Work Safe New Zealand reports that labourers, technicians, trade workers and community and personal service workers are the three most likely to report serious claims regarding workplace injuries. In addition, the impacts of COVID-19 and government interventions means that more and more applicants are coming into the workforce with an extended period of limited work-hardening or physical conditioning.

Pre-Employment Medical Screening: What To Expect

A pre-employment medical screen provides concise information around an employee’s suitability for work through a series of questionnaires and examinations. A pre-employment screen will provide a potential employee’s medical, physical and overall capacity to work, and highlights any potential considerations required from workplace health and safety.

Benefits For Your Business

Mitigate workplace health & safety injuries

Collecting information around a worker’s current medical, physical and overall work conditioning allows greater foresight with specific job recruitment to reduce the possibility of workplace related injuries. Insight into a worker’s physical conditioning allows for better matching to the physical demands of specific jobs. Performing a drug and alcohol screen from the pre-employment medical screen enforces the standards of a workplace’s commitment to a drug and alcohol policy right from day one.

Monitoring the wellbeing of employees

Existing conditions known about an employee are recorded in a pre-employment medical screen. If successful for an employment opportunity, employers can monitor and support workers to reduce the risk of a work-related aggravation.

Simplify the decision-making process.

Existing conditions known about an employee are recorded in a pre-employment medical screen. If successful for an employment opportunity, employers can monitor and support workers to reduce the risk of a work-related aggravation.

Improving an employee’s health and safety

A pre-employment medical screen provides important information around an employee’s medical and physical suitability for work. This allows for better matching to jobs that specifically match an employee’s overall capacity to work, rather than roles which may increase the risks of and employee’s health and safety.

Industry insight

More and more industries are adopting a pre-employment medical screen as a part of the hiring process. Understanding what is involved and required with a pre-employment screen improves an employee’s preparedness and chances of success in the hiring process

Health & wellness check-in

Pre-employment medical screens are as the name suggests, medical screens. For many employees, a pre-employment allows for a dedicated time to be assessed for an employee's overall medical and physical wellbeing. This can provide important information to prompt further follow up on any part of the screen with a physician.

Functional Assessments

This includes a questionnaire which covers:

  • Medical and social history
  • Screening specific to an occupational workplace environment

Followed by a practical component with a therapist which covers:

  • Full musculoskeletal assessment
  • Physical capacity testing
  • Audiometric examination
  • Spirometry
  • Drug and alcohol screening
  • Vision testing

Musculoskeletal Assessment

A musculoskeletal assessment tests for everything involving the skeletal and muscular system of the body. This includes a range of movement testing, orthopaedic specific testing and any other tests specific to different joints of the body. 

Physical Capacity Testing

A physical capacity test assesses the strength of various body parts through different physical tests.

Audiometric Examination

An audiometric examination screens for any hearing loss in either ear in an audiometric approved environment. This involves the testing of each ear for the detection of sound at different frequencies and volumes, which can be calculated in an overall hearing loss percentage.

Vision test

A vision test screens for any visual or colour loss in either eye. This involves the testing of each eye to recall certain text size and colour at a certain distance

Spirometry Test

A spirometry test assesses the overall lung function by measuring the maximum volume of air exhaled by a person into a spirometer. This, combined with medical history, can be used to calculate and determine a person’s overall lung function.

Cardiovascular Examination

A cardiovascular examination assesses the function of the heart under stress. This is commonly completed by assessing a person’s heart rate after performing a physical strenuous test in a controlled environment.

Drug & Alcohol Screening

A drug and alcohol screen is completed with a breathalyser and a urine or oral swab test. This allows for the detection of any flagged metabolites which would warrant further investigation with a lab test.

Why Employ Health?

Reliable service delivery

Employ Health prides itself on working together as a tribe and as a team; service delivery is never dependent on one single practitioner. This allows for consistent service-delivery and timely solutions to fulfil your requirements as required.

Integrated systems solution

Employ Health provides access to bespoke systems and software, simplifying large scale pre-employment screens to user friendly dashboard and report summaries.

Seasoned and experienced team

Employ Health has serviced pre-employment medical screening for many years, which allows for unique insights across various industries and individualised recommendations. Employ Health is a time-tested team delivering timely advice.

Other Workplace Screening Tests

Frequently Asked Questions

Pre-employment screening is usually paid for by the business which is offering the pre-employment medical screen. Usually, the business enters a service agreement with an external provider to provide this service.

A pre-employment will usually take up to one hour to conduct, excluding the time required to fill out the questionnaires. This may vary with business with different requirements, some pre-employment medical screens can range from 30 minutes to 40 minutes.

A functional assessment usually consists of a full musculoskeletal assessment, strength testing components and other tests to examine a person’s physical capacity. Please see above for a full description.

A pre-employment medical screen is only one component of the overall hiring process of a business. Many other considerations in the workplace and the requirements of the business determine the final hiring of an employee.

Usually a glass of water is more than enough to suffice, it is important to not over hydrate to discomfort when coming in for a pre-employment medical screen.