Danielle Mik:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to Pearls of Wisdom. Today, we’re going to chat with Dr. Boris Fedoric about the challenges of developing a mentally healthy workplace, and the role that rehab counselors can play in assisting employers to achieve this.

Danielle Mik:

Welcome, Boris.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Thank you, Danielle. Great to have you.

Danielle Mik:

Boris is co-founder of Career Bug and WorkGain, is currently Chair and National President of the Australian Society of Rehabilitation Counselors. And Boris has been involved in the compensation industry, both in the claims management and the rehab side, for over 11 years. So he’s well-versed to talk about the role of rehab counselors and the potential for their work in creating mentally healthy workplaces.

Danielle Mik:

So thank you for joining me today, Boris, on Pearls of Wisdom.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Pleasure.

Danielle Mik:

And really looking forward to hearing your contribution on this important topic.

Danielle Mik:

I mean, Boris, as we know and we’ve discussed, this area is a growing one, of mental health issues in Australia. Three quarters of people are saying that mental health is an important consideration when they’re applying for a job. And a half believe that employers should be doing more in this space. And we know that there is an increasing push for employers to do more in this space. And that’s moving into the legal requirement as well, it’s being written into law.

Danielle Mik:

We also know, through PwC cost-benefit analysis, that for every $1 an employer invests, $2.30 can be the average return. So there’s a fiscal positivity there for an employer to do it. So it begs the question, therefore, why aren’t employer’s jumping at doing it? So what are their barriers and how can they be helped to do that?

Danielle Mik:

So I’d love to hear your input on how you think rehab counselors can assist in that space. So do you consider that the rehab industry can play a role, or rehab counselors, in creating mentally healthy workplaces?

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Oh, definitely Danielle. And I think that the stats are quite compelling that you presented. And that’s something that we’ve been seeing as well.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

From my perspective, and I think if we talk about rehab providers in general, rehab providers generally consist of rehab counselors, you’ve got the OTs, you’ve got the physios, you’ve got the psychologists, and so forth. And I think rehab providers themselves, they’re probably very, very, very well-positioned to do that because you’ve got the variety of skill set that’s located with one institution, I guess, so one business. And we work across injuries that have occurred.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And I think, from the learning perspective, if you engage various allied health providers that work with that particular rehab provider, you can see, from psychological point of view, what went wrong; from a physical point of view, what went wrong; from OT perspective, exercise, physiology, all that wellness stuff as well. And you can actually work backwards and do some reverse engineering to see when things do go wrong, on that reductionist level, what actually manifests as a result. And which we know are workplace injuries, such as bullying and harassment, and all sorts of other psychological injuries that come from it.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah. So-

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

So, I would say, quite well-positioned to do that.

Danielle Mik:

Yes. Yeah, yeah. Look, absolutely. And obviously rehab counselors are involved, at the moment primarily in the management process. So helping someone get back to work. Obviously, when they’re doing that, they’ve got that ability to assess and see what’s going on in a workplace at the time. So it would seem to me that they’re very well-placed or well-versed to be able to determine the mental health of a workplace.

Danielle Mik:

So do you see that that involvement can translate to maybe a new area that they can move into, of work?

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Oh, absolutely. And I think from the perspective of the psychosocial risks. And one of the aspects of rehab counseling, which is quite not well-known and we are trying to do better from ASORC’s perspective, is raising awareness about what rehab counseling is.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Quite often, we are mistaken for providers that just come in, write resumes, and off you go. Whereas, that’s only maybe 1% of what we do. And I think there’s been a great paper coming out of Griffith University that shows using resumes is actually a therapeutic tool for a counseling. So yes, we do do that. But we use it as a therapeutic, to raise the motivation and self-confidence and all that sort of stuff, from a biopsychosocial perspective.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But when we do see pre-injury workplaces, why and how this injury happened, you can actually start to see the common denominators. And those common denominators are the good old: no one cares. I’m overworked. High KPIs. There’s just not enough time. Time pressures. No one talks to me. The boss is putting pressure on, i.e. bullying, and all that sort of stuff. What we see, is when we then develop a graduated return to work plans … we talk to the employer, we talk to the injured worker … we become that sort of a mediator almost, in that instance. And then you can actually start to really see what went wrong.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And the employer will say, “Well, I didn’t have time to do this.” And the worker says, “Well, I didn’t know that you needed that. Well, I didn’t know you needed that.” It comes down to perceptions. It comes down to lack of communication. And the KPIs themselves, yes they’re great as indicators of what we need to do. But also, at the same time, like I always say when I have these meetings, everybody’s different.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

