A Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration national survey from 2015 found that 75% of those 18 to 64 who had substance misuse disorders were in the workforce, Safety + Health reports. And the situation has worsened from two years ago when 33,000 Americans died due to drug overdoses related to opioids, including oxycodone and morphine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports.
“If you’re an employer, you care because of the cost to your business, and you care because you care about the health of your employees and their dependents and their families,” says Gary Mendell, founder of Shatterproof, a New York-nonprofit organization focused on drug addiction. Mendell started the organization in 2011 when his son Brian committed suicide after being addicted to opioids.
“How many employees work for a company have asthma or heart disease, and they’re not afraid to tell people they have it? They’re not ashamed about it. They get treated for it and they become healthy,” Mendell says. “But if you have an addiction to opioids, et cetera, there’s a stigma, and you are reluctant to say it.”
In a nationwide poll released in March, the National Safety Council (NSC) notes that 70% of 501 human resources professionals believed their organizations were impacted by opioids--ranging from absenteeism, lower productivity or safety incidents. But only 19% reported that they felt they were “extremely prepared” to deal with opioid fallout.
That survey also finds that only 13% felt “very confident” their employees were cognizant of signs of opioid misuse, while 76% don’t offer training to help them recognize the signs. Eighty-one percent of survey respondents noted their drug policies lacked “at least one critical element of an effective drug-free workplace program,” the NSC finds.
“We know that these substances--even when used legitimately as recommended or prescribed by a physician--can cause impairment or lead to errors or issues in the workplace that can impair safety,” says Tess Benham, senior program manager for the NSC initiative. “And so today, we have a very complicated landscape for employers, and so I think that poses challenges for HR professionals and safety professionals to rethink, ‘Do I have the right things in place for my company?”
One Oklahoma company has a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to opioid and other drug and alcohol abuse, which results in immediate firings, Tulsa World reports. American Castings manufactures cast iron products at its plant, with some products weighing several tons.
American Castings’ human resources manager, Lori Nichols, and other supervisors are trained to recognize signs that may indicate an employee is under the influence. If she or a supervisor suspects a problem, they then get another supervisor to witness. The safety manager, John Gann, is then notified, and if necessary, law enforcement.
A company policy lets addicted employees come forward and self-identify if they have a problem. But, that's not always enough. “In our industry, we can’t sit back and wait for someone to self-identify,” Nichols says. “Safety is our No. 1 priority. Usually when there is a problem, it happens with full force.”
Another manufacturer, a food processing plant in Baltimore, also has a zero-tolerance policy, the Chicago Tribune reports. The risks to the addicted employee and those working around them are too great to accept anything less at the Philip Tulkoff plant. The firm randomly chooses one employee to get tested each month, “and we’re gonna move it to two,” Tulkoff says.
But these proactive measures are not cheap. Tulkoff pays a third-party firm to pick a worker and then pays a clinic to do the tests. The company also bears the expense of workers it has trained and who then end up leaving after failing a drug screening. But not every company is willing to go this far. “I know people who’ve said, ‘I can’t do it, I would lose too many people,” he says.