Posted By Alan Barthrope I have devised a Pre-Employment Questionnaire, which I was hoping to use for all new recruits and for annual health reviews. The questionnes are quite intrusive, and need to be, to establish the existing state of health of each individual. My concern is that with all the human right stuff about etc etc, can we ask such blatently personnal questionnes and expect to get an answer? I appreciate all the data protection problems, and this will be managed accordingly. Thanks in advance for any guidance, or a point in the right direction for further information.

Posted By Paul B Alan, You need to be careful you do not fall foul of the Data Protection Act. The Act classes any information relating to an individuals physical or mental health as consituting a health record and is therefore 'sensitive data'. As such there needs to be a greater degree of control over who has access to this information. For me the principles of the DPA can be summed up in one question "What is the minimum amount of information about an individual an employer needs to collect in order for them to carry out their legal responsibilities?" In the absence of an OH dept, the HR dept may be best suited to hold this information. The guidance indicates however that even where this is the case, best practice would be to hold the information along side the employees personell file, in a separate envelope with special authorisation being granted to those who access this. Clearly at pre-employment stage there will not be any personnel files and this indicates another issue. Regardless of who the PEQ is sent to, is that person competant to interpret the information. If the information cannot be fully used for its intended purpose, the DPA would say "Why collect it?". One alternative may be to issue an initial very general questionnaire, requiring YES/NO responses, to be administered by HR. If the employee answers YES to any of the questions this is then sent for review by your Occ Health provider, who will then conduct a more detailed health questionnaire. The information Commisioners web site http://www.informationcommissioner.gov.uk/ has useful information which you may find helpful. Cheers Paul