Worksite Health- Utah's Best Workplace Health Management

Pre-Employment / Post-Offer Screen

Pre-employment / post-offer screenings are a very valuable tool to help select the individual most suited to the physical demands of a workplace job. In the past year alone, Worksite Health has performed over 1500 of these screens onsite in 3 different states for our clients. Pre-employment / post-offer screens are ADA and EEOB compliant, and are designed according to the following process-

Essential Functions of the Job - a licensed physical therapist will perform a job site analysis for each of the jobs you identify
Testing Existing Employees - once essential functions are identified and physical demands measured, a random sampling of employees currently performing the daily demands will be tested
Creating a Post-Offer Test - based upon information gathered a test will be created. Policy and procedure is established that will spell out criteria for pass/fail of the testing. It will also help establish a risk level for employees, allowing further follow-up by the employer.

Research Corner- Industrial Safety

Low back pain is a major contributor to increasing workers compensation costs. A recent study looked at a screening tool to identify those individuals who are at risk for development of low back pain during prolonged standing. This study particularly caught our attention at WorkSite Health because of the ease of the screening test.

The study involved-

43 individuals with no back pain.
screening test having the participants lie on their side and raise top leg toward the ceiling.
examiner scored their performance with this motion.
participants then performed 2 hours of simulated occupational tasks while standing.
After two hours, the participants rated their current back pain.

The results of the study concluded those who scored poor for the screening tool developed back pain with prolonged standing at a significantly higher rate.

This is a new screening test, but appears to have great functional use. This test, incorporated with other functional tests as part of a preemployment, post-offer screen can help indentify individuals who are at an increased risk for developing low back pain. By indentifying these high resk individuals, steps can be taken to lower their risk and prevent an injury.