Employers should avoid discrimination in evaluations
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There is a potential to violate anti-discrimination laws when employers require job candidates to undergo post-offer physical ability testing, experts say.
“With the Americans with Disabilities Act and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines, you have to be careful,” said Scott Strickland, national director of therapy services in Valencia, Calif., for U.S. HealthWorks Medical Group.
The key is to limit the examination process to determining only whether a potential employee can safely fulfill the essential functions of the job for which they may be hired, Mr. Strickland said. Look at why a work position exists, he said.
Document the physical demands of a job and make sure any testing is consistent with those demands, added Donald Gonzales, a senior consultant with expertise in absence, health and productivity at Zurich North America in Los Angeles.
“If you are testing someone in manufacturing who is going to be lifting a maximum of 20 pounds, perhaps repetitively throughout the day, and yet you test them to lift 60 pounds, then you have a test that is not valid,” Mr. Gonzales said. “You could be excluding people from the workplace that can later cause you issues with discrimination.”
When testing individuals who have been offered a job contingent on their ability to meet the work's physical demands, Mr. Strickland said he does not convey information to the employer about any existing health condition the employee may have.
He will test a subject's heart rate, blood pressure, comorbidities and other health data to make sure they can safely proceed with ability testing.
“But those results are never conveyed to the employer, so we don't put them in a position where they are using inappropriate information for a decision to continue with an employee,” Mr. Strickland said. “They have to go based upon whether the candidate is physically able to perform the task in a safe manner.”
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