Background on Reasonable SuspicionTraining
This training must encompass one hour of alcohol awareness and education and another hour of drug awareness training and education with the purpose of helping these managers spot the signs and symptoms of substance abuse in the workplace or behaviors that give rise to reasonable suspicion of workplace substance abuse. The also must understand the symptoms of use, hazards of use in the workplace, and effect of the major drug groups on behaviors of workers.
DOT employees consuming substances on the job are at risk for serious accidents
There is a lot packed into the above paragraph above, but here’s what important
to note: That’s about all the DOT says about what must occur regarding training of
supervisors. There is not "certification" of supervisors. I am often phoned by companies asking if we certify trainers. Answer: It's not necessary.
Of course many people do training live, and for presenting to a classroom of via ZOOM, you have to be a experienced professional to impart the material effectively.
You are pretty much on your own to figure out what training should
ultimately include.
U.S. DOT Does Not Specify a Heck of
A Lot
The DOT does not specify the type of training modality. They don’t mention
anything about certification. However the DOT does specify the drugs and alcohol content and what supervisors should know about it.
Note: When the 1986
Drug Free Workplace Act was signed by President Ronald Reagan, five general
categories of drugs of abuse were mention specifically, including Phencyclidine
or PCP. Remember that stuff? You don’t hear much about it anymore, but it’s
still out there. (Controls on its ingredients caused a fast drop-off in its
production by drug criminals.)
WorkExcel.com’s training always hit these five major drug categories –
· alcohol,
· depressants,
· stimulants,
· hallucinogens,
marijuana
PCP
· Within these categories are host of other drugs of abuse like various opioids, club drugs, inhalants, and odd substances, many of which are illegal but still available off the Internet – peyote, mescaline, bath sales, Spice/K2, Saliva, Ketamine, GHB, Meth, Ecstasy, and more.
Recently, the department of Health and Human Services stated that four different opioids should be included in federal employee/supervisor drug awareness and education. These are all derivatives of hydrocodone and oxycodone. (So, we added these to our DOT training program.)
We wrote this article from experience and include nine tips we think are worth
considering when you are training your supervisors in reasonable suspicion.
There are more than nine tips that we would like to share, but at the risk of
making this article no longer than it is right now, let’s keep it to these
nine.
Reasonable suspicion training of supervisors is a lot more than just turning on
a video to manager get educated on this
stuff. All supervisors come with a host of experiences, biases, myths, and
misconceptions about alcohol, drug abuse, addiction, who gets these
afflictions, why they get these afflictions, and what should be done about it
once a person realizes they are an addict.
What About Alcoholic DOT Supervisors?
Let’s face it, you may have supervisors who are alcoholics. Often they can be
the most opinionated in drug and alcohol awareness classes. Don’t argue with
them when they espouse their long held, but deeply wrong-headed ideas and
theories about addiction. Some of your supervisors may also have years of
recovery in Alcoholics Anonymous. Some may even disclose this to the other
supervisors in the class for the first time.
We have an Alcohol Awareness section in our training that is powerful,
educational, and amazingly impactful. You
can see it here if you jump to the end of the training program.
When discussing reasonable suspicion training, it is important to provide DOT
supervisors with background information on training, testing, and intervention
with drug and alcohol users in the workplace. There only needs to be a slide or
two about rationale for why training and drug use intervention in the workplace
is important, but definitely have it.
Background Information Helps Supervisors
Some supervisors may be skeptical about the practicality of drug use
intervention in the workplace, and may see drug testing and reasonable
suspicion training with a jaundiced eye. There is a business rationale for this
activity that boils down to dollars and cents, in addition to lives saved and
other immeasurable costs.
President Reagan signed an Executive Order in 1986 requiring the Federal government
to institute Drug Free Workplace programs for civilian and military employees.
Drug testing was included.
This was a dramatic (and controversial) step toward reasonable suspicion
training for substance abuse in the workplace, but dramatic increased treatment
of alcoholics and addicts. This of course also help such persons keep their
jobs. Indeed, with the Drug Free Workplace Act came a provision to offer workers
help when they got caught and tested positive.
These laws helped alcoholics reduce the inclination to hide their symptoms or otherwise
go to dramatic lengths to not get caught. Ever see an image of someone pouring
brown liquor in a coffee mug? Did you know that Head Shops (retailers of drug
paraphernalia) sell plastic office supplies like magic markers that are really
cleverly disguised crack pipes (preview
our DOT supervisor training program to see more – also Chapsticks lip baums for
crack!)
