When you operate a business in Hungary, it is your responsibility as an employer that your employees remain fit for their jobs. Now a new regulation is supposed to reduce the need for mandatory health checkups in low-risk jobs.
Regular health checkups for workers
Employers must make sure that employees are fit for the job when they start working for the company, and that they remain fit throughout their employment. For this purpose, employees must participate in health checkups before they start working for a new employer, and then regularly (this means yearly in most cases).
Eliminating mandatory health checkups
For many jobs, especially in low-risk environments (such as in offices), the yearly health checkup is very basic, almost a formality. To reduce the administrative burden this puts on companies, a new regulation has been issued that will allow companies operating in low-risk fields to remove health checkups from their yearly HR tasks.
The new regulation is in force starting from 1 September 2024, and on 26 September, an additional decree was published detailing conditions and jobs where regular health checkups remain mandatory (see a summary below).
The employer’s responsibility remains
Please note: even if you are not required to have your employees attend health checkups anymore, you as an employer remain responsible for the maintained good health of your employees.
- Your compliance with this requirement is best verified by continuing to arrange for regular health checkups, even if they cease to be mandatory for your company.
- If you organize a health checkup for your employees, the employees will be required by law to participate, whether the health checkup itself is required by law or not.
Health checkups remain mandatory for now
While the new regulation is in force as of September 2024, it refers to various other laws that have not been changed yet. As a result, even if the new law was obviously meant to abolish mandatory health checkups for many companies, checkups remain mandatory as long as the relevant additional laws are not updated.
Moreover, the new regulation does not concern the initial health checkups required before an employee starts a new job. Those will remain mandatory even after the relevant additional laws are updated.
Positions where health checkups remain mandatory for sure
The new regulation was intended to remove mandatory health checkups in jobs where employees do not face serious health risks. This is done by listing environments and jobs where the risk is considered significant. If the environments and jobs listed are not relevant for your Hungarian business, you will be able to abandon health checkups once all the relevant legislation is updated.
Risk factors | Typical environments | Typical jobs |
Increased risk of accidents | Work at height, underground, with fire and flammable materials, with electricity, or with heavy machinery and moving parts | Carpenter, tinker, stonemason, miner, electrician |
Physically demanding temperatures | Either in open or enclosed spaces, if the temperature is regularly above 25 °C or below 4 °C | Gardener, landscaper, forester, road maintenance worker, baker, cook |
Noise | Where noise at the workplace is regularly above 85 dB | Carpenter, logger, heavy machinery operator |
Ionizing radiation | In workplaces where employees are regularly close to ionizing radiation | Lab technician, anyone working with or radioactive materials |
Artificial optical radiation | Workplaces where laser and other non-coherent optical radiation is used | Welder, surgeon, jobs at laboratories |
Vibrations | People working with vibrating machinery | Jobs handling agricultural machinery, carpenter, stonemason, miner, gardener |
Chemical risks | Workplaces where people work with high-risk chemicals | Cleaner, lab technician, jobs at chemical factories |
Epidemiological risks | People working with small and possibly sick children; institutions providing food for a wider public | Nurse, caregiver, kindergarten teacher, cook |
Dust or asbestos | Jobs where workers may run the risk of pulmonary fibrosis due to being exposed to dust or asbestos in construction and agriculture | Stonemason, construction worker |
Biological risks | Jobs in healthcare and social services, including labs; sanitation related jobs, like working with wastewater or garbage | Nurse, caregiver, laundry worker, vet, lab technician |
Night shift | Work performed between 10 pm and 6 am | Bus driver, train driver, cleaner, security guard, medical doctor |
Manual handling of loads above 10kg |
| Warehouse worker, shelf stacker, stonemason, construction worker |
In the above listed jobs and environments, regular health checkups remain mandatory. The jobs mentioned in the column for typical jobs are just examples, and if the risk factors listed are relevant to your business, you should already know about them risks and have processes and workflows meant to reduce them.
Stay compliant with HSE requirements
Even with the new regulation, you as an employer remain responsible for the good health of your employees. If you will not be required to arrange for health checkups any longer once all the relevant laws are updated, you may decide to provide them anyway, just to stay on the safe side and protect your business as well as your employees.
Helpers is Hungary’s leading provider of business and immigration services. This includes assistance not only with work permit application, but also ongoing HR support for your employees. Organizing mandatory health checkups is just one of our HR related services. Feel free to ask about them.
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