Pre-employment medical screening

Pre-employment medical screening: Before making a job offer, the general rule is that you can’t ask questions about an applicant’s health. But, there are some exceptions, you can ask questions to establish whether an applicant will be able to carry out a specific function that is essential for the job. For example, if you are recruiting construction workers, you could ask whether applicants have a disability or health condition that would affect their ability to climb ladders.

What about after we make a job offer?

After a job offer is made, you can ask a variety of health questions. However usually most employees tend to make a job offer conditional on satisfactory health checks or responses to health questions. You must ensure health questionnaires are relevant to the job; and comply with any duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates.

If you need to design a medical questionnaire for your organistaion please CONTACT US we can assist!

The aims of pre-employment/pre-placement assessment are to

• • Ensure the prospective employee can undertake the inherent requirements of a job without putting themselves, their fellow employees or the general public at risk of illness or injury
  • Enable the company to modify work practices or work places to accommodate a prospective employee with a pre-existing medical condition and to allow them to safely undertake the inherent requirements of a job
  • Ensure the company fulfils its obligations under the relevant legislation when specific health standards exist.

IT CAN

• • Be an opportunity for prospective employees to identify possible work adjustments on health grounds, or raise any concerns about their health problems in the new job.
  • Establish base line health information
  • Allow education of new employees about potential job related health problems
  • Introduce new employees to the company’s health and safety culture
  • Allow relevant assessments where there are special health requirements, such as food handling.

IT CANNOT

• • Predict who will be poor attendees in the future
  • Select those employees who will never be sick in the future
  • Decide who is going to be a good performer or pleasant work colleague.

Your applicants will be sent a bespoke questionnaire to complete and return to our occupational health team. Where health conditions are identified we can follow up with the candidate and obtain information we require directly from the applicant’s GP.

Following our assessment, Our Occupational Health Doctor will send a certificate of fitness for work. This will highlight the employee’s ability to work and the need if any for job role adjustments to support them in the workplace. We abide by pre-agreed time-limits in order to prevent any delays with your recruitment needs.