Fifteen years earlier before federal drug free workplace laws were passed, a
mainstream movement began to treat alcoholics and addicts as disease-affected
individuals. They key hallmark—denial.
This movement gradually affected federal laws governing the handicapped, and
eventually protections of addicts—at least within the federal government under
Section 504 of the National Handicapped Act began. The policy theory: Addicts
and alcoholics are unaware of their diagnosis. They compare themselves “out” of
the definition. They look for symptoms they don’t have to convince themselves
and others that they do not have addiction; and, if they acquire anew any of
these once denied symptoms, they change their definition again to avoid
self-diagnosis.
Reasonable suspicion training for DOT and Non-DOT supervisors, then, is the
only pathway to protecting life and limb, or helping confront these individuals
to seek help.
EAP Employee Assistance Programs and human resources management have stayed in
pretty solid agreement on the value of salvaging addicted employees for one
reason – treatment works and alcoholics recover.
Alcoholic and Drug Addicted
Employees Bounce Back
When alcoholics recover, they often bounce back 101% -- they get well, but go
beyond that to get better than well. They improve their wellness mindset, they
experience improved emotional health. They dedicate themselves to work more
definitively and they become loyal workers who are thankful for their new
station in life.
Addicts in recovery begin making more effective life choices than non-addicts.
They become your “Eagle Scout” workers if they remain in solid and continuous
recovery programs.
They become super valuable workers. Do relapses happen? Yes, relapse does
happen, but every disease has relapse periods or elements. What’s the
intervention then? It’s swift—get the worker back on their program even it
means the absolute threat of job loss. But this is key, never see a relapse as
a return to the same massive problems that led to the admission in the first
place. Rely upon effective employee assistance program systems to monitor
recovering workers and spot their early symptoms of pending relapse. It is not
hard to do.
The bottom line is that with good follow up, companies save a ton of money if they
push addicts into treatment and prevent their termination. And they reap the
financial rewards for doing so.
Testing people’s urine has always been controversial, but the courts ruled in
favor of employer safety, (and sanity) and after an AMTRAK train piloted by drug
using employee in the Baltimore, Maryland area killed a bunch of people, the
controversy pretty much dissipated. The drug of choice in that incident was marijuana.
For over ten years prior to 1986, and actually a lot longer than that,
alcoholism was viewed as a disease process by the Office of Personnel
Management of the Federal government.
The federal government treated alcoholism as an illness like any other (covered
under Section 504 of the National Handicap Act) and enormous latitude given to help
active alcoholics. The ADA did away with this and made it easier to fire
alcoholics, not protect them. This cause the treatment industry to grow
rapidly. Even the CIA Alcohol Awareness Program began under Stansfield Turner.
The laws regarding rehabilitation non-discrimination, and OPM’s interpretation
of them had its history in the occupational alcoholism movement, NIAAA, and the
experience of recovering alcoholics many of who were attorneys like the late Frank
Ridley, Esq. founder of the Legal Action Network for Alcoholic Recovery in
Washington, D.C.
This movement to fight for addicts and help them “recover them from job loss” would
eventually be turned on its head by the Americans With Disabilities Act of
1991.
I distinguish firm choice letters from “last chance” letters – because last
chance letters do not typically address treatment, follow-up, accommodation,
illness, and key communication issues crucial to success.
The idea helping alcoholics and viewing the alcoholic as blind to their illness
is the basis of the FIRM CHOICE LETTER – which in effect is an accommodation,
not a punitive action to help an alcoholic accept help or lose something they
value more like a paycheck.
If the accommodation to accept an
assessment and appropriate help is not accepted, GOOD BYE!
Thousands of alcoholics have gotten sober this way. And this “performance-based
intervention” “formula” is still being used today. (You can learn more about it
here and hire a consultant to help your business organization apply the
approach if you are facing a crisis with an alcoholic in your company,
especially with one you value like.
This “positive coercion” still exists in practice today, but it is no longer
illegal to fire an active alcoholic. There is no requirement to offer help in
an active state of drinking, but many private industries still do so because
alcoholism is the most treatable thing on the planet if done correctly, and
followed up vigorously. Why lose a valuable worker? It’s economic self-interest
that drives a more sane approach after all!
