Promoting a drug-free working environment

Preventing health problems for your employees should be one of your main concerns. Implementing a wellness program is a great way to go about improving the health of your employees and the workplace overall. One thing you need to look into is promoting a drug-free work environment. This is a great way to show your employees that you are concerned about your health. A drug-free work environment will also mean lower health insurance costs for your company as you will not have as many high-risk employees needing health insurance benefits.

So what is a drug-free workplace and how can you get your company on board with it? A drug free workplace starts with doing regular drug tests of your employees. This allows you to find the dishonest employees and terminate them because they are not complying with policy. Drug testing also allows you to test your employees BAC (blood alcohol content) if you think your employees are being affected in the workplace due to the overindulgence of alcohol outside of the workplace.

A drug free working environment doesn't mean you just need to flat out fire a good employee because they have participated in drugs. Some offices are offering rehabilitation duty where they employee will still have a job with the company and they can earn it back if they take the time to clean themselves up.

Not only can a drug-free working environment promote better health, it also reduces safety concerns as your employees that are under the influence of alcohol or drugs will no longer be able to be a burden on your other employees. Employees that are legally drunk will not be able to operate the equipment you have running at your facility. This is a huge safety concern not only for that employee but for all the other employees at your facility. Removing the employee with the destructive habits will make everyone safer and it can strengthen the workplace as people no longer need to be concerned as much for their own safety since they will be able to trust their coworkers again.

Removing drugs and alcohol from the workplace can also provide you with a reduction in absenteeism. You will not have as many people taking off time to recover from a weekend of partying as they will not drink as heavily to the point that it will impact their work.

Theft will not be as big of an issue as well. Many companies that have implemented drug-free working environments have found that substance abusers are often the employees that have theft issues. When they weed them out, their theft rate goes down dramatically.

What else makes a drug-free environment great is that it draws a very clear line to your employees of the behavior that is tolerated and the behavior that is not tolerated. Your staff will not question if they are able to engage in behaviors that are against company policy as they know they will face termination.

Companies that are just starting a drug-free working environment do need to be aware that in order for it to work, they need to be heavily involved with it. The program will only work with strong and active leadership. This means you not only need to set the example, you need to be the person that is enforcing the policy if you notice an employee in violation of it.

To help your employees, offer drug-free educational courses along with information where an employee can get help if they struggle with drug addictions. By providing support, you are showing employees that you want to help them get better and you aren't just kicking them to the curb.