1. The scale of the problem

Union and safety reps increasingly have to negotiate issues relating to drugs and alcohol as more employers crack down on their use during working time. Recent research by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD), based on over 500 responses from firms employing over one million people, provides the most comprehensive picture of the current situation in workplaces on these issues.

Drugs and alcohol in the workplace

Why are employers concerned?

The 2007 CIPD report, Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work, sets out a number of reasons why employers are concerned about the issue of drugs and alcohol at work:

Absence — Four out of 10 (41%) respondents believed that alcohol misuse was either a very important cause or an important cause of absence from work, while 34% said that drug misuse at work was either a very important or important cause of absence from work.

Productivity — Drug and alcohol misuse was regarded as a significant cause of lost productivity. In all, 41% of respondents identified alcohol misuse as a very important or important cause of lost productivity. A total of 34% of respondents regarded drug misuse as a very important or important cause of lost productivity.

Health and safety — Employers told the CIPD that health and safety at work was the most significant reason for introducing policies on managing drug and alcohol misuse at work. This included the health and safety of others as well as concern for the wellbeing of individual employees.

External reputation — Corporate social responsibility and damage to customer or client relations rated highly as reasons for introducing policies on managing alcohol and drug misuse at work.

Employers’ policies and procedures

The CIPD report, Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work, found that around 60% of employers had drug and alcohol policies in place. Among employers in safety-critical industries, almost three-quarters had health and safety policies that refer to drug and/or alcohol problems.

Manufacturing and production organisations and private services organisations were more likely than non-profit and public services employers to have policies and procedures on drug and alcohol problems at work.

However, only a minority of organisations were actively communicating their policies and procedures on drug and alcohol misuse.

Only 33% of employers trained managers as part of their efforts to communicate policies on drug and alcohol misuse at work. Just 22% trained employees generally in the organisation’s policies, procedures and approach to tackling the issue.

Drug and alcohol testing at work

The extent of testing

The extent of drug testing at work is not clear but recent research suggests that it is on the increase.

The CIPD found that over one in five employers (22%) tested employees at work for drugs and alcohol consumption, increasing from 18% in 2001. This is likely to increase sharply as a further nine per cent of employers told the CIPD that they planned to introduce some form of testing in the future.

However, around two-thirds of employers (65%) said they did not test and had no plans to start testing for drug and alcohol use.

About 40% of safety-critical organisations conducted post-incident testing and 35% test pre-employment for drugs and alcohol. Around 27% of safety-critical employers conducted random testing for alcohol and 20% random test for drugs.

Organisations that tested for drugs and/or alcohol were most likely to use breath-testing or to test urine or a combination of both types of test. More than half of employers used breath-testing and nearly two-thirds tested employees’ urine. About a fifth of employers tested individuals’ saliva and just four per cent tested employees’ hair for evidence of drug use.

A major report, Drug testing in the workplace, published in 2004 by the Independent Inquiry on Drug Testing at Work (IIDTW) also contained evidence of the extent of testing. A survey for the Inquiry by employers’ organisation CBI found that 30% of companies testing for both alcohol and drugs.

In 2003, the IIDTW, which included trade union representatives, also commissioned survey research organisation MORI (now Ipsos-MORI) to conduct a poll specifically on drug testing. Over 200 companies were surveyed and four per cent said they conducted drug tests with a further nine per cent indicating that they were likely to introduce tests in the following year. In addition, 78% said that they would be more likely to test if they believed that drug or alcohol use was affecting performance or productivity.

The IIDTW highlighted the rapid development of testing in the United States into a multi-billion dollar industry since the 1980s. It concluded that for the UK: “A major expansion of drug testing at work, while far from inevitable, is now a genuine possibility.”

Arguments about testing

The IIDTW report found four principal reasons put forward by employers for drug testing at work: safety, organisational efficiency, damage to reputation and workers’ welfare.

The strongest argument was on safety grounds, where commonsense suggests that an individual who is impaired by alcohol or drugs is an increased safety risk to themselves, other workers and the public. This is of particular concern where workers have safety-critical functions — for example air traffic controllers, train drivers, ambulance drivers, pilots, bus drivers, miners and quarry workers.

However, the IIDTW concluded that: “There is a lack of evidence for a strong link between drug use and accidents in safety-critical industries, such as transport, engineering, quarrying and mining.” It said testing in safety-critical industries played “a useful role”, because drug- and alcohol-induced intoxication is a source of risk in such environments but also concluded that other factors such as “bad working conditions, sleeping and health problems, excessive workloads and work-related stress” may have a greater impact on safety.

The IIDTW also reported the views of many employers, who said that, even in safety critical environments “drug testing could be divisive and counterproductive if it was clumsily handled.”

On the arguments that using alcohol and drugs were a cause of low productivity, absenteeism and high staff turnover, the IIDTW concluded that this “is not conclusively supported by the evidence” and added that the question of whether drug and alcohol misuse damages the employers’ reputation was “almost impossible to assess”. Similarly, on the idea that testing helps workers tackle substance abuse, it found that: “There is no clear evidence that drug testing at work has a significant deterrent effect.”

