How far can you go?
You’ve heard that using pre-employment questionnaires can be an effective way to spot potential new recruits who might suffer with an attendance problem. But how far does the law really allow you to go?
What is acceptable use?
With sickness absence costing UK businesses around £12 billion a year, it isn’t hard to see the advantages of using pre-employment medical questionnaires to weed out unsuitable candidates. However, for those employers who don’t have easy access to occupational health advice, the question is just how far can you go in using these questionnaires before you require medical input or risk infringing data protection laws?
Data protection issues
As these questionnaires ask for information that not only identifies an individual, but also contains “sensitive” data, e.g. medical history, their use is covered by the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA). They’re also covered by its Code of Practice on health records, which, whilst not having legal status, will be used to assess your compliance in the event of a complaint or claim. For this reason, do ensure that your use stays on the right side of the law, especially with regard to the medical information you ask for.
How much medical information?
As these questionnaires are used as a filter, e.g. to assess suitability for a physically demanding role, or to identify a history of sickness absence, very limited information is required. Luckily, this can be dealt with by issuing a questionnaire which asks the job applicant to tick a box which describes an illness/condition, e.g. heart problems. As long as this information is kept secure with limited access, there shouldn’t be a problem. This is because no details are given, only confirmation of a condition. Plus, staff aren’t being required to make judgements, only to determine if the point is reached where such input is necessary.
Tip. Ensure that the conditions referred to in the tick boxes are relevant to your business.
Call in the cavalry
Often, the completed questionnaire won’t reveal any concerns and nothing else will be required. However, depending on the job, ticks in some boxes, such as cancer or depression, may raise legitimate concerns. If so, you should be safe in making enquiries, provided they are restricted to the condition’s impact on the job being recruited for. If you’re still concerned about the amount of sick leave that’s been taken, or about the need to make reasonable adjustments (should a qualifying disability be suspected), this is the time to consider referral to a medical advisor.
Administering the questionnaire
With recent developments in data protection good practice, issuing questionnaires may be seen as being a minefield. However, it should be okay if you can justify its purpose.
Tip. Always be able to justify your use of these questionnaires. So in practice only issue for certain roles, e.g. those which require heavy lifting, or safety critical jobs which involve lots of driving or supervision of dangerous machinery or equipment.
The next step
For a free copy of our health questionnaire, visit http://personnel.indicator.co.uk (PS 09.08.02).
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