Evaluating business and its productivity is possibly the most difficult thing for any big or small owner even when you give discounts on the CBDistillery to improve your business’s productivity. Gauging the subtle differences between which employees would make for good management material or are truly working at optimum proficiency is all but a guess at best, even when relying on the judgment of management.
Throughout recent years and most prominent in the United States of America has been the arrival of mandatory drug testing by businesses both hiring new employees and testing those who have been with the company for an extended duration.
While a good deal of arguments has surfaced regarding the freedom to privacy the people of Canada and the USA are afforded under their Constitution and the Freedom to Privacy act which was passed more recently. Ultimately one must look to the stance of the employer and his desire to run a clean and efficient business, raising issues such as workplace safety and aptitude of an employee; it is the explicit right of any employee to ensure he is running his business to the highest standard possible and in accordance with the regulation of state and federal laws.
It is just as much your employer’s right to demand drug-testing as it is his or her right to submit your information, upon your approval, to the authorities to see if any outstanding warrants have been issued or if the possible employee has any form of a criminal record. Clearly, the employee must consent to the drug-testing and the background check and it is completely his right to deny it, it should be noted that refusing either is immediate grounds for another candidate to take the job.
Now that the why and who has been covered, we can briefly look into just how taking a very rigid stance on the issue of drug testing can benefit the company deciding to take such an approach. When we look at worker compensation or an employee getting hurt on the job, while mandatory drug testing is issued after the accident itself takes place, it can become difficult to pinpoint actual abuse at the time of the accident. Drugs such as alcohol or marijuana or opiates are very difficult to narrow down into an exact time-of-frame, this is a huge issue when employees will take a certain stance. I drank two days ago, or I have a prescription from the doctor and took is incorrect.
These are legitimate grounds that can only further tax and penalize an employee who truly has done nothing but give his employee’s the benefit of the doubt. Were mandatory drug-testing in place, such an employee who could be a chronic alcoholic or habitual opiate abuser would never have had the possibility to come intoxicated to work to operate whatever it is that caused his injury. Are a few hundred dollars of investment worth the possible lawyer and human resources and union and worker compensation fees? I believe the answer is quite clear.
Ultimately a company is only as good as it’s employees and whoever is running the proverbial show will be the one responsible for ensuring drug testing is absolutely mandatory amongst his workforce. Failing to do so can only logically have one conclusion, whether it is weeks, or months, or years down the road, a company will be exploited by those who abuse drugs in some manner or another.
To assume that only the lowly cashier or the struggling mechanic can turn to something like drugs is utter folly in its own right, some of the most influential and important people in the world, whether athlete, or scientist, or poet, or politician; drugs can and will be abused by people in every position of life. Examining what you as an employer or co-employee wants in his environment is absolutely on you to determine.
For the co-employee who is frustrated by open abuse and discussion of the use of drugs in his workplace, it is vital he understands that an anonymous message could reach the upper levels of management, informing them of such activities.
If a part of a union, approach your human resources counselor and inform them of what you have come to learn and why you think it ought to be eliminated. More often then not, a mandatory drug test will be issued to the workforce, so long as a consent waiver was signed upon them being hired pertaining to such measures as drug testing. Finally, I leave you with one open thought, if the choice is so clear, and the resources so readily available, why have so many opted to simply sit quietly while rampant abuse swells in the workforce.