You look at something like the Marmot study in 2010, where they talk about the social determinants of health, you can see the huge scope of different social determinants and how that impacts of someone’s wellbeing and how their health is going to look like in the future.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But then same should be applied for work. When we do vocational assessments, for example, you look at the occupational interest searches, you look at work aspect preferences, you look at plus or minus personality assessment; DiSC or whatever you use. And that is to match the personality to that job. But also importantly, we need to match the personality of a human being to another human being that’s working there. And I guess that’s the interview part. So if you’ve got these personalities, combined with a poor social determinants of health, you can’t really be then having a same blanket KPIs for everybody because that is really a disaster waiting to happen.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And something as simple that occurred last week, where an individual with a workplace injury has the same picking rate as somebody else who is fit and healthy in their 20s, compared to somebody who’s 60 and with a whole bunch of comorbidities. Now, you don’t need to be a scientist to work out that to 95% pick rate, in those cases, we can work out which one is not going to go well.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah, absolutely.

Danielle Mik:

So Boris, if I was a rehab counselor and I was thinking I’d like to do more work in this space-

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

More work?

Danielle Mik:

… what would you be suggesting the skills that I’d want to advance, to move into this space, to do more work with employers to develop mentally healthy workplaces?

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Good question. I was thinking about this probably, I would say, about six months ago. We had some conversations with SafeWork SA, and they delivered a PD event for ASORC. And since that, I’ve been thinking about this. And I think, in addition to obviously our counseling services that we provide as rehab counselors, as allied health professionals, we also study research. So I think having that ability to research, in terms of those health research topics, we can quite well do that. Having the ability to do vocational assessments and understand the world of work. That’s a very unique intricacy of someone who’s doing counseling. And I think the most important is that we love to work in systems; systems, frameworks, processes, we thrive. The insurance, the health system, disability, and so forth.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But one of the things, what I was really thinking, from the training perspective as well as the practice, we provide services that have therapeutic benefits. But in doing so, there’s that neuroplasticity and changes in neurotransmitters and so forth, which leads to therapeutic effects as such.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But one thing that we don’t probably do as much of is the workplace health and safety aspects. So understanding and doing those risk assessments themselves, which the workplace health and safety guys do really well. And I think probably, from perspective of the ergonomic type assessments … not for us to be doing those sorts of things, but understand, in a greater depth, the biomechanics and so forth.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

I think we’re quite doing well with the biopsychosocial approaches, and we’re doing extremely well with the psychosocial approaches. But I think having that risk assessment component to our training and to our further development, as well as the physical aspect of things; understanding biomechanics and body movements, I think those are the sorts of things that I think will be quite useful to a rehabilitation counselor.

Danielle Mik:

So doing some training in that work health and safety prevention systems and hazard management risk assessment area.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Yeah.

Danielle Mik:

Because obviously, with an employer, they always need to put some figures and justification around decision-making. And you can do that using the hazard assessment, risk ID process. Which is not something that many rehab counselors would be overly familiar with.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

No, it’s not really at the forefront of our mind. I certainly have done those, but it’s not something that I predominantly do. I mean, I would do it on a particular cases of when you get engaged with a large employer who does want to make a change … and I think this is an important part, employers need to want to make that change in their workplace … and then when you start assessing.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And the best way of doing that is then you start assessing people, you start assessing jobs, you start doing the cross-sectional analysis. And it takes a lot of time. But I would think, yeah, the risk assessment side of things, that will probably be important.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah. So obviously, a major step in system and thinking would be if rehab counselors could actually, in the service delivery that they’ve got, have the capacity to do a bit of preventative work with employers. Because prevention’s definitely better than cure.

Danielle Mik:

And if an employer’s having certainly ongoing numbers of people being bullied or harassed, or whatever, to do some work in that preventative space would be highly economic, I would’ve thought, for the schemes even.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Oh, yeah. Yeah, you’re absolutely right. Because we know, when things do go wrong, they go wrong pretty bad. And I know you well, Danielle, we’ve both had cases that were two years, three years, four years long. And when you really-

Danielle Mik:

15 years, Boris.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Well, you know?

Danielle Mik:

Back in the old days.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Yeah, I was focusing on more acute things. But when you look at those cases, you look at the … and I know we’ve done that. We’ve analyzed, going all the way back. And you look at what went wrong. And it’s that psychosocial risk that hasn’t been managed at the front.

