Safeguard The Workplace With Substance Abuse Testing

By Author: Naman Vohra
Total Articles: 133
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organisation's environment is highly influenced with the quality of the workforce, and quality depends on various factors. Education, background and productivity are few of the factors that have a bearing on the quality of the workforce.

Substance abuse is another factor that has a strong influence on the workforce environment. A person under substance influence can prove very risky and costly, monetarily and beyond. An employee having a drug abuse problem can bring in negative influence in the workplace in numerable ways. For instance, the employee under the influence of drugs can get into a fight with a colleague, can display an undesired behaviour at workplace, can encourage other colleagues to do drugs, and can be unproductive at work, etc.

Another crucial consequence of drug abuse is the high probability of the addict to get into criminal activities. Such actions can be anything from harming colleagues and other employees in the organisations to indulging in thefts and murders to arrange for more funds.

Many companies in India are already aware of how substance abuse can harm the overall productivity ...
... of its workforce and many of them already adopted effective measures to identify drug users. Substance abuse testing is now part of the screening policy of many organisations. With a substance abuse test, they are not only screening out the candidates not fitting the list but are also doing away with the forthcoming possibilities of high employee turnover and absenteeism, and negative influences at workplace.

Companies generally opt for five-panel, nine-panel, eleven-panel or twelve-panel substance abuse tests. These drug abuse tests in India can typically be conducted with just urine sample or blood sample. Rarely are the hair sample or bone marrow sample taken for tests.

Drug abuse tests is a check that should not be restricted to just being part of pre-employment background screening. It should definitely be conducted from time to time. A surprise substance abuse test would not give the employee enough time to be prepared for the test, or enough time to let the effect of drug wear off. Periodic drug abuse test will assure that your employees are complying with the corporate policy related to drugs and alcohol. Also, the tests bring to notice those employees who come to office under substance influence, thus, equipping the company with knowledge of the problem that needs to be tackled by the management immediately.