HR Specialists’ Views on Vocational Rehabilitation as a Part of Workplace Disability Management
Abstract
The idea of multi-sectoral partnership and interaction has promoted employers’ role in rehabilitation. This article addresses rehabilitation as an integrated part of workplace disability management from employer’s perspective. The data consisted of individual interviews with HR professionals (N=10) who represented employer’s viewpoint. The data was collated in the evaluation research of a vocational rehabilitation program provided by Kela. The result of the process-oriented content analysis was a conceptual structure that incorporated main- and sub-categories. The categories of the function of rehabilitation and the stakeholder roles were components of workplace disability management paradigm.
Rehabilitation was reinterpreted from the vantage point of the HR processes and practices. The goal was to support work ability for individual workers. This was understood more an employee-centered than an employer’s interests driven activity. When rehabilitation was expected to be a work-community based and work-related activity, the importance of the interaction between a supervisor and an employee was underlined. The individual employee’s agency and responsibility in terms of maintaining one’s work ability was highlighted. The role of HR professional was to enhance stakeholder collaboration in rehabilitation processes in order to manage the work ability of personnel. Nowadays, HR professionals are playing an important role in the professional field of workplace health management where the occupational health service providers and rehabilitation professionals, in the past, had the main responsibility.
Author
Riitta Seppänen-Järvelä
Additional Information
- Peer-Reviewed: yes.
- Open Access: no.
- Cite as: Seppänen-Järvelä, R. (2018). Kuntoutus osana työkykyjohtamista henkilöstöasiantuntijan näkökulmasta. Kuntoutus, 41(1), 21–32. https://journal.fi/kuntoutus/article/view/100409