Danielle Mik:

Absolutely. Yeah.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And we always ask that question: if we could’ve just changed that one bit, we would’ve done it so much better.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

So yeah, the answer is absolutely yes. Because we know that when things really go wrong, you can see that they really go wrong. And cases of 15 years, nobody can convince me that that could be any good, coming out of that.

Danielle Mik:

No. Absolutely.

Danielle Mik:

So what about ASORC, Boris? What role do you see they can play in this up-skilling of consultants?

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Well, I think, from ASORC’s perspective, being a member organization, we are quite heavily focused on professional development, and obviously liaising to various stakeholders and raising awareness of our profession. I think that’s something that, over this year and next year, we really want to focus on even more intensely than we did previous two years. We’re sitting in a lot of important tables now. We are getting there. So I’m really pleased with the traction that we’ve got at the moment.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But I think in line with what I said before, providing potentially some further training in those spaces, in workplace health and safety. I mean, at the moment we’ve got a module for a biopsychosocial approach, which we’re finishing up. And there’s also some talk about doing a vocational assessment aspects of it. So those sorts of things are quite important.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And we know there’s a quite strong emphasis on biopsychosocial management. So we thought, providing to our members, further training and education from specialists in that area that have decades of experience, both learned experience and practiced experience, that would be quite useful. But certainly, taking on board the whole workplace health and safety risk assessment type training would be really useful.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And we always welcome anybody that has any ideas, understanding obviously what rehab counselors do. Whoever has any ideas, to come forward to us. And you can email us and reach out, and we’ll be more than happy to organize a meeting and discuss any professional development. We have webinar programs, so anybody’s really welcome to put their hand up-

Danielle Mik:

[crosstalk 00:14:13]? I’m familiar with those. Yeah.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Yeah. Absolutely. To deliver those. And I think that is so important. And even these sessions, talking about this sort of stuff is quite important, especially for the new rehabilitation counselors that are coming into this industry.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

We used to do a lot of work in a primary health and so forth, and I’m not going to bore you with a history of rehab counseling. But we’ve got a very strong roots in social justice, disability, the primary health. And there’s the research coming out of, I believe, University of Sydney, and some in Queensland, about using rehabilitation counselors in hospitals at the moment. And I think those are the places that, we used to be there at some point, and something has happened and we are not there. So we need to get back into those environments. Because the cost-benefit analysis, as you’ve said before, is tremendous and it’s huge.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

So as ASORC, we’re always very happy to provide professional development, in addition to obviously the advocacy that we do for our members.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah. So Boris, just finishing up. So, from your experience with a variety of employers … and obviously, you’ve worked across many … what do you see as the main challenges that employers have got in creating a mentally healthy workplace?

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

From challenges? I mean, you’ve got about three hours?

Danielle Mik:

In a nutshell. Yeah.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

There’s nothing worse than saying-

Danielle Mik:

Top three.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

… to a scientist, “Can you tell me about this?” And it’s like, “Yeah, no worries. I’ll make it short. Do you have three hours?”

Danielle Mik:

Yeah, “Tell me about the immune response,” or something.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

The immune response, yes.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Look, I’ll probably talk about neuroscience a bit. But if we think about, quite often, people think … and I think I’ve probably commented on one of the posts as well on LinkedIn. But one of the biggest, I think, misconceptions that we have is that the mentally healthy workplaces equals cost.

Danielle Mik:

Yes.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

I don’t think that’s the case.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Okay? I don’t think that you need to be reinventing the whole organization and doing these things. There’s a lot of neuroscience research that’s come out. And it’s coming out about even a simple things … and you’ll probably know about this with your emotion, intelligence, resilience training that you do … gratitude.

Danielle Mik:

Absolutely

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Not as much as in writing letters of gratitude, but receiving those letters of gratitude, can-

Danielle Mik:

Expressing gratitude.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

… reconnect your wiring and get your prefrontal cortex to work differently. And you generally feel better. And when they do scans of people that have and have not had this, you can see certainly the brain activity changes.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And I think what’s more important is that some of these effects are also permanent. So it doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to keep on going and seeing a consultant and coming back, this is something that you can practice. But the employers need to be aware of these things. And I think that’s where we, as a rehab counselors, or yourself, we come into play, where we provide tools. And then it’s onto the employer to really manage that and do that well. Inexpensive.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And you’ve asked me a question before: what can rehab counselors do? But I can certainly tell you, that in 99% of the cases that have had psychological injury or physical injury that led to a psychological injury as a result, it is the lack of occupational bonding.

