Garment Factory Health Checks: What a Buyer Audit Expects to See

A factory rarely fails a health-related audit finding because nobody screened the workers. It fails because the screening cannot be evidenced: the register is a stack of loose sheets, the fitness decisions were verbal, or the file covers the workers who were present that day and nobody knows who was missed. The screening happened; the record did not.

For the diagnostic centre holding the contract, this matters commercially. The factory is not buying tests. It is buying a defensible record, produced on the day someone asks for it, and it will renew with whoever supplies that reliably.

What tends to be asked for

Requirements vary by brand, by the factory's own code of conduct, and by the hazards of the specific work, so treat any fixed list with suspicion — including this one. What recurs across programmes is a check before a worker joins, a periodic check afterwards, attention to job-specific risks, and records that can be produced without a week's notice.

• A pre-employment medical, dated before the worker started on the line.
• A periodic or annual check for existing workers, with the cycle visible.
• Job-relevant checks — vision for sewing and finishing operators is the common example.
• A recorded fitness outcome per worker, not a general statement that the camp was held.
• Referral and follow-up evidence where something was found.
• Records that identify each worker by their employee ID, so the file reconciles against the factory's own roster.

Always confirm the package per factory

Two factories in the same district may be audited against different expectations because they supply different buyers. Agreeing the package at contract stage — which tests, which workers, how often, what gets certified — protects both sides. A centre that assumes one standard package will eventually deliver a campaign that does not satisfy the buyer, and the argument will be about your invoice.

Where the evidence usually breaks

Three failure points account for most of it. The first is attendance: 800 workers on the roster, 640 screened, and no clear record of who the missing 160 were or why. The second is the fitness decision, which often exists only as an opinion the doctor gave verbally on the day. The third is the follow-up: someone was told to see a specialist and nobody can show what happened next.

All three are record-keeping problems rather than clinical ones, which is why they are worth solving with a system rather than with more staff on the day.

Keep clinical results away from the employer

A factory needs to know whether a worker is fit for their job, and whether any restriction applies. It does not need the worker's blood sugar. Sharing individual clinical values with an employer is a confidentiality problem for the worker and a professional one for the doctor who signed the file, and no audit requires it. The defensible arrangement is that the employer sees attendance and the fitness decision, while the clinical detail stays with the worker and the examining physician.

What good looks like on paper

When the auditor sits down, the useful document is not a pile of individual reports. It is one sheet with the workers down the side and the tests across the top, opening with everyone who needs attention, followed by the full roster with the outcome against each employee ID — plus the numbered fitness certificates behind it. That sheet answers the questions an auditor asks in the order they ask them.

SihatSuite's corporate health module produces exactly that: a consolidated worker-by-test sheet, a numbered fitness certificate per worker, a follow-up queue for anyone referred, and an employer portal that shows attendance and fitness decisions without exposing clinical values. Screening is defined per contract, so each factory gets the package its own buyer expects.

Related resources

• RMG worker health check software
• Corporate health screening software
• Fitness certificates and records
• Running a worker health camp