This history above is important for people to understand as they consider reasonable
suspicion training with for non-DOT or DOT supervisors because questions will
arise in the context of training that touch on issues of cause, effect,
intervention, treatment, enabling, myths, misconceptions, and anger and shock
from supervisors who have alcoholism in their families and who have for decades
decided upon their own “pet explanations” for what happened in their homes
growing up.
These folks can unwittingly sabotage a drug free workplace program if they
misconceptions interfere with the practical realities of a biological disease.
So, much changed in the 1990’s and it started with the American with
Disabilities Act where henceforth alcoholics could not be discriminated against
if they were in recovery (that’s good), but could in fact be fired if actively
drinking or drugging (that can be bad.) The ADA made it more likely that alcoholics
would cover up their drinking rather than seek help as they once did. What do
you think about this?
The Legal Action Network for Alcoholic Recovery (LANSAR) fought the ADA
provisions on these grounds above. But let’s move on.
The movement to help employees with alcoholism was well under way in the 1950’s
in fact, and later when the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
with the “Hugh’s Act” in 1972 the Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism
Rehabilitation Act of 1972 ramped up many alcoholism funding opportunities
spurring the founding of treatment, rehab, journals, associations, intervention
services, and much more.
There was a lot of controversy before and after these historical events about
the value and ethics of drug testing workers, treatment, the cause of
alcoholism, addiction, and how to treat it. These issues must be addressed in
reasonable suspicion training for supervisors because clearing up confusion
among supervisors is of paramount importance to prevent conflicts of beliefs
about addiction and substance abuse.
Now, what about drug testing? One concern focused on the question of “privacy”
and personal rights. Is it a violation of a person’s rights under the 4th
amendment against illegal search and seizure to have their urine tested for illegal
or illicit drug use? Is it a violation of one’s human rights to see if they
have alcohol on their breath? The courts ruled “no” – employers do have
legitimate business interest in having employees remain drug free. This final
judgment undergirds reasonable suspicion training.
Admittedly, these questions almost derailed drug testing laws, and they were so
controversial at the time, that even today, employees will protest getting drug
tested when their name is called, or there is reasonable suspicion that one is
under the influence of a psychoactive drug.
We will refer to the term psychoactive drug in reasonable suspicion training to
reference alcohol, marijuana, or any substance that has the effect of changing
ones mood or creating a high or “buzz.” Most of these drugs are also addictive.
Marijuana is addictive, by the way, but like alcohol, not for everyone.
The annual reports in Colorado that assess the damage to the state from the
horrors inflicted by the legalization of marijuana are plain to see every year,
and this report which is mandated by state law is pure facts. For example,
highway deaths for people under the influence have skyrocketed because of legal
pot use.
There are many drugs that can create a high, and many you may never hear about.
Some are sold illegally on the Internet. We’ll cover some of them below.
Any drug testing service in your community will be able to help you establish
and drug testing program, including paper work and forms and policies. I
recommend that you also consult your attorney have them do a read through of
the program you are establishing so you feel protected in even some
administrative mishap or controversy regarding drug testing seeks as its goal
to interfere with you program to intervene with workplace substance abuse.
Employees who should be tested in your company are not just the ones acting
drunk or appearing high on the job. Your drug testing program should also
consider other positions important to the safe operation of your company and
create a random testing provision, but asking your attorney first.
Although employees who drive trucks (DOT Regulated positions) must be in a random
drug testing pool annually, you may want to inquire about others who manage
money, or who are in other positions requiring great trust. Inquire with your
attorney to see what is legal and appropriate for your organization based upon
also what is reasonable and customary.
When you educate supervisors on your drug and alcohol policy and drug testing
procedures, critical to the process will be reasonable suspicion training. I am
going to give you the benefit of my experience having done this for 30 years,
and having interviewed employees referred to me after testing – all types of
employees from cocaine addicts, alcoholics, and heroin users—some of the nicest
and sweetest manipulators you will ever meet.
The risk of being sued by employees when you have an effective drug and alcohol
education and testing program is very low, especially if your legal department
has given you the green light on your process and procedures. But the rewards
are extremely high.
Unfortunately, or fortunately—you will never prove a negative when it comes to
the success of your reasonable suspicion training for supervisors and drug
testing program. That means, you will never prove that the disaster or accidental
death of a worker that did NOT happen, was the result of your taking due care
in helping to prevent it. There are ways of measuring impact using convincing
before and after studies of cost factors however, but I will discuss those in
another article.
