Is your previous employer allowed to disclose your health record when asked for a reference?
Previously I had severe clinical depression, I asked my work for help many times over 3 months and they ignored me and outright refused to reduce my workload/hours. The week I got signed off they gave me 7 new projects on the Monday morning. I was given an excellent yearly review the month before I was signed off and I know I was good at my job, even when I was sick my work didn't decline. I ended up being signed off for 6 weeks, my GP and I both felt I was ready to go back but that work was not to stress me out and needed to reduce my hours for the short term. HR refused and forced me to stay signed off. This went on for 10 further weeks before I had enough and quit. They obviously didn't want me back and were going to eventually fire me for inability to do my job. I left professionally even though I was very angry with them for forcing me out. I know my managers were left in the lurch when I was signed off and really resented me for it.
I then went travelling for 3 months. I work in an office now and find it very boring and wanted to go back to my profession.
I applied for a part time job doing exactly the same thing as previously but with a different company and after many rounds of interviews and tests, was down to the final 2. I said my reason for leaving was to go traveling as I didn't want them to know I had been so ill previously (how do you make severe clinical depression sound positive in an interview). I was told they would let me know within 48hrs. 2 weeks later they finally spoke to my recruitment agent after avoiding his daily phone calls and said that I had not been negative about myself in the interview and so they didn't get a real feel for my personality, so they went with the other candidate. WTF? I get if I wasn't the best candidate but the 2 weeks of refusing to respond was weird.
Anyway the person that got the job quit after 8 weeks, so I reapplied and got nowhere. I now think that my previous job must have told them about my health record, are they allowed to do that? If they can it means I will never get a job in my profession ever again and I really miss it. It looks terrible that I had 16 weeks of sick leave. Is there a way to find out what they said about me?
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Previous Health Record Disclosure?
3 replies
Rufus200 · 20/09/2014 17:57
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