What is occupational Health and why do I need it?
A good Occupational Health company will listen to what concerns you have and then make
recommendations to ensure that your employees are fit to carry out their work and ensure that
you meet all the current health and safety legislation.
Many companies currently undertake some aspects of Occupational Health themselves totally
unaware that in many cases they are breaching the data protection act. A typical example would
be where prospective employees are asked to complete a pre-employment medical questionnaire
which is then reviewed by someone in the HR department, who has no medical training and uses
the Internet to look up any illnesses. The problem here of course is that you are asking people to
divulge medical information to a non-medical person, which both contravenes the Access to
Medical Records Act 1990 and also the Data Protection Act of 1998.
The correct way for this to be done is for a qualified occupational health doctor or nurse to review
the questionnaire in conjunction with the job description for that post. In this way the demands of
the job can be reviewed and the doctor or nurse can then determine if the individual will have any
problems in being able to carry out all, or any part of the proposed job. Only this way can the
company be protected against a claim in the future
This is just one aspect of how the company needs to protect itself from potential future claims
from the employee.
Tribunals are today overloaded with cases where the company didn’t carry out the correct
procedures when dealing with employee sickness absence or recruitment and in most cases the
cost of a good occupational health service is miniscule in comparisons to some of the awards
made to employees.
Please read the additional leaflets for further information on what to expect from a good
occupational health company