Importance Of Substance Abuse Test

By Author: Naman Vohra
Total Articles: 133
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Have any of your employees lately displayed any kind of undesirable trait? It is very normal to find a case or two in an organization wherein an employee's productivity dips, two employees get into an argument, or a dissatisfied employee becomes a negative influence for his/her colleagues. All these situations can lead to employee lay-offs or exits which further results in higher replacement and staffing costs.

In order to keep such costs under control, it is advisable to go to the root of the problem. Among a slew of plausible reasons, the possibility of substance use also stands high. Substance abuse testing is one tool that helps organizations to identify whether drug abuse is the reason behind an employee's uncanny behaviour.

There are times when companies run the risk of ending up hiring a drug addict in their organization. This is when drug abuse test can come to corporates' rescue. Substance abuse testing can be conducted beforehand in order to screen out the ones who have been under the influence of drugs.

In accordance to what have been discussed above, there are two stages during which substance ...
... abuse test can be conducted. Each stage has its own relevance for an organization.

Pre-employment stage- Drug abuse test is carried out in this stage when the provision of final employment letter is contingent on a favourable result from the test. Drug abuse test at this stage will help in determining whether a candidate takes drugs or not before he could joins the company and the company incurs any further costs on him.

Post employment stage- Once an individual has been absorbed into the system, it is always preferable to keep him/her screened from time to time. Conducting surprise tests would be an ideal thing to do as the test results can come negative if doses are not taken for a stipulated time. So a surprise test would not give time to employees to keep themselves prepared.

Hence, the importance of substance abuse test is magnified by the time it is being used. Also, the number of test being conducted matters. There can be a five panel test, nine panel test, ten panel test, twelve panel test, and so on. Panels refer to the number of drugs the tests are carried out for. Generally, a sample of hair, urine or blood is collected for the test. Some tests can also require sweat or saliva sample, which is not very popular.

~Naman is associated with a leading background screening company that specializes in Employee background screening