With incidences of alcohol and drug fast on the rise in workplaces, more and more employees are resorting to pre-employment drug-testing programs. As such, drug testing is gaining widespread use in small, medium, and large business meaning that it has become a key safety issue. This is to say that it is now common practice for departments of Human Resources and Safety professionals expose their workers-to-be to a thorough alcohol and drug test at the time of hiring and thus making it an additional qualification requirement. Accordingly, I am in total support of this practice for a number of reasons.
First, it is clear to all employers that alcohol and drug abuse undermines the general output of workers especially it happens at the workplace. It is therefore only fair that employers take necessary caution so that they avoid hiring those who have either alcohol or drug dependency because they will be a liability to the company or organization. The negative impacts of alcohol use and drug abuse among workers cannot be overemphasized. They range from unwarranted absenteeism, decreased productivity, tardiness, turnover, violence and even criminal activities, as well as attitude problems among others.
Further evidence for the need of alcohol and drug tests on employees is available with the statistics of the US Department of Labor. It is estimated that on annual basis, employees who use alcohol and drugs generally cost their employers as much as $75 to $100 billion dollars in terms of lost time, accidents, medical expenses together with workers compensation costs (United States Department of Labor, 2012). It is further noted that a whooping 65 percent of all accidents that occur at workplaces are drug/alcohol-related. In addition, substance-abusers use 16 times as many benefits besides being six times more likely to file their compensation files as compared to non-abusers. This is costly for employers and thus it is only good that they take precautionary measures to avoid finding themselves in this sorry state of affairs sooner or later when they hire people with alcohol and drug problems.
However, employers should take care to make sure that drug-testing programs are not implemented before appropriate policies and procedures are put into place. Similarly, pre-employment drug-testing programs require little amount of effort. Companies that are located in a single location can use local medical clinics to run tests on their potential recruits. As for those organizations with multiple locations, drug-testing agencies can be used to do the testing at convenient places requested bu the job applicants.
Reference:
United States Department of Labor. (2012). Drug-Free Workplace Advisor. Retrieved on April 23, 2012 from: http://www.dol.gov/elaws/asp/drugfree/benefits.htm
