If you do not accept that alcoholism is a true disease process, you will need believe something else instead. What is that? What do you believe it is, truly. Here are the facts from 30 years of working in this field. The only way to get an alcoholic quickly pointing toward treatment is to hold them responsible for getting treatment when their disease become evident. In other words, you blame them not for the disease or drinking again....but for not getting into treatment. When you make this shift, you succeed very quickly. Do you see with this belief paradigm how important accepting alcoholism as a diease is? It is a myth that "rock bottom" must come first. More often, fear is what prompts or facilitates alcoholics to accept help or treatment. In DOT Reasonable Suspicion Training, you hold powerful leverage in the workplace.
- Fear of harm or death
- Fear of job loss
- Fear of losing a relationship
- Fear of hurting someone
- Fear of hitting rock bottom, whatever that might mean
The key to effectively managing troubled employees is understanding their fears and focusing on job performance issues such as absenteeism, behavior or quality of work to help both the workplace and employee.
Confrontation is the supervisor playing the appropriate role of confronting the employee with documented evidence of job performance problems and motivating the employee to use the EAP before disciplinary action becomes necessary. Constructive confrontation works because almost all employees are fearful of job loss. This confrontation is not the act of diagnosing the employee. Instead, the employee is referred to EAP solely upon job performance problems that may be ongoing. Although supervisors will be confronting employees, no discussion should be made of the possible alcohol or drug problem. If discussion arises the employee is referred to the EAP.
Have you ever seriously wondered if an employee possibly has a drinking problem or are an alcoholic? This is one question that will help supervisors decide whether an employee needs a more complete evaluation to examine their alcohol use and to rule out the diagnosis. Even if the answer to the question is yes or no, supervisors should encourage employees to consider getting a screening to rule the diagnosis of alcoholism. The response to this question from social drinkers, those who drink but do not have alcoholism, may vary because they usually do not seriously consider this question.During the alcohol screening the employee should expect to be interviewed and screened by professional counselors to help them more closely examine their drinking experiences.Since denial is a roadblock to treatment, those who drink should participate in screenings to detect alcoholism like other chronic diseases.
