Random Drug And AlcoholTesting

Tuesday, May 5th, 2009 Subscribe To Our Feed

Random drug and alcohol testing is common in a lot of UK companies in order to discourage the use or abuse of illegal drugs by employees within the workplace. There have been lots of case studies to show how great random drug and alcohol screening is at reducing accidents, absenteeism, ill health, litigation, etc, and so it is frequently thought to be best practice, particularly in safety critical environments.

Even when a company doesn’t introduce full random drug testing, they frequently only do drug and alcohol testing when there is a problem - such as accident based screening or “for cause” testing when there are satisfying grounds to suspect that an employee is not fit to complete their duties due to drink or illegal drugs.

The regularity of random drug and / or alcohol testing can be worked out by the business based on various variables. Such factors include the type of the business, demographics of their staff or variables relating to the culture of the business – for example, a culture of lunchtime drinking.

Most companies conduct as little as 5 percent random drug and alcohol testing, whereas other companies may insist that every member of staff is screened at least once every year or more. It generally depends on the companies buget, health and safety in the workplace and the importance of drug testing to the company.

Workplace substance abuse screening is fairly straight forward to put in place and is relatively inexpensive to introduce when done correctly. Random drug testing of employees can be carried out on-site for less than £10 per employee. Providing there is a drugs and alcohol policy that states that random screening is compulsary.

There are various companies that can help you to create or improve your drugs and alcohol policy, which must be in place for the duration of your notice period so anyone who objects to the policy has the opertunity to leave the company.

Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages.