will review the referral and submit it for consent to the employee. Once the employee has consented, the referral will be sent to OH.
6. When Occupational Health are in receipt of the referral, we will make contact with the employee to book an appointment to speak to an Occupational Health Advisor.

Occupational Health Report

After receiving the referral and meeting with the employee, the OH Advisor will request consent from the employee to produce a report for you and HR. The report will include an opinion on fitness/prognosis/disability and recommendations for support/adjustments. It will also respond to any specific management questions raised in the referral.

The OH report is advisory and it would be for you to decide if recommendations for adjustments are reasonable and workable. You can seek further guidance from HR if required. You are encouraged to contact the Occupational Health Team if you require any clarification or you have further queries.

I would like to add a contributor but they don’t appear in the drop down list. How can I add this person?

• Please contact Occupational Health and we will create an account for them.

Why do I need to add my team member’s details to the management referral rather than select from a drop down which auto-populates?

• The system is not set up to group team members by managers currently. If employee details were made available in a dropdown, everyone with an account would be able to search on any member of staff and have access to their sensitive information.

A member of staff in my department/team would prefer that another manager rather than their direct line manager make the management referral. Is this possible?

• If the employee consents and you have discussed this with your HRA, then any appropriate manager can refer a member of staff to OH.

Managers should initially contact their HR Advisor.

For informal queries regarding Management Referrals, from either the employee, manager or HR, please email the confidential OH inbox and we will reply by email, Teams or telephone.