Tuesday, October 23, 2018

Workplace Drug Testing For Safe Working Environments

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.

Drugs tests will minimize problems for you as an employer, and will stop accidents from happening. But, that's not all. Having a strict drugs policy can help people with addition and drug problems. When an employee fails a test, you have two options. Instant dismissal is the first. Or, you may consider drugs counseling for your employees. If your staff know they will be tested, they too will make more of an effort to stay clean.

Rehabilitation is very important. Otherwise, the person in question would simply continue using and go and get a different job elsewhere. When you test regularly, problems will be unearthed quickly and action can be taken.

So let us look at how the tests are carried out. They don't necessarily require blood testing. Saliva and urine can be used. But be aware that people can try and trick results by bringing the urine of someone else to work.

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.

There are no bad points to using screening either prior to or during employment. When you care about your company reputation it's the only way forward. If you happen to have staff who believe you are invading their privacy it's more than likely that they have something to hide.




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