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Volunteer health questionnaire for current employees
Rank: Forum user 
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Hi.it has been mentioned in our company that could be good idea to implement volonteer health questionnaire for current employees.have you got any experience or can suggest pros and cons.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Don't try to do it yourself - get an occ health provider to do it for you. Then all the ethical issues are covered.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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From an employees point of view I can see a list of cons and no pros. If I wanted my employer to know of any health issues that affect me I would have already told them. And there's no way I'm telling them about my addictions, afflictions and dodgy knees.
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Rank: Super forum user
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Get a nurse lead as against doctor lead occie health co to help -its cheaper and just as good
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Rank: Super forum user 
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Do you do anything that requires health surveillance? If you do it will be a requirement to do, how you achieve it is up to you, but the people doing it must be competent in the eyes of the HSE. It is only related to occupational, not general health. We had a company spending too much time on non-occy subjects and had to specify the checks. Properly introduced and run it can have positive effects. Have a look at the HSE site, HSG 61 (the old publication) having been withdrawn. http://www.hse.gov.uk/he...h-surveillance/index.htm
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Rank: Super forum user
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benek84 wrote:Hi.it has been mentioned in our company that could be good idea to implement volonteer health questionnaire for current employees.have you got any experience or can suggest pros and cons. I suppose they are voluntarily going to put in place the necessary security on the data gained, or maybe just put it in an envelope where anyone can "'ave a gander" with a few spare minutes? Another legal minefield you're about to wander into...or maybe you have just got some "interesting" staff members that someone wants to know more about? http://www.fom.ac.uk/wp-...nt/uploads/empopguid.pdf
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Rank: Super forum user 
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One of the down sides of this type of initiative is that some personnel will not want to declare any chronic condition for fear of losing their job or being transferred to lesser role. I have had first hand experience of this. Therefore a voluntary health questionnaire is reliant on the integrity of the respondents.
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Rank: Super forum user 
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quote=RayRapp]One of the down sides of this type of initiative is that some personnel will not want to declare any chronic condition for fear of losing their job or being transferred to lesser role. I have had first hand experience of this. Therefore a voluntary health questionnaire is reliant on the integrity of the respondents. Agree, however from a backside covering position if they fail to mention something, that later turns out to be an issue, you can demonstrate that you ( or your Occ health provider) were not informed. You need to ensure they all understand the benefit for them of early identification of issues. Then if they play ball all good, if not then that is up to them, you will have done everything reasonable. People can have all sorts of irrational fears ( or perfectly good fears as Ray notes), so good explanation is of what you want to do and why is essential. As it is Friday - in a past role we were doing a noise survey and a monitoring device was attached to an employee. It soon became apparent he thought we were going to record his conversations, when he asked if he could remove it a break time and we asked why :0) Chris
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Rank: Forum user
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Why?
What information do you need?
What are you going to do differently with the information, that you wouldn't without?
It is all to easy to say we want to do a survey of.........., but then not know what to do with the information when you've got it.
On a more helpful note, use an occ health provider - all personal medical information requires consent and it will be quite difficult to work around this. Also, you then have to think about "healthy worker bias" - your occ health will talk about this if they know what they're about. In effect the very nature of what you are attempting will result in more bias towards feedback from the "healthy workers" and no feedback (due to none participation) from the less healthy people - thereby completely messing up the results - unless you know what your doing.
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Rank: Forum user
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Thank you All for responses.first of all it would be volonteerly so people dont have to do it instead of not telling us the true.
On the other hand it has been mentioned that it could be good idea thinking about first aid- first aiders could be aware of it so could emphasise that area in the training/education.
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Rank: Super forum user
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benek84 wrote:Thank you All for responses.first of all it would be volonteerly so people dont have to do it instead of not telling us the true.
On the other hand it has been mentioned that it could be good idea thinking about first aid- first aiders could be aware of it so could emphasise that area in the training/education.
Voluntary or not, confidentiality is still required. The data has to be kept secure and access limited. The person who provided the health data may not want the first aider/s to have access to it, and you cannot allow them routine access anyway. It all sounds so haphazard and makeshift; "let's get all their health problems here and see what we've got" I don't think you've thought this through. Here, have a read of the data protection act. It isn't voluntary, it is mandatory: https://ico.org.uk/for-o...tection/key-definitions/
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