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Want to stay on the right side of the law? We support businesses and public authorities and help them to promote good practice.
 
 

Medical assessments

What you need to know

 

Medical questionnaires and assessments

You should only seek information from job applicants and employees about their health when you have good reasons for doing so, i.e. reasons that are objectively justifiable.

Medical questionnaires, medical examinations or advisers’ opinions should only be factored into a final selection decision, and should not be treated in itself as deciding the matter without justification.

In particular, in the case of disabled applicants, you should also consider what reasonable adjustments may be required, and you should make your final selection decision only following an assessment of how the applicant would perform in the job if these reasonable adjustments were actually made.

Good practice recommendations

  • Do not include questions about job applicants’ health or medical history in the application form
     
  • Do not require applicants to submit a completed medical questionnaire together with their application forms. Only seek the information from those successful applicants who have been given conditional job offers
     
  • Apply your policy consistently and in a non-discriminatory manner. In particular, disabled applicants and migrant workers should not, without justification, be singled out to complete medical questionnaires, or to undergo medical examinations.
     
  • Inform applicants about how questionnaire responses, examination results and medical opinions will be used.
     
  • When briefing your designated medical advisers, provide them with structured guidance as to the requirements of the jobs in question, including the job descriptions and personnel specifications, as well as descriptions of the relevant working environments.
     
  • Medical questionnaires and medical examinations should seek to elicit sufficient, relevant and reliable contemporaneous information:
  - about an applicant’s ability to carry out the particular duties of the job
  - in the case of disabled applicants, to assist the employer to make reasonable adjustments
 

Data protection safeguards

You should not collect health information without having established data protection safeguards, as required by the Data Protection Act
 

Further guidance is available online at nibusinessinfo.co.uk

 

 
 

 
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