Developing a collaborative and sustainable return to work program for employees with common mental disorders: a participatory research with public and private organizations.

To disentangle the key steps of the return to work (RTW) process and offer clearer recovery-focused and sustainable RTW for people on sick leave due to common mental disorders (CMDs). This participatory research involves two large Canadian organizations. In each organization, we established an advisory committee composed of RTW stakeholders. We collected information in semi-structured interviews from RTW stakeholders ( Ten common key steps within the three RTW phases emerged from the semi-structured interviews with RTW stakeholders and discussions with the two advisory committees: 1) At the beginning of sickness absence and involvement of disability management team (phase 1), we found 3 steps (e.g., taking charge of the file), 2) during the involvement in treatment rehabilitation with health professionals and preparation of the RTW (phase 2), 4 steps (e.g., RTW preparation), and finally 3) the RTW and follow-up (phase 3) consists of 3 steps (e.g., gradual RTW). A participatory study involving RTW stakeholders helped identify 10 common key steps within three phases to support RTW sustainability of people with CMDs. Future research will need to address how RTW coordinators intervene in the RTW process of employees with CMDs within these steps.IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATIONRehabilitation professionals will benefit from a detailed description of the RTW process (10 steps spread out over 3 RTW phases), allowing them to standardize it while adopting a personalized approach for the employee on sick leave.Rehabilitation professionals are informed of stakeholders' role and actions required in the RTW process; as such the communication between RTW stakeholders should be improved.RTW coordinators will be able to tailor more precisely their intervention, considering the detailed RTW process and RTW stakeholders' role and actions, and thus will become the pivot occupational health specialists for the RTW process.