FAQs about Employment Law

WATFORD EMPLOYMENT LAWYER FAQS

Are employers banned from carrying out health checks before a prospective employee commences employment?

The Equality Act, which was brought into force on October 1st 2010 was brought in to consolidate laws on discrimination, allowing employers and employees alike to more easily understand where they stand under the law.  However, beyond mere consolidation, the Act does bring in some changes to the substance of the law, leading to the question posed above.

Prior to the Act, the position was employers were allowed to make of health checks of people they recruit prior to employment, provided that the job has been offered and is conditional on the results of the checks. Usually these checks are made through a health questionnaire.

Why would an employer want to check someone’s health?  The simple answer is for the purposes of managing any liabilities they may be subject to should something happen to their employees, managing ;risk with reference to the nature of the job and required standards of health and safety ;assessing if the employers have adequate insurance to cover their employees.  Doing this is a difficult balancing act – if the employer takes checks too far and makes the wrong assumptions based on those checks (for example, that a disabled person cannot do a particular job, when in fact they can), the employer could be seen as acting in a discriminatory fashion.

Under the Equality Act, nothing much has changed with regards to the specific question of “whether employers are banned from carrying out health checks before a prospective employee commences employment?”  The simple answer is no they are not, so long as they make the checks after giving a job offer; the offer is conditional upon the health checks and the checks are not made for discriminatory reasons or in a discriminating fashion.  Under the Act, the central question that an employer must ask is whether the health checks are done to assess whether a person is able to “carry out a function that is intrinsic to the work concerned”.

If you have been given an offer of employment only to be subsequently refused on the basis of health checks which you feel bear little relevance to the core roles of the job, you might have a good claim against the organisation that a professional employment law solicitor can advise you on.

I feel I am being treated badly at work, is there anything which I can do?

If you feel so ill-treated that you feel you can no longer work there, you may resign and claim constructive dismissal. You can then sue your employers for unfair dismissal.

Should you feel ill-treated on the grounds of race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, pregnancy or disability, you may also sue your employer for discrimination.

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