As a supervisor governed by the DOT reasonable suspicion training guidelines, you are naturally going to receive a lot of scrutiny if you ever decide not confront an employee who who may be under the influence for drugs or alcohol on the job.
This portion of the alcoholic progress curve will be insightful. Can you see how the alcohol use in the beginning of the addiction progression can be quite normal. This however is the typical pattern. Reasonable suspicion training with WorkExcel.com covers these normal looking symtpso and how to make them fool you.
Most dot supervisor training courses focus on signs, symptoms, effects, risk, and impact of substance abuse. Great--no problem with any of that. So, what's missing? The answer is myths and misconceptions about alcoholism. Wait! the U.S. Department of Transportation does not require that information at all, so why would it be important. Well, the answer is manipulation. Employee with substance abuse problems use a selection of defense mechanisms, like denial, to avoid their self-diagnosis. They know the symptoms of alcoholism or substance addiction that they do not have, and use this information to avoid anxiety caused by self-awareness. In other words, they are lying to themselves with awareness so they do need to take the next step and deal with the anxiety by getting treatment. That indeed is a tough assignment. But there are other defense mechanisms that help support the primary foundation defense mechanism of denial--and these are the ones employees will use against you as a supervisor. You can learn more about these defense mechanism if you click on the alcoholism button here, but also cover them all in the dot supervisor training course.
