Hi all
One of my clients an engineering business would like to introduce a drugs and alcohol misuse policy in their workplace. It is an environment where there is the potential for harm to employees and others due to heavy machinery etc if an employee attends unfit for work. It is a small firm with approx. 30 employees and non-unionised.
Could I ask how you have approached this in your organisations:
Do you use for cause testing or random testing? What were the considerations when deciding which to use?
What challenges did you face when introducing the policy?
What worked well and not so well?
What are the pitfalls to look out for?
It would be great to hear how this has been approached in other workplaces.
Regards
Sarah
Replies
I work for a logistics company and we have a very thorough and robust policy... It doesn't allow a great deal of manoeuvre in terms of sanctions, however it seems to work well for us. We have a large number of hgv drivers as well as forklift and electric pallet truck drivers too. We don't currently operate random testing although I am looking to bring this in from a previous workplace where it worked well. We do however have the clauses that if any driver has an accident or there is a justifiable and reasonable suspicion of someone being under the influence of drink or drugs then our external company come out and do two tests. The first is instant result, if this is positive then the employee is suspended pending the next one. This is sent to the laboratory and gives us our definitive result. They have to declare certain things that may show up as well and we will consider mitigation if it is reasonable and declared before the results. It seems to work well for us! I hope this helps, if you want any more information just let me know.
Mary
Hi Mary
Thank you for taking the time to reply appreciated. Yes we are looking at 'for cause' testing as we think this is more reasonable.
Could you let me know which test agency you use? I have contacted one in Derby but they seem slow to provide me with details of costs etc.
I have a number of students from Network Rail on my HRP programme and they operate random testing also interestingly they have a lower threshold than the drink drive limit. You can find a copy of their policy on line if you Google it as that may help you with the change to your existing approach.
Kind regards
Sarah Loates