When little things make a big difference

A better understanding of the reality experienced by people injured at work generates efficiency dividends for the casework of the National Board of Industrial Injuries.

”Those questionnaires again! They keep making you answer the same thing. What happened? Did you get examined? (..) What symptoms did you have following the incident? But I’ve answered all that loads of times. So why should I have to keep answering it again and again? Is it because they hope I won’t be able to remember? Because it’s some kind of trap?”

Female industrial injury victim

The employees of the National Board of Industrial Injuries go to work every day in order to help those who have been injured at work. Their desire is to make a positive difference. It therefore made an impression when measures which the Board regarded as a service could be perceived as bewildering by the victims of industrial injuries.

The industrial injury victims’ experiences of the handling of their cases were pivotal when MindLab contributed to a pilot project for the National Board of Industrial Injuries that centred on so-called ‘mobile team’ interviews with industrial injury victims. The purpose of these interviews is to speed up the resolution of individual cases. All the authorities involved in the case take part in the interview, and the outcome is decided on the spot.

MindLab recruited several people who had suffered industrial injuries, and via observation and video interviews examined their experiences with the mobile team. From the experiences thus uncovered, the management team overseeing the mobile team gained new insights regarding what it feels like to suffer an industrial injury, which enabled them to identify a variety of specific adjustments to the mobile team concept.

MindLab involved:

• Four industrial injury victims chosen by the National Board of Industrial Injuries.
• Municipality and union representatives

Principal results

• Clarification of roles. Industrial injury victims now receive more specific information beforehand regarding the content of their interview with the mobile team, as well as the role of the National Board of Industrial Injuries during the interview.
• No deliberations during the interview. The deliberations of the staff of the National Board of Industrial Injuries that used to interrupt the mobile team meeting have been eliminated because the accident victims found them bewildering.
• Pedagogical approach. The increased emphasis on the circumstances of industrial injury victims allows the National Board of Industrial Injuries to adopt a more appropriate pedagogical approach, such as not giving out masses of information at once during the meeting.
• In-house training material. The National Board of Industrial Injuries uses the interview videos together with service journeys when it trains new staff at the retention centre.

What MindLab did

MindLab conducted home interviews with five industrial injury victims. These interviews, which were recorded on video, charted the experiences of each industrial injury victim throughout the entire handling of their case from the moment they were injured at work up to their interview with the mobile team. MindLab also took part in the mobile team’s interviews as observers and conducted follow-up interviews with the industrial injury victims. These interviews comprised the basis of so-called ‘service journeys’ outlining each industrial injury victim’s experience of the handling of their entire case leading up to their interview.

A workshop that inter alia included representatives from the National Board of Industrial Injuries, municipalities and unions worked on how to improve the experience of the proceedings leading up to the interview, as well as how to improve the interview itself. These adjustments give the industrial injury victims a quite different sense of calm about the interviews.