Think twice before paying a live trainer enormous fees to
deliver training. You can find good DOT reasonable suspicion training (purchase
the course and keep it) by googling “WorkExcel DOT Editable PowerPoint Training
for Reasonable Suspicion.”
So, one other practical suggestion: Acquire a training program with notes for a
live trainer and a program (like PowerPoint) that can run like a show, which
you purchase that allows anyone with knowledge or no knowledge, the ability to
present the material. Also, get permission to make a couple sets of the program
if need to pass on to other trainers if your organization is large, or break up
the training (it is supposed to be two hours remember) so you can deliver say,
30 minutes at a time.
Remember, it is not necessary to have a professional experienced in drug and
alcohol addiction treatment, counseling, or other type of patient interface.
Reasonable
Suspicion Training Tip 1: Alcohol – Get this One Right
Let’s get boring for a minute. These dramatic drugs of abuse you may
hear about in the news are not what contribute to death and mayhem in the
workplace in great proportion. The real culprit is alcohol.
Needless to say, alcohol is the most common drug of abuse. It also has the most
myths and misconceptions associated with it because it has been around for
thousands of years. This length of time has helped ensure lots of confusion
about alcohol use, abuse, alcoholism, who becomes alcoholic, and why, how best
to recover, who recovers the right way, and what does recovery from alcoholism
really mean. It’s exhausting!
Marijuana is the #2 of abuse in the workplace, and it has as almost as many
myths associated with it thanks to the marijuana lobby and groups like NORML
that have sought for decades to propagandize the harmlessness of pot and many
benefits it can instill on society.
Are you personally curious about the harm marijuana causes? You need some
facts. I would like to give you two links that will connect you with plenty
facts about cannabis and its enormous harm to help you fight the propaganda. You
may even fend well at a social gather where the topic arises.
I will bet money you have not seen one or both of these resources: 1) Impact of
Marijuana Legalization on Colorado 7th annual report 2019: https://rmhidta.org/files/D2DF/FINAL-Volume6.pdf
2) 150 Negative Studies on Marijuana: https://www.independentsentinel.com/150-scientific-studies-showing-the-dangers-of-marijuana/
Join my mailing list to reports like these sent to your inbox.
You can unsubscribe anytime.
If you are researching what content to include in your own training, try the
video product or YouTube presentation called “Thinking about Your Drinking” –
you can also find it at WorkExcel.com. Go ahead and borrow some of the ideas
you see there.
Reasonable Suspicion Training Tip 2: Drugs Specifics
There are many different psychoactive drugs of abuse that you can
include in reasonable suspicion training, but it isn’t necessary to cover each
one or its symptoms. I won’t go over every drug you can put in a reasonable
suspicion training presentation, but I will highlight a few that are worth
helping supervisors understand. You can then visit http://drugabuse.gov, find all
the substances of abuse and isolate the information you want to share with your
managers. It’s a great site to get specific drug information.
The Federal DOT requires the following substances to be addressed in DOT
Training:
Alcohol – Beverage alcohol products
and medicinal products that contain ethanol.
Depressants –
Depressants are prescription medications used as anti-anxiety agents like
Ativan, Valium, Xanax, and Clonopin. These are minor tranquilizers. Major
tranquilizers, more common in the 1960s and 1970s—and more deadly when combined
with alcohol—are also important to discuss in DOT reasonable suspicion training
and education courses.
Amphetamines &
Stimulants – These drugs include medications like Dexedrine, speed,
Ritalin, Adderall for ADHD and illicit drugs like Cocaine and methamphetamine
Narcotics &
Designer Drugs – these drug like heroin Dilaudid, and other opium based
derivatives like Fentanyl, Heroin, and Morphine or synthetic drugs that mimic these
Opium based substances. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services now
requests that all federal employees that fall under DOT provisions also
received brief education about four Opioids. These include Hydrocodone,
Hydromorphone, Oxycodone, and Oxymorphone. They are all pain relievers, but
there does not have to be more said about them. Awareness is the key.
Hallucinogens &
PCP – LSD, Ecstasy, Psilocybin mushrooms, Mescaline and Peyote, PCP, and
various “club drugs” – many of these include date rate and predatorily used
medications, are manufactured illicitly in Europe in imported to the USA.