Overall, the IITDW concluded that: “The evidence does not provide much support for alarmist claims about the impact of drug use on absenteeism, turnover, productivity or reputation. Nor has it been demonstrated that drug testing has a significant deterrent effect, or is the most appropriate way of identifying and engaging with staff whose drug use is affecting their work.”

In fact, drug testing may have a negative effect on productivity. The IIDTW report argued that “an employee whose relationship with his/her employer involves a high level of surveillance and control may be less inclined to work creatively and productively, and less committed to the organisation.”

The report tried to put the issues in proportion finding that “the majority of employers who gave evidence did not believe that drug misuse was a serious or widespread problem for them.”

Interestingly, questionnaires sent out to all members of the Federation of Small Businesses elicited no replies and under the heading, “Small business — the dog that didn’t bark”, the IIDTW concluded that this “suggests that small businesses do not regard drug use among their employees as a serious problem, or see drug testing as a priority for them.”

The report also states that “most employers who had drug tested employees told the IIDTW that levels of positive results were very low.”

Arguments against testing

There are substantial arguments against drug testing at work. As the editor of health and safety magazine Hazards, Rory O’Neill, puts it: “Drug testing at work is a dangerous distraction, bad for safety, bad for privacy and bad for morale. Employers should stop testing and start listening.”

Firstly, drug tests do not identify impairment but merely the presence of substances that indicate past use. This is not useful or appropriate information for an employer.

The IIDTW concluded that:

“Drug testing is not a measure of current intoxication and will reveal information about drug use that can have no impact on safety, productivity or performance. Someone may test positive after taking a drug days, weeks or months before.”

And its report warned employers that: “Outside of the safety-critical industries, the benefits of drug and alcohol testing are unclear”. The report indicates that substantial costs are involved — including the financial costs of legally defensible tests, impact on staff morale and industrial relations and staffing costs — for example, where well-qualified and able candidates fail pre-employment drug tests.

A number of companies that gave evidence to the IIDTW felt that drug testing had damaged relations with their employees. For example, Southern Water felt that testing had done “more harm than good.” The UK Atomic Energy Authority said that there had been resistance to testing at some of their sites, as “some were more human rights conscious than others.” Similar concerns were expressed by London Underground and telecom giant BT.

The IIDTW report is quite scathing about the role of the testing companies. Although it said most were responsible, it found evidence that “some of these companies may be making what appear to be inflated claims about the extent and impact of alcohol and drug problems in the workplace and the effectiveness of their own products.”

In particular, the IIDTW found that the system of accreditation for providers of drug testing services is unsatisfactory. The UK Accreditation Service (UKAS) accredits approximately 1,500 laboratories, but only 12 are involved in drug testing. UKAS told the IIDTW that it was concerned about the number of non-accredited bodies that were providing drug testing services.

The Inquiry also pointed to legal and ethical concerns finding that “the legal position on drug testing at work is confused.” Employers could be open to legal challenge if they invade the privacy of employees unnecessarily, particularly under the Human Rights Act 1998 and the Data Protection Act 1998.

The management of drug and alcohol problems

Most employers manage drug and alcohol problems at work as a combined disciplinary and health issue. More than 80% of employers used this approach, according to the CIPD’s 2007 report, Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work, which found that the three most common management interventions were:

• the provision of specialist counselling services;

• the use of disciplinary procedures; and

• referral to occupational health practitioners.

In the CIPD survey about half the organisations who responded adopted all of these approaches. Overall, 16% of respondent organisations primarily approached alcohol problems at work as a performance issue, while eight per cent regarded it as mainly a disciplinary issue and six per cent regarded alcohol problems as a health issue.

Disciplinary and capability procedures

According to the CIPD, in the previous two years (2006-07), about half of employers had disciplined some employees for alcohol misuse at work and about a quarter had disciplined individuals for drug misuse.

Six out of 10 respondent organisations said they had used the disciplinary procedure when managing drug and/or alcohol misuse at work, while more than a quarter had used a capability procedure as part of their approach to the issues.

Almost a third (31%) of organisations surveyed by the CIPD said they had dismissed workers for alcohol problems and 15% had sacked workers for drug misuse in the last two years. On average, organisations dismissed two employees for alcohol problems in the previous two years compared with an average of three and a half employees for drug misuse at work.

Rehabilitation

One of the most alarming findings from the CIPD’s report was the lack of widespread rehabilitation provided by employers. Only just over a third (38%) said they provided co-ordinated rehabilitation support to help individuals with drug or alcohol problems return to work after treatment.

Overall, 46% of respondents reported that they had an employee assistance programme in place to provide advice and support (such as access to counselling) for individuals with alcohol or drug problems.

This is surprising given the success of rehabilitation. Of the employees organisations referred for treatment or supported through rehabilitation, just over 60% remained working for the organisation after successfully managing their problem.