Danielle Mik:

Yes. Yes.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Which means: communication. Communication wasn’t there to start off with. Or communication was there to start off with and then it’s just got broken over time. But it doesn’t cost much. Structure.

Danielle Mik:

And that leads me to … we talk about hierarchy of human needs; love, connection, and belonging, is right there just above our basic physical needs for food, water, et cetera, cetera. So we need for that to be replicated in workplaces to a certain … we need connection with people, we need to feel like we belong, we need to feel respected, et cetera, et cetera.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

That’s right.

Danielle Mik:

So that ties in exactly with what you’re talking about.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

That’s right. You do not need to change logos and brands and-

Danielle Mik:

But it costs nothing.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

It costs nothing. This sort of stuff costs nothing. Providing advice, providing some basic tools, writing a letter of gratitude. I mean, could that be a text message that you sent to staff, personalized? Can that be a phone call? That does not cost you much. But I think it’s getting into this routine and understanding that a simple gesture can lead a long way.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

If you look at the-

Danielle Mik:

Particularly from your leaders Boris, particularly from people who are leading you.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Oh. Absolutely.

Danielle Mik:

I mean, it’s good between coworkers. But also, when people get that from their leadership team, that’s enormous.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Oh, absolutely. And again, in us, as a rehab councilors, we love to go and say, “You remember that case when I had …?” But this is one of those examples where it literally just needed a phone call from the employer to say, “Hey mate, I think you’re doing a top job. Sorry I haven’t spoken to you in like two months, but I didn’t want to really bug you because I thought the WorkCover takes over from now. I really didn’t know.”

Danielle Mik:

Yes.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

And that’s it. And that one sentence changed and created a better mentally healthy workplace for that individual. How much did that cost?

Danielle Mik:

[crosstalk 00:19:34] all together. Yeah.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Exactly. 10 minutes of my time to suggest that, what is that at the rehab rate? Plus a phone call from an employer? Under 100 bucks. You’ve potentially solved the problem there. It’s inexpensive.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

But it’s having consultants, like I said, go in there and say these sorts of things and develop a basic protocol of what to do. And then if you really want to go high-end, then you can add, add, add to it. But I think sticking up to the basics.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

If you look at injury management principles as well, that’s something that we really strongly work against as rehab counseling. And there’s best practice injury management principles: early intervention, occupational bonding. You mentioned before, respect and dignity; that goes into that motivation, gratitude and so forth. And then collaborative and comprehensive approach. Collaborative means engaging with somebody. So it’s making those phone calls, doing those phone calls that count, is probably a good first step.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah. Absolutely.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

How to do that though, it’s a person dependent. I think that’s why us, as counselors, come through and look at various personalities and look at various methods of how one person may perceive that and so forth. So there’s a science aspect to it. And yes, there has to be a science, it’s not just everybody start calling everybody.

Danielle Mik:

And some people just need coaching in that, let’s face it.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

That’s right.

Danielle Mik:

They just need coaching in how to speak. From my experience, a number of employers are scared they’re going to say the wrong thing or say it in the wrong way and that sort of stuff. So sometimes they just need coaching to get the confidence to do it.

Danielle Mik:

But look, we could talk about this all day, no doubt. But I don’t want to take up the rest of your [inaudible 00:21:08]. So thank you very much, that’s fantastic.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Pleasure.

Danielle Mik:

And I’m sure rehab counselors will get a lot out of this discussion. And particularly thinking about their own future and where they can develop and where they can progress too as well.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

It’s a great career, Danielle. You’re absolutely right. And there’s a lot of employers that we speak to. And they keep knocking on our doors, saying, “Could we please have rehabilitation counselors?” It’s exactly for these aspects. We provide counseling. We can understand the research and methodology. We understand the vocational aspects, injury management, disability … when things really go wrong, we understand it … and systems.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

So this really taps nicely into what you’re trying to achieve with the mentally healthy workplaces. And I agree, prevention is way better than us seeing those cases 15 years later.

Danielle Mik:

Yeah. Well, thank you Boris.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Pleasure.

Danielle Mik:

Thanks for your time. Hopefully we can chat another time.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

Agree. Take care.

Danielle Mik:

Okay.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

All the best.

Danielle Mik:

Thanks. Bye.

Dr. Boris Fedoric:

See you.