Additional Services
Transparent, independent, and unbiased vocational incapacity and ill health assessments.
Additional Services
Transparent, independent, and unbiased vocational incapacity and ill health assessments.
Incapacity and Disability Fund Rules
Soma assists Pension Funds or Disability Scheme Trustees in the development and formulation of disability or ill health retirement rules to ensure greater synergy and compatibility between current labour legislation and occupational disability parameters. Many disability fund rules are outdated and don’t allow for the integration of the requirements of labour legislation, Code of Good Practice, and the long-term Pension Fund Act in the assessment and determination of occupational disability and the validation or otherwise of disability benefits. Soma specialises in the development and drafting of disability fund rules that take all these issues into account and ensure equitable assessment for all role players, the employer, fund, and applicant.
Ad Hoc Consulting
Functional Capacity Evaluation
This is a comprehensive, objective testing of an employee’s ability to carry out on-the-job tasks. It can be used to determine an employee’s ability to return to work or to perform alternative work, and it can also inform reasonable rehabilitation and retraining to enable redeployment.
Medico-legal Occupational Therapist Evaluations
Soma’s occupational therapists are tasked with evaluating, specifying, and treating problems that interfere with employee performance and productivity – as well as carrying out medico-legal assessments of work function. They analyse, plan, create and participate in rehabilitative programmes that help to restore vocational skills and capability.
Job and Work Site Analysis
Combine a functional capacity evaluation with a work visit and on-site job analysis often necessary to evaluate specific demands placed on the employee, and to ensure reasonable recommendations in terms of adaptations. It is important to note that, where necessary, these analyses can also take the form of home visits.
Medical Certificate Management
The ‘magical’ medical certificate! Legal issues regarding medical certificates are not well understood, and management, unions and employees appear not to know the limitations thereof and their specific responsibilities in this arena. Soma advises employers on the management of medical certificates – we examine the validity, the duration relative to the diagnosis, patterns of absence and we liaise with treating medical doctors.
Sick Leave is heavily supported by medical certificates which are accepted by management as prima facie evidence that the illness and the allied book-off period is genuine and may not be challenged. Alleged sick absence approval is given without question upon receipt of a medical certificate which makes sick leave usage a simple method to justify employee absence. The employer, unions and employees perceive that all that is required to have sick absence ratified is a medical certificate. So, employees go to any length to secure the ‘magical’ medical certificate believing it is the licence to legitimate absence. But nothing could be further from the truth. The “Back-dated”, “As I was informed” and “No Diagnosis” medical certificates are never questioned and simply accepted at face value. Medical certificates are well administered but there is no consequential management of the underlying absence, and an absence management opportunity is thus lost.
Facilitation of independent specialist examinations
Soma facilitates independent specialist medical examinations on behalf of the employer in cases where an employee suffers from a chronic condition impacting on their ability to perform the requirements of their occupation optimally. Medical information relating to the employee is analysed after which the relevant medical specialist is sourced.
Organisational Productivity Analysis
Productivity analysis relating to employees is designed to ascertain the root causes of compromised employee well-being and associated poor productivity. Once these fundamentals are determined, we propose appropriate, goal-directed intervention to guide future strategic intervention.
Our service involves:
- Situational analyses of processes and methodologies, manual and automated
- Intervention management
- Operational effectiveness and efficiency consulting
Document Management
Nominated employees of each client are given secure log in access via the client log in portal to allow for track and trace of incapacity and disability claims submitted.
Each client is provided with a dedicated email address allowing for the electronic submission of incapacity and disability claims to Soma, thereby avoiding the need for tedious hand or postal delivery of claims.
Incapacity Leave Management
We believe that employee incapacity management, in compliance with the LRA Code of Good Practice and other relevant labour laws, contributes to improved workplace productivity. It ensures that temporarily or permanently disabled employees are accommodated in productive work and considers the medical and vocational needs of ill and injured workers, to reduce the cost impact of incapacity, disability and sick absence.
When implementing an incapacity process, it is important that Soma first establish whether the employee has a disability. Soma then assists the employer in establishing the extent to which the employee’s work circumstances or duties can be adapted to accommodate the disability. In short: finding alternatives before dismissal.
