Pre-employment Health Checks
If you normally rely on pre-employment health checks, be prepared for changes in the law that will see them banned from October 2010.
The Equality Act, coming into force this Autumn, brings all strands of discrimination law under a single framework, intentionally to create more equal opportunity in employment. One of its first provisions is the outlawing of health-related questions and questionnaires delivered during the recruitment process. This includes gathering absence information from a previous employer.
If you’re thinking this is a licence for serial slackers to slip through the net … don’t! The law is designed to ensure that disabled candidates are not rejected for work on the basis of data that has little or no bearing on their ability to do a good job for you. It doesn’t mean that you will have to take a punt on a candidate’s attitude and commitment to work. There are still plenty of things that you can do – after the offer has been issued – to qualify health and absence information that is not linked to disability and which can be used as a reason to withdraw an offer of employment.
