Survey of drug testing in the workplace among selected companies

The 1981 crash of a Navy jet on the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier was a landmark, though tragic, day for the concept of drug testing in the workplace. Investigations after the crash found the presence of drugs in carrier personnel, leading to a wider probe that unearthed extensive drug use in the United States military. It led to President Ronald Reagan issuing Executive Order 12564 that made it mandatory for all federal workplaces to be drug free.

Guidelines were established in 1988 and, since then, industries and private companies have realised that substance abuse is not restricted to federal offices. Indeed, the quest for profit and the pressure to perform has only increased the risks for working environments in which employees resort to drugs as means of escape. Although not mandated, many private companies, most in high-risk industries where drug abuse on the job can cause injuries and fatalities, have decided to implement drug testing policies of their own.

The Journal of Global Drug Policy and Practice is a survey conducted in 2011 on companies that had rolled out in-house drug testing programs. A total of 1,058 human resources professionals responded to the survey, which was sent to 6,000 random companies, half of them working for publicly listed for-profit companies, with manufacturing (18 percent) and health care (14 percent) representing the largest proportion of sectors. The overall results found that drug testing had a positive impact on overall productivity and employee performance.

One-fifth of companies (19 percent) reported an increase in employee productivity after the implementation of drug testing in the workplace. About 56 percent of the companies had reported a high incidence of workers’ compensation claims prior to drug testing. After implementing the program, such claims dropped to 6 percent from 14 percent. About 16 percent of companies said employer turnover decreased.

Of the companies surveyed, about 69 percent said they had been conducting drug testing among employees for seven years or more. Only 2 percent had been actively testing employees for less than a year.

The survey also showed that the private sector was more aggressive in some aspects of employee drug testing than federal institutions. For instance, 71 percent of companies with more than 2,500 employees said they conducted pre-employment drug testing on potential hires whereas the figure for federal institutions was 51 percent. Workplace drug testing is important for businesses to retain their competitive edge. Drug and alcohol testing is necessary.

The study reported that random alcohol testing in the workplace appears to be the best deterrent of drug abuse on the job because employees have no idea as to when they will be asked to submit to a urine sample. Employers also said that reasonable suspicion testing, in which an employee may be tested for drugs on reasonable grounds of suspicion, dropped 45 percent between 2010 and 2011, probably because employees knew of such a policy and therefore stayed off drugs or a company’s pre-employment tests resulted in a more responsible work force. 

This article has been taken from http://mediscreen.net.au/articles/?p=1987