Job overview

Staff are the most important asset within the NHS. Join our amazing team as we support their health and wellbeing.

We are seeking a dedicated and compassionate Occupational Health Senior Practitioner with a strong background in mental health to join our team within one of the largest NHS Trusts in the UK. Working as part of a multidisciplinary team within our Employee Health and Wellbeing (EHW) Service, you will play a key role in supporting the wellbeing of our staff by providing specialist advice to help maximise employee health, wellbeing and productivity.

In this role you will assess and advise on employees’ fitness to work, helping to identify any adjustments or support required to ensure a healthy, productive workforce. Your expertise in providing psychological assessments and neurodiverse overviews will be critical in advising on complex cases, including stress, anxiety, and other psychological issues, enabling staff to return to or remain in work safely.

You will work closely with an EHW/OH multidisciplinary team, as well as HR and line managers, to deliver comprehensive occupational health services. The successful candidate will have strong communication skills, be compassionate, and have a proactive approach to problem-solving.

Main duties of the job

You will conduct mental health assessments, helping employees access both in-house and external support services. After training, you will provide expert case management on fitness for work and attendance, particularly where mental health or neurodiversity is involved.

As part of the Fitness for Work team, you’ll help shape mental health and neurodiverse pathways and Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs), working closely with stakeholders to deliver tailored support. You will also lead psychoeducation initiatives, delivering courses, critical incident debriefs, and training sessions to promote mental well-being across the Trust.

This role involves leadership, as you will manage junior team members and oversee complex cases, providing clear, specialised advice on fitness for work assessments to non-clinical colleagues. You’ll also drive innovative health programmes, ensuring the Trust's Wellbeing Strategy is at the forefront of employee support.

In addition, you’ll lead clinical audits, evaluate service effectiveness, and play a key role in policy development, ensuring we provide the highest standards of care and support.

This is an autonomous role where your expertise in mental health and neurodiversity will directly influence the well-being of our workforce.

Working for our organisation

MFT is one of the largest NHS Trusts in England with a turnover of £2.8bn & is on a different scale than most other NHS Trusts. We’re creating an exceptional integrated health & social care system for the 1 million patients who rely on our services every year.

Bringing together 10 hospitals & community services from across Manchester, Trafford & beyond, we champion collaborative working & transformation, encouraging our 30,000 workforce to pursue their most ambitious goals. We set standards that other Trusts seek to emulate so you’ll benefit from a scale of opportunity that is nothing short of extraordinary.

We’ve also created a digitally enabled organisation to improve clinical quality, patient & staff experience, operational effectiveness & driving research, and innovation through the introduction of Hive; our Electronic Patient Record system which launched in September 2022.

We’re proud to be a major academic Research Centre & Education provider, providing you with a robust infrastructure to encourage and facilitate high-quality research programmes. What’s more, we’re excited to be embarking on our Green Plan which sets out how MFT continues to play its part in making healthcare more sustainable.

 At MFT, we create and foster a culture of inclusion and belonging, provide equal opportunities for career development that are fair, open, and transparent, protecting your health and wellbeing and shaping the future of our organisation together.