Inhalants – inhalants are substances
that contain volatile fumes, many of which can cause death and plenty of brain
damage. Glue is the most recognized form of inhalant that can cause brain
damage, or at least, it has gotten the most press. The DOT does not require or recommend
that you introduce supervisors to the problems associated with inhaling
volatile substances, but let me share a uncomfortable fact about drug addicts
that may have you think twice and consider offering education about it.
All addicts, no matter what their preferred psychoactive substance used to get
high, have the one drug they prefer. Perhaps it is alcohol. Maybe it is
cocaine. What happens if choice #1 or #2 are not available? What if the urge to
use a substance suddenly overcomes an employee?
Answer: The nearest psychoactive substance or mood-altering substance that
could mimic a “high” would might be considered. Withdrawal is this powerful. So
the “cure” to the craving might be an inhalant if it is handy enough.
This is why some alcoholics will drink mouthwash or perfume. Pride comes before
the fall, or this case the need to get high will come first, and whatever the
substance and stigma associated with using it, will come last.
Inhalants make the user feel drunk. This in turn will affect psychomotor
abilities noticeable to the observing supervisor. No other reasonable suspicion
training program for DOT supervisors (or non-DOT supervisors) contains this bit
of information, but WorkExcel.com’s
program does.
If you are someplace in the mid-West, you may have a concern about drugs like Methamphetamine.
However, if you are in Miami, your concern may be more about date rape drugs
like Rohypinol (“roofies”) . So, consider not just the federal government
mandate concerning types of substances, but also the geographic area where you
happen to be located.
It is really is not important to the supervisor or the organization for that
matter, whether the employee is high on Spice K2 or Salvia. What’s important is
recognizing behavior so bizarre that the threshold for reasonable suspicion is
met so intervention and testing can occur, or when a test is useless because it
won’t find a drug metabolite, a fitness for duty evaluation can be ordered and
completed before the employee can return to work.
For example, there is no requirement for supervisors to learn about Peyote
which is derived from Mescaline, a cactus plant found in the American
southwest. It is similar to LSD. There is a DOT requirement to discuss
hallucinogens as a drug category.
LSD is the most popular of the hallucinogens, and it is also the most powerful.
LSD, Psilocybin (magic mushrooms), DMT, Ketamine (Special K), and PCP
(phencyclidine) are also hallucinogens, but PCP is probably the strangest one
in this group, and some argue it is in a class all by itself.
An overdose of PCP literally untreatable. Essentially being controlled so you
do not hurt or kill yourself—or someone else—is how use of the substance is
managed.
With each drug category, discuss nature of the drug, signs and symptoms of use,
hazards of use in the workplace, and effects on psychomotor disturbances.
Reasonable Suspicion Training Tip 3:
Weird Drugs You Should Mention
There are drugs of abuse that once ingested to not produce metabolites,
which are critical for drug tests to be effective in spotting a substance after
its used. Metabolites are evidence of digestion or the body metabolizing the
substance and producing a by-product from the chemical reaction with bodily
enzymes like those found in the liver.
No drug tests exists for many types of hallucinogenic type drugs such as Spice
K2, (but testing companies are reportedly working on one.) Other drugs
dangerous enough to mention include Salvia, Bath Salts, and GHB. Also Ketamine,
Peyote, and Rohypinol. You can see a preview
of our reasonable suspicion training program and jump to the sections
on these substance if you are curious.
Even though a drug test won’t detect use of some odd psychoactive drugs,
managers should still have a general awareness for what they are. These drugs above
are highly dangerous, in that the user must be surrounded by friends to prevent
self-harm or accidentally killing themselves while high on the drug. To see one
of these drugs and how people behave on it, visit YouTube and in the search bar
(on the YouTube page) enter “Salvia” to watch people in distress who have used
this substance. Now imagine an employee or warehouse worker on a fork lift high
on Salvia.
Reasonable
Suspicion Training Tip 4: Signs and Symptoms
Signs and symptoms of substance abuse are not all associated with
psychomotor disturbances like stumbling and slurring of one’s speech. Frankly,
I have never seen a drunk employee slurring their speech in the workplace in my
25 years of education, assessment, and intervention. Most alcoholics are
perfectly capable of speaking clearly when moderately drunk because they have
tolerance, which means their nervous system is not affected to the degree that
such is noticeable.
Some signs and symptoms relate to mood swings. Others are associated with
withdrawal and memory loss. Still documental signs and symptoms include
attitude changes from a calm quiet mood to one of anger, depression, or
suspicion.
