Sunday, October 21, 2018

Workplace Drug Testing For Healthy Staff And Employers

By Daniel Turner


In recent years, drug testing at work has become far more common. Before it was seen as evasive, and although there is still some controversy surrounding it, it is now accepted as the norm. With few disadvantages, we are going to look at the advantages of workplace drug testing in this article.

As the boss of a company you are well within your rights to want to know if any of your employees are using drugs or have an alcohol problem. Wanting to know these facts is not an invasion of their privacy. It is protecting yourself. Imagine if drunk staff were allowed to operate machinery or drive company cars. So, let's just talk about a few of the pros of tests at work.

First and foremost, it promotes a healthier and safer working environment. Your health and safety will always be at risk if you don't carry out testing. You may suspect that an employee is using, but you won't have the concrete evidence that you need. Team members who take drugs are putting your company at risk, and need to be stopped. Operating machinery, driving vehicles, and handling chemicals are three areas you really need to be very careful with. If your staff members are under the influence of alcohol or drugs more accidents will happen.

Imagine an accident ended in the death of an employee or worse still a member of the public who was visiting your operations. The amount of negative exposure would be enough to stop you from continuing trading in an instant. You can't risk this and you need to avoid bad exposure. You need a safe working environment, and one that is free from public liability suits and lawyers. Failure to keep your working environment safe will only cause you problems time and time again.

When you carry out tests for drugs, accidents at work will be reduced. People won't come to work under the influence of drink or drugs. When you are strict about your policies, you will help those with a problem. Say a long standing employee fails a test. Instead of firing them on the spot you can offer counseling to help them get clean.

Rehabilitation is important for those with problems with drugs and alcohol. Carrying out tests can help addicts. The problem they have will be unearthed sooner and they will then go on to receive the help they need.

Testing does not require blood samples, although blood screening may be used. Saliva and urine tests are common. But if you are going to use these methods, make sure that the samples are taking in front of you or that there is no possibility that samples can be switched.

With a drug test program in place at work, productivity will increase. Your employees will be happy and healthy and moral will be high. Theft will decrease, as will anti social behavior. Your health policy insurance costs will also decrease.

Really there are no negatives to drugs tests, and you can use a program prior to employing people as well as once they are part of your workforce. People who are adverse to tests are often people who are using drugs or who drink too much. These types of people are not the type of staff you really want for your company.




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