Alcohol and substance abuse in workplaces is nothing new. Going by a paper published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine, around $74 billion is lost in reduced productivity as a result of alcohol each year. This is not mentioning the negative effects of working under the influence of alcohol such as causing workplace accidents. It is a deadly problem that business owners have to constantly face.
There are plenty of strategies you can use as a supervisor or manager to deal with substance abuse within your team but drug and alcohol training for employees is perhaps the most effective. If done right, it absolutely makes for a rounded solution. As a guide, here are a few aspects that you need to know about drug and alcohol training for your employees:
How Does Substance Abuse Affect Employees?
Substance abuse, in general, causes an individual to pay zero attention to their health. Hence they are bound to neglect sleep, good nutrition, and other basic needs. This, in turn, causes the inevitable to happen — reduced work productivity, increased sick offs, absenteeism, tardiness, and so on. It is also not uncommon to have a physically and mentally impaired employee because of alcohol and drug abuse.
The lack of motivation and major safety risks associated with such employees make them slow, increase errors, decrease morale and promote workplace injuries. In fact, most of them love to steal and trigger workplace violence.
How employee DOT training can help
As an employer or hiring manager, you could simply hire and fire your staff every time you catch them working under the influence of alcohol but this approach presents three problems — you could lose a potential asset in the process, you will be hiring and firing for a long time (this is also costly), and you may never actually know who the victims are.
What’s the solution?
Most experts recommend drug and alcohol training for employees. By having some pros come and teach your staff about the dangers of drug and alcohol abuse, you offer a holistic solution to them. The training which is a recommendation of the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), is both intensive and effective. It details things like counseling, training, assistance for managers, and emergency consultation. Your staff will sit through all the lessons and will be offered a certificate after the training.
Drug and alcohol training was designed to help employers retain qualified personnel despite their alcohol and drug abuse habits. In a way, it also helps make the workplace safe and avoid paying off plenty of compensation benefits.