Employers

You may be weighing up the pros and cons of telling your employer about your HIV diagnosis.

Disclosure may not be a good idea if you think your employer might treat the information insensitively or if you think personal information could be made public, or that you may suffer discrimination.

On the other hand it can allow your employer to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ such as reducing your workload or allowing you extra time off work for medical appointments.

Since the introduction of the  Equality Act, employers are restricted on the questions they can ask about your health when applying for jobs (except for certain jobs, such as a nurse or doctor). You shouldn’t be asked to fill in a questionnaire about your health before you have been offered a job.

After an offer of a job has been made, an employer can ask questions about your health if it is relevant to the job you have been offered. For example, if the job requires extensive travel to a country with travel restrictions on people with HIV, it would be legal to ask you about your HIV status. If you were asked to complete a health questionnaire after being offered a job, and lied about your HIV status and your employer later found out, this would be called a breach of mutual trust and you could lose the job.

If you choose to disclose your HIV status, it is worth knowing that people with HIV are protected under the Equality Act 2010. The Data Protection Act 1998 also states that records of your HIV status must be kept confidential.

If you work in healthcare you are obliged to inform your occupational health physician that you are HIV positive and to avoid performing invasive procedures.

NAM has a useful page on disclosing your HIV status at work.