Clinical skills & passion are Kelly-Anne’s keys to workplace rehab success

Woolloongabba’s new Team Manager Kelly-Anne Salter joined KINNECT in June 2024 and is already infusing her enthusiasm for helping others recover from injury and illness into her role. Kelly-Anne talked to us about her background, experiences working at the crossroads of physical and psychological injuries, and her passion for supporting the Woolloongabba team to grow in skills and strength. 

An Accredited Exercise Physiologist, Kelly-Anne began her career with clinical work, but quickly ‘fell’ into workplace rehabilitation and has worked primarily in this space, achieving a high level of skill and seniority as a workplace rehabilitation consultant. In a previous role, Kelly-Anne was a lead consultant and oversaw quality and operational excellence. She has led large-scale injury prevention projects, designing, developing and implementing them from identifying customer needs through to full fruition. 

Working at the intersection of physical and psychological injury 

While working in the internal injury management team for a large government employer Kelly focused on psychological injury cases, both compensable and non-compensable, providing workplace support to injured and ill workers while working closely with HR and supervisors. It was during this role that she experienced the depth of challenges that workplace rehabilitation consultants face in balancing the goal of getting people back to health with the needs of multiple stakeholders. 

“It’s very different to physical injuries – it’s a lot more time consuming, more in depth, and there’s a lot more involved. And there’s a lot more communication and stakeholder management. 

“You see a variety of situations where things haven’t gone well for people and their managers, from health to performance and everything in between. I was regularly involved in the worst-case scenarios, where there’s a really poor working relationship between the worker and their manager and there’s performance issues at play. I was in the trenches, so to speak, with those cases, and because I was internal, I was sitting in the room with the HR partner, possibly health and safety partner, and with all the various supervisors.  

“Because of that experience, I’m able to give my team some context and some advice when my team face those situations. Sometimes the line between health and performance in a psychological injury can be a difficult line to walk and we need to know what is within our scope and what isn’t so we can manage those expectations with our stakeholders.  

“For my personal career journey, it’s allowed me to hone my communication skills and helped me understand and shine light on aspects of being a good supervisor and being a good leader,” Kelly-Anne explained. 

Managing psychological barriers to facilitate physical injury recovery

Having seen the impacts personally in previous roles, Kelly-Anne firmly believes that the recovery of physical and psychological injuries goes hand-in-hand and needs to be managed as such: “Recovery comes down to the level of support that they’re receiving and the length of time they’re away from work. We know that the longer that is, the more likely it is that a secondary psychological injury can occur.  

“The physical injury can impact their whole life, but if someone feels that they have support, whether that be from their employer, the insurer and any third party such as a rehabilitation provider – and have a process to answer questions and help them overcome their psychological barriers – there’s less impact on the recovery of their physical injury,” she said. 

But Kelly-Anne warns that the more challenges a worker faces recovering and returning to work from a physical injury, the more likely that a psychological injury will occur. This can result in a negative cycle where one impacts the other, making each progressively worse. “Fortunately, if we can intervene and provide the right support in those situations and prevent that from happening, we generally see much better results and outcomes for the person and their employer,” she said. 

Energising a new team with knowledge, passion and skills 

Since joining the Woolloongabba team in their newly refurbished office in June 2024, Kelly-Anne has been busy getting to know the business and supporting consultants and clients. From the joy she expresses, it’s clear that her start at KINNECT has been overwhelmingly positive. 

“The culture and team are amazing. I’m’ enjoying being able to support rehabilitation consultants to do what we do best and help uplift their skills and capability. I enjoy looking after clients to ensure we’re getting good outcomes and meeting their needs,” she enthused.  

Kelly-Anne was also quick to note that the diversity of tasks and people she encounters makes her role incredibly fulfilling: “It’s a very fast-paced and varied role where I use a lot of skills and look at various sides of the business which suits me well.  

“Being a Workplace Rehabilitation Team Manager is such a diverse role for an allied health professional. Having done some clinical work sporadically through my career, it’s definitely more interesting,” Kelly-Anne enthused. 

However, it’s being able to actively work on achieving KINNECT’s ‘why’ – to help people – that keeps her motivated: “You get into allied health and into this industry because you want to help people and that’s what I enjoy.  

“I’m someone who likes to be challenged and help others overcome their challenges. Here, we get to see the outcome – the positive impact that you’re having on people’s lives – and it’s really rewarding because we’re the ones making that happen,” she said. 

As a manager, Kelly-Anne wants to create a happy, healthy workplace not just for the customers we service, but for her team, by taking her passion for helping others and relating it to the people she directly supervises: “We have a skills and experience shortage in the workplace rehabilitation industry. As someone who has been doing this work for over ten years, I feel it’s my duty to give back by sharing my skills and knowledge with others to uplift their capability so that we have a really healthy, thriving industry and we can continue to help people.” 

Kelly-Anne also said that KINNECT’s focus on professional development is a key motivator for her and something she hopes to promote within her team: “You can really grow and learn a lot here, not just in terms of formal career progression, which is great, but within the role of rehabilitation consultant.  

“I feel that there’s so much skill development and capability building possible during day-to-day work – everything from communication to strategy and planning.”  

Kelly’s advice to those considering a move into workplace rehabilitation 

Kelly-Anne is quick to emphasise how diverse and interesting it is with unique challenges you won’t find in other roles. She also points out while workplace rehabilitation roles may seem administration-heavy, clinical skills are vital for success. “It’s important to know that if you’ve only worked clinically or have a clinically focused lens that you’ll still use those skills in this job every day, and the better those skills are there, the better consultant you can be. 

“Workplace Rehabilitation Consultants need to apply clinical justification, that critical reasoning, to everything we do, otherwise it would just be an administrative role. We need to be allied health professionals in this role for a reason, and we use those clinical skills to facilitate amazing outcomes for people. 

“Also, if you’re a clinician, especially if you’re working with compensable injuries, you see quite a bit of the same each day, and there are clinical protocols that are standard for any given situation. Whereas in workplace rehabilitation, you have to be a problem solver and think outside the box and step your clinical skills up a notch,” Kelly-Anne explained. 

If you’d like to work with one of our dedicated and experienced Team Managers, like Kelly-Anne, explore the roles available in our careers centre.