Always use a checklist when constructing documentation. Use a toxicity
checklist and a performance issues checklist. One measure substance abuse
effects and the other measures job performance, conduct, and attendance
effects. Both are helpful in constructing documentation. Search WorkExcel.com
for a good signs and symptoms checklist for use in reasonable suspicion
training.
Reasonable Suspicion Training Tip 5:
Performance Issues of Drug Users
Signs and symptoms are the same as performance issues when it comes to
drug and alcohol abusing or addictive employees in the workplace. Many
trainers, including myself, believe that performance signs and symptoms are
often more reliable for spotting drug or alcohol addicted employees than
physical signs and symptoms. These workplace behavioral shortcomings and
problems are then used as leverage to get an employee to a counselor, typically
an employee assistance professional, who can then do an assessment and
determine what comes next. This sort of referral can happen long before alcohol
on the breath, stumbling or mood changes ever appear – in fact many years, if
not decades before.
A case in point would be a 69 year old Heroin addict who is a janitor in a
school symptom and who has worked in the same job for 28 years—but whose
absenteeism has finally become more problematic, frequently, longer in days. A
heroin addict can look like a million dollars in an interview with and the most
skilled drug and alcohol counselor won’t notice the addiction problem.
Such a referral to a counselor could only be made based upon performance, but a
complete assessment including a medical referral, and other assessment
questions might very well produce an inpatient admission.
So you can see how all of this works. Signs and symptoms are not necessary that
visible and behaviors, performance, and conduct might very well be.
Reasonable Suspicion Training Tip 6:
Manipulation Ploys that Fake Out DOT Supervisors
We like to cover manipulation in reasonable suspicion training so
supervisors are on their toes and expect these ploys perpetrated by addicts who
are desperate not to get caught for drinking and drugging in the workplace. There
are dozens of such manipulative scenarios, but we will cover a few. You can the
top ten in the DOT
Reasonable Suspicion Training program at WorkExcel.com or you can
purchase this element of training separately from us at the following link.
“We’re Friends”
Many supervisors have been faced with the need to confront an employee
because of reasonable suspicion of being under the influence and faced a big bump
in the road: They are also friends with the employee.
Are you friends with your employees? Do you party together? Go fishing? Share
secrets about your spouses or partners? Were you the “best man” at the wedding?
Have you been in tough jams where you bailed each other out of close calls
(whatever they might have been ala “The Hangover II”.)
If you are close friends with those you supervise, you will face a crisis in a
situation where you must choose confrontation and referral for a drug test over
ignoring the situation call for a reasonable suspicion intervention on the job.
Looking the other way drug and alcohol test with the goal of looking the other
way and avoiding a crisis—nay—the loss of the friendship with your employee.
Indeed, that is exactly what will happen if you do your job and refer your
buddy for a drug and alcohol test. They are going to protest, hope to talk you
out of it, and use the relationship as a weapon to convince you to ignore your
duty to refer to testing. Friends don’t do that. Instead, a real friend would
suck it up.
Think of the risks involved in ignoring your job to confront and refer your
employee both for yourself, the company, safety, the general public, coworkers,
etc. As you can readily see, is a problem that you should decide right now how
you will handle if you are ever faced with it.
The correct management of this potential problem is to tell all employees you
supervise that you will not play favorites when it comes to reasonable
suspicion testing, and also say, that it is obvious why not—your job and many
risks and consequences would be on the line.
The smart thing to do is not to be friends with those you supervise—do not join
clubs, play cards, drink alcohol, party, loan money, or counsel them about
their personal problems. If you do, the type of relationship will grow to the
point where it will take priority over your job and supervisory functions.
You must not depend on your employees to
get your personal relationship needs met from them. This is called a dual
relationship.
Does it sound impossible to forego all of the benefits of a personal
relationship with your employees for the sake of being able to manage a task
like confronting one of them for reasonable suspicion of substance abuse?
Tough question isn’t it. The goal of these several paragraphs is to get you
thinking and finding the right answer for yourself. If all supervisors would do
just this much, many lives and jobs could be saved nationwide.
“You’ll ruin my career”
Someday, you can expect that an employee you confront for signs and symptoms
of alcohol or drug use on the job saying, “You will ruin my career” if you send
me for a test. Hopefully before this happens, they will have a solid understanding
of your responsibility because this is a tough place to be as you can imagine—having
to listen to the fear coming from your employee or following through with your
responsibility to refer for a test.
