How To Support Your Employees During a Workplace Drug Test

Every workplace is different, and some require more safety procedures than others to ensure the safety of employees. A drug test has benefits that will positively impact your business; it ensures that the productivity levels stay where they need to be while the staff performs to the best of their abilities. If you are having a workplace drug test, learn how your can support your employees during the process.

If your business handles food or your employees need to drive, having a drug test is essential. You need to take into consideration state laws as well as what are the best options to keep your business safe and running. These types of tests effectively prevent accidents, health issues, and costs.

Inform Your Employees

One of the first actions you need to do is to inform your employees about the tests for them to know that it could happen at some point. Legally, you need to disclose this, especially when someone is already in the hiring process. Four main types of drug tests apply in the workplace:

• Pre-employment
• Random
• Post-accident
• Reasonable suspicious

When your employees know that the test could happen at any moment, it reduces the risk of usage to ensure workplace safety. The staff needs to sign an acknowledgment policy, and if they refuse to sign, you are in the legal right not to hire or fire them.

Create a Safe Space

When you hire people to do a job, you want to choose the right candidate. Creating a culture around the workplace will develop a sense of security and help your employees feel comfortable, leading to a job well done. Creating a safe space provides the necessary ambiance in the workplace that can filter most of the actions supported and the ones that are ok to do.

A safe space leads to better standards and improves productivity. Most of the time, employees who feel threatened will either leave or create unwanted problems that could damage your business and reputation. Stress does things to people that push them to find solutions to those problems, which sometimes results in drug usage.

Talk About Previous Experiences

Talking from experience is an excellent way to create a connection and provide a sense of support. You can talk about your personal experiences with these types of tests in as much detail as possible to paint a clear picture for your employees. Also, let them talk about their previous experiences, if they have any, and what happened after.

Sometimes people are afraid or ashamed about disclosing certain situations. A company with background investigation services will provide you with some relief of information about any past experiences or usage from your employee that you should know about. Learning and understanding the reasons why will not give you all the answers, but the lineal progressive will give you an idea of some possible situations.

Open Communication

If you have good communication with your employees, accidents and problems decrease. Creating an open channel for your staff to address issues with you and find solutions together will create benefits and alternatives to the problems that you can avoid in the first place. It affects how well a company operates and how quickly a team can take care of a problem without negative consequences.

Learning and knowing what goes on in the lives of the people you work with is one of the best ways to support your employees, especially with something important like a workplace drug test. Be honest with them because they will be honest with you. An employee clearing a pre-employment drug test clears the path a little, but that doesn’t mean there’s a 0-percent chance that a person can eventually use drugs.

Open communication will also give your employee the chance to come clean about what is happening and if there are certain situations that you as an employer should be aware of. It might not be that employee that is using drugs but maybe another one that that person knows about.

Talk About Their Options

If one of your employees has a positive drug test result, talk to that person about the possible options. This could happen at any stage of the hiring process or even once that person is already working. Drug policies and screenings come in the legal documents for the workplace; if the employee goes against these rules, then the options are clear.

People forget with time, especially if it’s the first time a situation has occurred. An excellent way to support your employee is to directly talk to that person and explain what is happening, what those written options are, and the possibilities with the establishment. As an employer and business owner, you can have your own rules and regulations on top of the state and federal ones, as long as yours don’t interfere.

Employee’s Value

An employee doesn’t want to feel like a number, so treat them with the value and dignity that everyone deserves. While going through drug testing, employees will feel stressed, especially if they know something negative might come from those results. Talk to your employees about how valuable they are to your business and why you prefer and need them to be performance-ready for everyone’s safety and to keep customers safe and happy

Terminating an employee after a drug test is drastic; yes, there are federal laws that regulate and suggest actions. Still, as a business owner, you can decide if you want to fire someone permanently or give that person a second chance. Some employers offer their staff multiple opportunities or strikes.

The first step, if not fired, could be to remove that person from safety-sensitive functions to make sure that nothing dangerous could happen; this will create some consciousness in your employee, and you can talk to that person about the dangers of drugs and alcohol abuse.

After some time away from that employee’s primary position, you can warn that person that termination is the next step if there is another positive result. Opportunities teach a person the value and benefits they bring to a company and encourage them to do well and improve.