Employer Balancing Act: Australians Smoke & Drink Less but

drug testing program

Roy Morgan Research found during a study that 3 out of 5 Australians are now over eight or obese, despite smoking less and reducing alcohol consumption. What’s an employer to do? Sometimes it seems like it is impossible to win at times. One thing improves, and the situation gets worse in another area. It can be difficult to interpret the mixed signals that statistics deliver, but the message is clear that workplace drug and alcohol education should be integrated with wellness programs.

The Chief Executive of Roy Morgan, Michele Levine, explained the study conducted on the status of the nation’s healthy. The study found that less alcohol is being consumed (good news), the number of people smoking has declined (good news), but more Australians are overweight (bad news) and experiencing anxiety (bad news). The three out of five Australians who are overweight with a body mass index of over 25 are more likely to suffer health effects like high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes.

Health AND Safety Go Hand-in-Han

Maintaining a safe workplace is an excellent principle, but it requires the ability to balance all the factors that influence health and safety. Drugs and alcohol in the workplace are dangerous for many obvious reasons. For example, approximately 10 percent of workplace deaths and 20-25 percent of workplace accidents are related to drug and alcohol use. However, drugs and alcohol also increase the chances of one worker verbally or physically abusing one or more coworkers. General statistics show that 1 in 4 Australian employees have been verbally abused by an alcohol user, and 1 out of 50 have been physically abused by someone using illicit drugs.

Drug and alcohol users and smokers are more likely to experience medical problems and call in sick. They drive up health care costs which directly impacts the employer. When people are overweight, some of the same issues are at play. People who are overweight are more likely to take sick days or develop expensive health conditions or get fatigued easier. They tend to have less flexibility, which can impact their ability to do their job. It was estimated that the 2010 cost to Australia associated with people being overweight and obese was $21 billion, a number likely to have grown by now.

Fit For Duty Includes Fitness

What is an employer to do to balance all the factors that go into a safe workplace? Testing for drugs and alcohol is one strategy for maintaining a healthy and safe workplace. But being overweight and developing associated problems like high blood pressure and lack of flexibility impact worker safety too. Fit for work is influenced by multiple factors that includes drug/alcohol use, physical fitness, emotional distress, and fatigue.

Mediscreen can help employees better understand the consequences of lifestyle choices by providing them with health snapshots of their health status in critical areas like blood pressure, cholesterol level, lung airflow, and BMI. A wellness program coupled with a random drug and alcohol testing program gives employers the assurance they are going the extra step to maintain safe and more productive workplaces.

This article has been taken from : http://www.mediscreen.net.au/employer-balancing-act-australians-smoke-drink-less-but/

Technical Malfunctions

Technical malfunctions are so annoying, aren’t they? Computer glitches, software crashes, and a variety of other things regularly screw up your nice even workflow that you’d like to maintain all day long.

Here are some tips to help keep your temper even when technical malfunctions are not even.

Keep backups ready. This means backing up files and it means having back up computer equipment and/or power sources so that you can continue working while your technical problems are being fixed.

Be very warm and appreciative of technical crews. They may have made this their job of choice, but there is nothing more likely to make them work slow than an irritated and frustrated client. Be very warm and appreciative and nice and grateful and helpful. Ask them if there is anything you can get them and, if all else is politely rejected, at least bring them a cup of iced tea.

Be willing to help out. Do not attempt to take control of the situation, but instead tell them that you are their gopher and if they need anything, to just ask you, and then be sure to stand by to help them, just in case. When they are finishing up and after their work is complete, be very appreciative and offer them some more tea. Make their job pleasant and, next time you have an issue, they are far more likely to help you out first, even if you were at the end of the line when you phoned them.

Check their work. Be sure that you will not have to call them back right away, albeit politely. A good way to do this without seeming to be too insulting is to “have them show you what you can do now.” This way, it is appearing as if they are demonstrating something to you, when in fact you both know that you are just checking on their work.

Lastly, make sure that your workplace drug testing program is up to date. Workplace drug testing laws require that every employee of some industries to be tested on a regular basis, no matter what their job is. Mediscreen effectively implements your drug testing equipment to do the greatest good.

Company Policies for New Drug Testing Methods

When you are switching over your company policies from lab testing to onsite drug and alcohol screening, you will have to make some changes to your business plan. However, you will fortunately not have to change things so much as you will just have to make some additions to the business plan. What are some things which you should add to the company business plan and how can you alter them to specifically apply to onsite drug and alcohol screening?

Begin with a standard drug screening plan. This written procedure should include a basic, standard guide on both drug and alcohol testing, as well as both types of drug tests, urine and saliva. This can be a simple copy from standard sheets which are available for business use, or it can be specifically tailored to your organization, especially if you have non-standard business plan or if your organization is very large. Make sure that the basic foundation of your employee testing plan is in place first and that it is strong and flexible.

