Pre-placement Health Screening

Pre-placement health screening helps minimise the risk of :

• Employing someone who’s health prevents them from performing a fundamental or intrinsic requirement of the job, even with adjustments.  Examples might include a Scaffolder with a disability which renders them unable to climb a ladder or an HGV driver who has un-correctable impaired vision.
• Breaching your legal obligations to identify and control for risks to your new starter’s health, safety and welfare, including the implementation of reasonable adjustments.  For further information, click here to read Occupational Health Standards. 

You can usefully screen any new starter:

• Around 1% may have a health condition which prevents them from performing intrinsic requirements of the job.
• More than 10% are likely to require some form of adjustment. 

You should certainly screen new starters where their job places higher demands upon their physical and / or  mental health or exposes them to greater physical and / or mental health risks.

We use a pre-placement health screening questionnaire (a Microsoft Word document or Google Doc) to obtain the information we need from your new starter.  We will carefully design the questionnaire to capture the minimum necessary information to identify health conditions which could:

• Prevent someone from performing the intrinsic requirements of the job.
• Affect your new starter’s capability to perform a job function.
• Be aggravated by a job function.  For example, a questionnaire for a job involving baking, painting or insulating may include questions about sensitivities to respiratory irritants and asthmagens.
• Pose a risk to the health and safety of other colleagues, customers and the public.

We’ll guide you through a sequence of questions to help us understand the job and consequently design the questionnaire for your approval.  We have a library of “default” questionnaires from which we can select and amend based upon the specific requirements of the job you are recruiting for.

You will send the questionnaire (together with our guide to completion) to your new starter together with the offer letter or shortly afterwards.

Your new starter will complete the questionnaire, password protect it and return it directly to Work Wellness. 

The completed questionnaire is processed in accordance with the Access to Medical Records Act.  For example, it would be filed by ourselves and not disclosed to yourself.

The questionnaire responses are carefully assessed by a qualified occupational health specialist practitioner.  Their experience enables them to recognise ambiguous / evasive responses potentially masking a significant health condition which needs to be clarified with your new starter.  This is certainly not an in-tray exercise carried out by an OH technician or admin assistant.

Where a response is not provided, is unclear, ambiguous or may imply a health condition then we will follow-up with your new starter to obtain clarification.

Normally, within 3 working days of receiving a pre-placement health screening questionnaire, we will report back to you to say that your new starter:

• Has declared no health conditions which affect the recruitment and induction process.  They are “certified” as fit to perform the job without adjustments.
• Has been asked to clarify a response.  We will normally report back to you within 3 working days of receiving clarification.
• Has declared one or more health conditions and that we recommend an Occupational Health Assessment to more fully understand the condition and recommend adjustments to enable them to perform to the best of their capacity and without further aggravating the condition.
• Has declared one or more health conditions which renders them unfit to perform an intrinsic requirement of the job.  You might then decide to withdraw your conditional offer of employment.