Purple Co — 2 Years in Review
BY PURPLE CO
Hello – Jo Muirhead here – Founder & Principal Consultant of Purple Co.
For the last 2 years I’ve been analysing how we continue to help people make work, work well. One of our core values here at Purple Co is to provide a Return On Investment (ROI) for our clients and their funding bodies.
It is important for all of us here at Purple Co to ensure that we are providing a valuable service.
I appreciate that we can all make statistics say what we want them to say. However, what I know as a Rehabilitation Counsellor and Business Owner who is passionate about her team and the work we do, if we can’t measure it we can’t improve it. [1]
When I started putting together a list of the things I wanted to measure in Purple Co the list was really long (I am nothing if not an overachiever). A lot of the data was unnecessary. To be frank, we have a very small sample size compared to other service providers in our industry therefore any anomalies will greatly skew our results. However, many of our customers need to make a business case about using services like Purple Co when helping their client’s recover, return to work and maintain employment. We want to help with that decision making. We all know that rehabilitation and RTW services can offer incredible value when they are used well, and GOOD REHAB is employed. [2]
I don’t claim to be a statistician. However, I do have some pretty big plans for being able to report on the objective and subjective experience of our client’s and our customers – so watch this space as we continue to grow and develop.
For the time being, I’ve sought to provide a snap- shot of who we have served and our progress, so that claims assessors, claims managers, rehabilitation professionals, employers and prospective clients can understand that getting the “job done well” is not an expense – rather an investment.
[1] https://hbr.org/2010/10/what-cant-be-measured
[2] http://www.swissre.com/australia_newzealand/rehabilitation_watch_2016.html
HERE IS WHAT WE HAVE BEEN WORKING ON IN THE
PAST 9 MONTHS
This data is based on the work we have done within the Income Protection (IP), TPD and Life Insurance sector. This remains the largest source of client work for us however it is not what we are limited to.
We also serve
- CTP clients
- LTCSA participants
- Privately funded client’s
In the past 9 months we have experienced growth in these client bases which is great for diversification. This contributes to a dynamic team culture here at Purple Co, as all of us continue to work with a range of client’s, upskilling in terms of experience and knowledge and ensures that we are able to serve those people who need us when they need us.
What remains consistent is that most of work we are asked to do in the Life Insurance, IP & TPD space is Assessment Only, Specific Service or very short-term duration. This has been consistent in the 2 years of data that I have been reporting on.
The types of services we provided are:
- Employability Assessments [3]
- Transferable Skills Analysis
- Medical Case Conferencing
- Labour Market analysis
- Training Research
- Forensic Style initial needs analysis
- Fatigue Management programs
- Short term job seeking skills audit, training and implementation
- Community reintegration
- Medical management
- Workplace assessment
- Assessment of pre-disability occupation
[3] http://riskebusinessmagazine.com/2017/09/25/employability-assessments-raising-the-industry-standard/
HERE IS A HISTORICAL REPRESENTATION OF THE LAST 2 YEARS SINCE I HAVE STARTED COMPILING THIS INFORMATION
As you can see, one of the things we are here at Purple Co, is consistent. Assessment Only and short term specific services remain our biggest source of referrals, and our RTW rates (for people who are job attached and people who require a new job) range between 66% – 75%.
The cost of our services has increased slightly for Assessment Only and short-term services in the last two years and reflects the amount of work we are doing per service in a very short concentrated period of time.
The average cost of comprehensive rehabilitation, RTW and recovery programs, however, has not been increasing, and that is thanks to Purple Co remaining committed to ensuring that we have the right knowledge, skills and technologies to be able to execute the work that needs doing with clients.
We remain committed to helping people to make work work well for them. We acknowledge that work is a significant part of a person’s life, and that injury, illness and disability need not be grounds for a lack of employment. With employment comes choice, health benefits of work are realised, and we are more fully able to participate in everyday life activities. Work is not the by product of good health or when we are well enough, it actually contributes to our health and wellness.
If you, or someone you know would like assistance with being able to return to work, find a new job, stay at work following injury, illness or disability please don’t hesitate to contact us.
Until next time
Jo Muirhead
Jo and her team are all about helping people make work work well.
Work is such an incredibly significant part of our life, yet for so many of us work is hard and leaves us feeling exhausted, unwell and, in extreme cases, unable to earn at all. As qualified allied health professionals with significant coaching training, Jo and her team use their expertise in human behavior to help people to make their work work well for them.
We know that work is not all of who we are, BUT without work our health, our wealth and the ability to live a fulfilled life can’t be realized.
The key problems we help to solve are:
- Helping you return to work following injury, illness and trauma.
- Sustainably managing change and transition even after forced change such as illness, redundancy, downsizing, retrenchment.
- Building personal capacity and resilience as a foundation for creating success in the 21st Century workforce.
- Mapping, planning and implementing how to make your work work well.
How to contact Jo:
+61 414 276 265
https://www.linkedin.com/in/purpleco/
https://www.facebook.com/jo.muirhead/
Twitter @JoJo_Muirhead
Instagram jo_muirhead
We are proud signatories to Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine (AFOEM) of The Royal Australasian College of Physicians (RACP) Consensus Statement on the Health Benefits of Work.
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