Equalities Act 2010

During the parliamentary stages of the Equality Bill, mental health organisation Mind lobbied with other mental health and disability charities to get a ban on pre-employment questionnaires included in the Act. After securing cross-party support for the principle of a ban on questions that ask about a candidate's medical history and putting considerable pressure on Ministers, the last Government introduced a new clause to the Equality Bill making these questions unlawful.

The Equality Act came into force on October 1st 2010.  The act bans companies from finding out whether potential employees are healthy enough to work for them prior to an offer of employment. Candidates will no longer be expected to declare medical issues during the recruitment stage unless it is specifically related to their job role.

Equality campaigners have long argued that employers discriminate against prospective employees with mental health issues, disabilities or a long history of illness, putting people off applying for a job.

However, 65pc of employers still ask a candidate about their health prior to a job offer, and 48pc ask potential employees to fill out a questionnaire detailing medical conditions and sickness records, according to a poll of 100 companies by law firm Pannone.

Jim Lister, head of employment law at Pannone, said: "The penalties for employers include investigation by the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the reversal of the burden of proof, meaning that the employer will be assumed to have discriminated, unless it can show there was another reason for non-selection.

Organisations that learn of a person's health issue after the job offer but fail to make reasonable adjustments and are forced to withdraw the offer face litigation, lawyers have said.

The reversal of the burden of proof is highly significant.  Effectively this means that an employee who feels discriminated against on the grounds of mental ill-health, for example, is not required to prove that this is the case.  It becomes the employer's responsibility to prove that this is not the case.  If proved otherwise, the employer will be required by law to comply with equalities legislation and where necessary, to make reasonable adjustments on behalf of the employee.

How mental health can enrich the work environment

People with mental health conditions who are returning to employment or even accessing it for the first time can often make exceptional contributions to the workplace.

Their previous experience can be considerable and many individuals returning to mainstream carry high levels of skills and expertise.  It may also be the case that the previous workplace was a contributory factor and there is no desire to return to 'the scene of the crime'.

Individuals returning to mainstream often do so with care and caution.  The pathway back to employment may begin with voluntary work or a part-time position.  Often it provides an opportunity to discover an area of interest the individual has always wanted to take up but never had the chance.  A part-time post in a related field can help to prepare the way for a full-time salaried position.  The returning employee makes his or her way back into the workplace with new skills, new experiences and new life encounters.

An art tutor who understands mental illness from first-hand experience will apply non-discriminatory and more inclusive practice alongside his or her skills.  An individual in recovery might discover through accessing a mainstream service that he or she has gifts that can be developed and extended.

The way back into mainstream for people who may have never worked due to illness needs to happen through gradual re-skilling and training.  With good bridge building, clients can identify the kind of special gifts they may have never identified previously.  Person-centred planning is designed to help clients discover genuine aspirations and goals.  It is not designed to force individuals to  fit  into a particular job role nor to be assigned to sheltered employment outside mainstream, except where the individual feels this may be appropriate.

Identifying a suppressed aspiration as the cause of stress at work can lead to formidable achievement when previously hidden dreams are pursued and developed in the appropriate mainstream setting.  This too creates employment or self-employment alongside increased cashflow and profits for the service providers and employers who are helping individual dreams to become reality.