manager asking if we have pre-existing medical conditions

[battenburg100]

My work place is starting to plan for the Coronavirus and have started asking if any of us have pre-existing medical conditions. Can any Mumsnetters shed light on WHY they would need to know this information ?

My colleagues and I are concerned about whether to answer their request for a number of reasons:

a} that private medical information could be mis-used, for example for targeting certain people for future redundancies.

b) that the request came from our manager and not HR .

c) us wanting to keep pre-existing conditions private, especially if they do not affect our ability to do our job.

d) private medical information being potentially stored insecurely in our manager's email area,.

Are we being unreasonable in not being forthcoming with this information?

Thanks for your advice.

I would guess anyone with anything underlying would be sent home first.

I work for a large corporate and we are preparing a list of people who fall into a vulnerable category so that we can ask them if they want to work from home. Nothing sinister at all about it.

They obviously need to know if you have any condition that will make you more vulnerable and they need to make adjustments for you. Sounds like a caring employer
If for instance you had type 1 diabetes this would put you in this category

I’ve been asked, I do have underlying condition and also work in HR. I was asked as they are contingency planning for vulnerable employees. I’ve also been asked to seek medical advice regarding my condition on whether there’s anything I need to do above the NHS advice. Glad they are being responsible employers

Can you just disclose that you have a pre-existing condition but tell them that you don't want to specify what it is?

As other have said their reason for asking is likely genuine but I can understand why you might not want to give over private medical information.

We have been asked how many dependents we have. I'm still struggling to work out why it matters if I have 1 or 100.

To identify who is vulnerable and higher risk of complications??

What everyone else said. Employer being decent. Ours have categorised some people as higher risk. They forgot that I was too so I told them my medical history and am now home working.

It’s to protect the vulnerable.

Surely they're just doing a risk assessment to work out how conservative they need to be about implementing WFH policies and if they need to prioritise certain staff members?

We’re asking staff the same but it’s purely to keep them safe, nothing sinister

I wouldn’t question it if I were asked to be honest. I would be thinking it would be so they could be proactive.

I just has to ask people this as a manager, so the organisation can plan accordingly. Tbh the planning won't achieve much (as who knows who will be affected). So I told my team they didn't have to share any info they weren't comfortable about.

I would think for a risk assessment as part of a contingency plan . Did you not ask.? However it needs to be handled according to gdpr policy.

We've been asked this and none of us even considered not answering, or any possibility other than that they were seeking to put in place extra considerations for anyone vulnerable. It must be awful to work somewhere that you can't (or at the very least don't) trust the people you work for to this extent - if I were you I'd look for a new job because if this is you and all your colleaguea' first thoughts then its not a good workplace by a very long way.

Hm. I have a pre-existing condition but it’s not currently known if getting infected would make it worse (it’s not likely to make it more likely I would catch the virus). So I don’t know what I’d do in this situation. Doubt my employer would think about this though tbh.

Too many likelys!

We've been asked, presumably so HR can make informed decisions. They'll be planning things like prioritising special measures, the likelihood of lengthy absence, the departments that could be most affected.

My manager asked the same, acknowledged they shouldn’t really be asking and confirmed we were under no obligation to tell them anything if we didn’t want to. But that it would help them with contingency planning and to protect us.

In the absence of a government plan, employers have to do the best they can....

If they are asking for this info, they should also be transparent about why they are asking and what will be done with the information. No need for all the cloak and daggers!