Many employers use drug and alcohol testing as a health and safety measure to ensure that the workplace is safe. This protocol is a good way to find out if someone is using drugs or drinking on the job. Drug testing is a safety procedure to help reduce workplace accidents and keep workers from using drugs while at work. Furthermore, it can also be used as an extra precaution if a workplace has a lot of non-negative findings after an accident.
Employers are increasingly using random drug tests to detect substance abuse. There are still industries where this plays a major role, which might be a factor in deciding whether to hire a candidate. Of course, every company wants to hire people who don’t use drugs that are against the law. For that reason, it is crucial to understand the importance of drug and alcohol testing in the workplace.
What Drug Testing Can Do For Your Company
Drug and alcohol misuse annually costs U.S. businesses billions of dollars due to employee turnover, unexcused absences, decreased productivity, accidents, and higher compensation claims. The National Safety Council says that employees who misuse prescription medicines are more likely to take unexcused absences, be late to work, be hurt or violent on the job, file workers’ compensation claims, resign, or be terminated within the first year of employment.
Here are 10 reasons for your company to invest in getting a drug and alcohol test
1. Risk-Free Work Environment
Every employee has the right to a safe working environment. Each firm is required by law to establish a Health and Safety policy, which should include a Drug and Alcohol policy. This policy helps cut down on the chance of accidents and deal with their effects. When someone is high or drunk at work, they can’t do their job either. Additionally, people around the person are in danger if they are in charge of heavy or dangerous machinery.
Even if drugs or alcohol aren’t used at work, the effects of using them outside of office hours could last well into the next day. For instance, the most likely time to find alcohol is the morning after, and the same could be said for drugs of abuse. A well-planned employment assessment on drugs and alcohol guarantees a safer workforce.
2. Efficiency and Effectiveness
Most of the time, you’ll spend an hour or two with a potential employee before making a hiring decision. A pre-employment assessment can help find out about recent drug use or bad habits before they start to hurt the company.
Randomly testing employees on a regular basis can help prevent accidents and save time that would have been spent on disciplinary hearings. Also, the risk of contamination for people, the environment, products, and processes are kept to a minimum by occupational hygiene monitoring.
3. Reduced Health-Care Costs
Companies with a policy about drugs and alcohol enforced by screening programs pay less for their insurance. If accidents caused by drugs and alcohol happen less often, the insurance needed to cover them will also go down. Insurance companies like the idea of testing for drugs and alcohol, especially in the workplace.
4. Less Employee Turnover
Again, pre-employment testing will keep you from hiring someone who will be a problem for your business. This will make it less likely that you will have to fire them in the future. Having drug and alcohol testing in place has been shown to stop people from using drugs and alcohol that affect them at work.
5. Improved Productivity
People who use drugs and alcohol tend to be less productive than people who don’t. Fatigue and a lack of cognitive performance can make it hard to pay attention and finish tasks. This can lead to general inefficiency and the wrong or missing essential details. When something takes longer to complete, it costs the business more money.
6. Lower Recruiting Expenses
As employees are discouraged from using drugs and alcohol, they are more likely to stay on the job. This saves recruitment costs and reduces the need to train new employees. Training can be costly and time-consuming.
7. Reduced Risk of Workplace Accidents
Employees are paid to do their jobs to the best of their abilities. But when you’re drunk or high, it’s hard to pay attention and be aware of what’s going on. For instance, when driving a forklift or crane, someone who’s sick or drunk can be very dangerous or even kill themselves or others. When workers are in their right minds and focused, accidents are less likely to happen.
8. Fewer Disputes In The Workplace
An employer might have to deal with a couple of problems if a drug or alcohol user doesn’t get caught. You might also expect that coworkers will fight with each other. Companies can be helpful to people coping with addictive behavior. However, covering for other people and doing someone else’s work can be hard on employees who want to do their own jobs and keep their workflow going.
9. Reduced Absence Rate
Research says that workers with drinking problems are 2.5 times more likely to miss work because of an injury than workers who didn’t have drinking problems. Basically, high absenteeism can be very bad for a business.
Moreover, drug and alcohol tests can contribute to workers’ occupational health and hygiene. This results in a contented, productive, and healthy workforce. Consequently, there is less spread of disease among employees in a healthy workplace. The huge cost of paid sick time for companies is significantly reduced as a result.
10. Cost Effectiveness
The cost of drug testing often is small compared to how much it can cost if someone is impaired at work and isn’t caught. Accidents, absenteeism, abnormally high turnover, low worker productivity, and harm to your reputation add additional costs to the business. If not managed and planned for correctly, these costs can add up to thousands of dollars.
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Conclusion
On the surface, testing for drugs and alcohol at work is often seen as an invasion of privacy. Some people may find testing intrusive because it gives companies information about their employees’ drug use. Drug and alcohol testing does more than only keep workers safe on the job. It also increases productivity and fights local drug abuse.
So long as there is a good reason to test and employees’ private information is handled professionally, drug and alcohol testing at work is good for the workplace and the community.