Let’s face it. Although most company alcohol and drug policies protect workers
from reprisals, people are the ones who make decisions, and these deciders
could always discriminate against a worker when it comes to hiring and
promotion, just as they might based upon their internal politics.
“It’s Medicine or Mouthwash”
Certainly one of the most common retorts from employees who confronted with
alcohol on the breath, and who in fact, have been drinking on the job is the
excuse that what the supervisor is smelling is only mouthwash. The other excuse
commonly used is that the supervisor is really smelling medicine. With either
of these excuses, the supervisor might envision a substance like Listerine as
the order to which the employee is making reference. After all, these consumer
products do small pretty “mediciny.”
But here is the catch. So what? If what you smell on the breath of the worker
is alcohol-like in its make up, then you have a good cause to recommend a test.
No reason to feel intimidated. Make this point in your reasonable
suspicion training class.
We mentioned before that alcoholics may turn to other substances that contain
alcohol, and drink them in order to ward off withdrawal. Mouthwash (some of
which is 25% alcohol or 50 proof) happens to be one of them. The other is
medicine of some type. And of course, we have our perfume drinkers. Sound crazy
and not believable? I would suggest you take in a few Alcoholics or Narcotics
Anonymous meetings where you will hear these authentic presentations on what
alcoholics now in recovery, once did while in the hey-day of their drinking
careers, as they often refer to them.
Reasonable Suspicion Training Tip 7:
Incorporate the EAP
If your organization has an employee assistance program or EAP, be sure to incorporate
its purpose and how to use it in your reasonable suspicion training program
education. EAPs are confidential. Very confidential. In fact their confidentiality
provisions, although not absolute, are stricter than those guarding medical
records or any other confidentiality laws in the nation. Why? This was purposeful
when the 1972 Comprehensive Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism Rehabilitation Act was
passed by President Nixon. The idea was to make confidentiality laws so strict
that people would be encouraged to seek treatment voluntarily more readily.
Always encourage people to get help via the EAP. Also, remember this. At some
point, supervisors may not have another to conduct a reasonable suspicion test,
but they may have enough information to say something appropriate to the
employee with, say, a hangover – like, “hey, man, you should call the EAP. It
looks like you have a too many of these hangovers.”
Always remember, that confrontation of addicts in cumulative. Over time, the
likelihood of their seeking and/or accepting treatment is directly proportional
to the frequency of confrontations, close calls, interventions, and other bad
experiences related to their drinking.
Reasonable
Suspicion Training
Tip 8:
DVD, PowerPoint, Video, or Web Course
Training supervisors in drug and alcohol awareness is often done on-site
using PowerPoint programs. In my experience, this is the most common method,
but if you have a group of supervisors, how many don’t show out of every 10?
Do you have a method of reach each one? How long are you willing to pursue
these supervisors to come back to the training room and watch a PowerPoint on a
laptop? Needless to say this is not very practical, and you risk never reaching
every supervisor unless you have a very aggressive HR manager or safety
director in charge of training who really knows how to pin managers down.
A better way to go is to have a Web course. And here is the beautiful thing!
You can own a Web course that will play like a movie hands off, and use this in
a training room --- or online where a certificate of completion is issued from
the course with the supervisors name imprinted on it with date and time stamp
as well. So, this way you have a couple different ways to train that allow you
to quickly reach every supervisor, especially the ones that got away.
Don’t discount resistance. If you have 10-12 supervisors, chances are that one
of them is alcoholic. These individuals will be inclined more than the others
to skip out of training.
Imagine this – sending an email to every supervisor with a link to the Web
course. Then a week later expecting everyone one to turn in a copy of their
certificate. Any supervisors who have not done so are email the link again with
a more assertive message on management’s part to complete training.
This is how you reduce risk in an organization!
If you train DOT supervisors, break up the training into different types of learning experiences. For example, some audio visual, some handouts to read, some educational test questions that expand on important concepts.
A huge myth among employers who much conform to DOT training is that the entire two hours of training must be comprised of audio/visual material. Not true. I have phone the DOT in Washington, DC myself. Even group discussion of pertinent content can quality has part of the 2-hour drug and alcohol training. Personally, I like to give supervisors lots of questions, have them answer the question, and then give them a paragraph of education about why the answer to certain question is the way it is.
So, the message with this tip is – don’t put your supervisors to sleep because you will increase risk to everyone.
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