Happy New Year

We are a Health Provider employing c14,000 employees in the UK and use an out sourced independant OHS provider to carry out pre-emploment screening (questionnaire and referral as necessary) and management referral once in employment if necessary. This is a hugh cost to the company.

Currently we are questioning the need for the pre-employment service and welcome your thoughts on the pros and cons of carrying out this check. Should we stop using the pre-employment screening? Please note we do employee a number of overseas staff.

In addition we are not happy with the OHS provider that we use, does anyone have a provider that they are happy with and could provide their details.

Thank you for your help

Hi there,

Last year I recommended that we stop doing pre-employment health checks. We found that we were paying a large amount of money for very little information.

We amended our application forms to include a more comprehensive question about whether a person had anything wrong with them that might affect their work or would need special adjustment of their workplace to help them in their role. (It's not quite that but you get the idea)

If they answered no it's fine - we're covered if anything untoward appears in the future as they have signed the application form and if they answer yes we ask their permission to be checked by our OH advisor who can let us know if there is anything we can do to help. Help has included everything from buying a new better chair for their desk all the way through to providing a driver whilst they recuperate.

I am not happy with our OHS provider either and in the process of finding someone new. I look forward to reading other people's experiences and suggestions for good OHS provision!

I hope that helps,

Kind regards,

Christopher Temmink

HR Advisor, Everest Limited

Pre-screening questionnaires can be done which are reviewed by HR. They contain no medical details but flag up any problems which can then be addressed by completeing a further detailed form which is then screened by occupational health.

This speeds up the process, is cheaper and especially useful where agency staff are used.

As an OH and Employee Risk Manager I am saddened to hear that you and others posing here are not getting what you need.  Pre-employment Questionnaires are of course only a snapshot at the time, and as people can claim that they were worried about discrimination and therefore did not declare something about their health, they are also notoriously unreliable.  We are looking at revising the questions asked, as we believe that we should be able to give useful advice about reasonable adjustments and modifications, and assess the employee's functional ability, rather than trying to decide whether an individual is "fit" for work.  This is extremely dicy ground, where there is no formal medical standard against which to measure fitness, and no-one really recommends trying to set this up, except in very few circumstances where it would be justifiable. These circumstances are already clearly defined, such as Oil Platform workers, Firemen, members of the armed forces.

It is also true that the practice of pre-screening the completed health questionnaires by non medical persons is a risky business;  you could be exposing you to possible claims of discrimination, breaching confidentiality, and the legal issue that non-medical persons are not deemed competent to assess medical questionnaires, so we would not recommend it.  We already use a 2 tier approach ourselves, whereby our non-clinical staff check the questionnaires and pass any that need further scrutiny over to our nurses. Our service level agreement normally says we will do this within 2 working days of receipt unless we have to make further medical enquiries. We are about to go over to putting the questionnaires online, for our customers convenience.  Of course, we also provide a huge variety of other services, and if you are interested you may like to look at our website www.healthcare-rm.com.

Happy New Year Tony.

There is indeed a better and more cost effective way of conducting OH screening. Typically OH screening involves nurses manually checking all forms. However the 80-90% of OH forms that are marked by applicants as 'no' mostly do not require screening by a nurse. You could reduce your costs significantly by adopting this methodology: use nurses to screen only those forms that require attention.

It is still important to ask applicants to fill a detailed OH questionnaire as it gives them the option to declare more information about their health in confidence. Many applicants will be deterred from declaring anything on a general application form that can be seen by virtually anyone in the company.

A proper OH questionnaire screened in confidence by a third party is the way to go about this. However, using technology to filter out those forms that require attention is your way of improving the service whilst reducing costs.

I would be more than happy to discuss any of your needs should you find this interesting. For your information, I work for Verifile Ltd which specialises in pre-employment screening.

Best wishes,

Ben

_____________________________________________________________________

   Eyal Ben Cohen
        Managing Director

        Email  ebc@verifile.co.uk

   Verifile Limited
        I-Lab, Priory Business Park

        Stannard Way

        Bedford, MK44 3RZ, UK

        Tel. +44 1234 834670

        Fax +44 1234 834671

   Checking Facts Building Trust          www.verifile.co.uk

______________________________________________________________________

Hi Ben

Thank you for your advice. I have your email should we require further assistance.

Thanks again

Toni

Hi,

I have read through your post with great interest and thought I should comment on a few of the flaws I picked up upon.

I noticed a number of replies stating the health declarations should be checked by either a third party or HR Dept. This is a very common practise, however with many of the new laws and legislation coming in to force I don’t believe this can be done legally. There was a case at the end of last year and the company had carried out there on pre employment screening and the company was prosecuted as a result and also lost the case.

I have double checked with the Faculty of Occupational Medicine who confirmed that this practise would not adhere to the medical confidentiality act and also several other rulings. I would suggest before taking any of this advise on board that you contact them by visiting http://www.facoccmed.ac.uk/contact/index.jsp

Pre employment screening is a vital part of ensuring a employee is fit in health and it is one of these things that sadly it does require a health professional to decide if they are fit to work or not. I appreciate that some companies may adapt other processes to save a few pennies but it is best to do things by the book.

As a gesture of goodwill I would welcome the opportunity to provide you with a free sample of our screening. We would screen so many employees free of charge with no obligation. Please feel free to contact us at info@healthierbusienssltd.co.uk we would also supply you with an excellent rate.

I read this with interest from Australia - I have both an OH/Risk Management and HR background and currently work as a HR Consultant. I have worked in the UK in OHS.   From my experience I agree that generic pre-employment questionnaires can be a waste of money -  I believe the real value comes from being quite specific in your requirements and defining what you are wanting to achieve with the questionnaire ie I believe there is real value if it can be used as a risk management tool to ensure 'jobfit' ie someone is capable of carrying out the tasks without significant risk of injury to either themselves or fellow workers as there should be a consistent reduction in costs associated with work related injury or sick leave.   I have implemented a system called a 'job dictionary'.  This details the functional task requirements (physical requirements), environmental conditions, PPE requirements etc. for each job type and we use it from recruitment to other areas such as case management and return to work programs etc. It enables your OH people to do a quick risk assessment that is specific to the job which reduces time and therefore should reduce cost. It also prevents workers from providing their doctors with inaccurate information about their jobs eg such as enlarging on how much time is spent on data entry etc or being required to climb heights.   I imagine that for 14000 staff it may be more cost effective and provide more value added service to have your own in-house OH person to compile and review results and arrange follow up/referral management in-house.  I have implemented an online pre-employment questionnaire system with a previous employer which opened an additional questionnaire to any 'yes' anwer.  Only 'yes' answers were forwarded to me on the online system so there were only a few hundred reviews rather than thousands.  This enabled me to assess whether the applicant was suitable or not suitable taking into account what actions we could implement to make them suitable.  The results of the reviews were at times included in the employment contracts eg their employment was subject to certain conditions eg ground work only if they had a condition which created an unsafe environment for them or their fellow workers if they were to work at heights.       

HR and line managers are not qualified to assess medical information. 

To save money your company could cut pre-employment screening and only use occupational health if a problem is identified during employment.

I would recommend Katie Eastwell of Canaan Occupational Health, based in Aylesbury. She will visit sites, but can do reports remotely to save money.

Sandra Beale FCIPD