Interact with Mediscreen. Next, call our offices and obtain thorough and exhaustive information about our specialized onsite drug and alcohol testing which is available through our company. This way, you know what to expect from onsite screening procedures, and you can then take the next step in adding this information to your existing drug and alcohol screening plan. Be sure to include any details which will replace (rather than simply add on to) standard employee laboratory testing.

Add the details after experiencing onsite testing a few times. This gives you some firsthand experience with the procedures involved, including storing your own employee records on your jobsite, and helps you to understand what to expect and various details you will need to add to the company plan. There is nothing quite like real life experience to refine written detail.

Mediscreen offers onsite drug and alcohol testing to companies all over Australia. We are based in Perth, and our phone lines are always manned by informed operators who will be able to answer any questions which you may have about the procedures, even just a quick, “What is it exactly that you can do for me?” Call Mediscreen today

Alcohol and Drug Testing as Component of OWIP

In many cases, organisations approach alcohol and drug testing as a program primarily in place to “catch” violators. The testing program becomes a tool for punishment rather than a means of promoting workplace safety. Though workplace drug testing programs can certainly identify workers using illicit substances or alcohol, focusing only on catching individual workers can ignore many factors that influence worker substance abuse. By concentrating on detecting violators, a prime opportunity is missed to promote a positive and healthy organisation wide environment.

In other words, instead of viewing the alcohol and drug testing program as punitive, it can become an integral component of a workplace health initiative. This approach promotes a drug and alcohol free workplace, while also helping employees understand that substance abuse is a lifestyle, and not just a workplace, issue. People do not have clear lines between their work and personal lives, meaning they overlap. While prohibiting drugs and alcohol in the workplace is important for workplace safety, it does not educate people on the harm that they cause themselves and others when using the substances.

One Link in the Healthy Living Campaign

An organisation wide improvement program benefits the business and the workers.  Developing an alcohol and drug workplace policy should be one link in a campaign to educate and train workers in best practices for developing and maintaining healthy lifestyles. Instead of focusing only on the impact of drugs on the body or alcohol on the brain, an improvement program will address many lifestyle factors that impact workers. For example, some companies incorporate training on the dangers of alcohol and drug use in a program focused on healthy diets and exercise. People who are concerned with taking care of their bodies through diet and exercise are much less likely to use drugs and alcohol.

Focusing on harm minimisation rather than punishment is also more likely to garner compliance. Employee assistance programs (EAPS) and health promotion programs (HPPs) can include a number of components of which drug and alcohol abuse education is just one. For example, employers may:

• Offer stress management workshops
• Provide employee access to counselling for substance abuse, family issues, stress etc.
• Provide safety training
• Hold supervisor-employee sessions to facilitate conversations about workplace concerns
• Conduct  regular review of workplace factors that may create employee stress, i.e. schedules, production schedules, staffing etc
• Pay for employee memberships at a gym or fitness centre
• Train supervisors on alcohol and drug policy while also giving supervisors a role in the organisation wide health initiative
• Contract with an outside medical agency to provide occupational health services and health screening

Healthy Lifestyles

By developing a companywide culture that promotes healthy lifestyles, the Onsite Drug and Alcohol Screening is not viewed as a way for the employer to catch and punish workers who violate company rules. Instead it is seen as a natural component of a healthy living program. Employers accrue a number of benefits from this approach. These benefits include increased productivity, fewer missed days of work, lower medical expenses, and improved workplace safety.

Onsite Drug and Alcohol Screening Today

Today, Drug Testing Australia is part of normal practice, but you are still likely to hear some complaints from your employees for having to do it, either because they occasionally abuse substances themselves, or because they are insecure enough that they believe that drug testing is a threat to their job somehow, even if they could not possible be fired for it. While you may have been implementing employee drug and alcohol testing long enough to know to ignore such complaints, there IS a level of complaining which you should not ignore. It is the social norm to feel put upon and dissension can spread among people rather quickly. Do NOT take someone aside and lecture them about their verbal complaints on the jobsite. Rather, pick out several people publicly, in front of everyone else, and ask them their concerns with the Onsite Drug and Alcohol Screening policies of the business, and most importantly, INTERACT with them on this. Do not keep them from knowing your thoughts or from knowing how open to their ideas you are. Take what they say very seriously and discuss it with them, always interacting, in order to absolutely positively make sure that they understand that they have been heard.

If you have experienced high employee complaining and high employee turnover in the past, you may find it emotionally less taxing to simply put a barrier or space or separation between yourself and your employees, but in the long run this is unwise. Your coworkers and employees work for you, not for themselves. They need to feel that their work has value, and not that they are just another drone worker employed in the line of hard labor. They need to feel that they themselves, as people, are needed, and that you yourself, as a person, are invested in them specifically and in their interests as a whole.

Mediscreen provides onsite drug and alcohol testing services to businesses all over Australia. Onsite drug testing helps employees feel even further appreciated, because it saves them time and money and effort that they would normally have to take in going to a laboratory.