Not every employer takes the time to plan and carry-out an employee drug screening. Not every employer feels ready to assemble the four essential elements of an employee drug screening. Any employer who hopes to weed out from his or her employee pool those workers who are using drugs needs to have the following four essentials.

First, the employer must have designed a way to coordinate the collection of the specimens that are to be tested. If the employer wants to screen the urine of his or her employees, then the employer must make arrangements for a lavatory to be available on the day of the screening. It can not be in a very small space, because a number of people must come and go from that location.

Of course, an employer does not need to plan for the collection of urine. An employer could decide to test a sample of each employee’s hair. In that case, each person to be tested should have a place to sit down, while someone from the laboratory takes a sample of his or her hair. Oral fluids testing can be done with or without a chair for the specimen donor.

The mention above of laboratory personnel introduces the second essential element of an employee drug screening—laboratory coordination. The day for the screening must be a day when the laboratory has personnel available. The day of the screening should be a day when the lab will have plenty of space for the storage and handling of the acquired specimens.

Once the employer has managed to coordinate the collection of specimens and the assistance from the laboratory, he or she has but one half of the needed elements in a successful employee drug screening. The employer must also take into account the need for communicating with medical review officers. Those officers are an important part of the post screening activities.

After an employee drug screening, the medical review officers need to talk with each of the workers who donated a specimen. They need to obtain from each worker all of the relevant information. This is especially important, if the worker’s specimen has tested as positive for drugs.

Finally, the employer must decide how to go about reporting the results of the screening. A wise employer usually plans to share the results in the most caring manner. A wise employer makes an effort to see that none of the results become public knowledge.

The process of screening employees for use of drugs takes time and money. Not all employers want to invest that time and money. Some employers are ready to test not only present employees, but also all those who want to work for that employer. The pre-employment screening must mirror any program that has been based on an employee drug testing guide.

John was so psyched about how well his job interview had gone that when the interviewer asked for an employee drug test before making an offer, John agreed without thinking twice. It had completely slipped his mind that he’d smoked a joint with an old college buddy over the weekend. Unfortunately, John tested positive for cannabis and was not offered the position. He lost out on a great job. And the employer lost out on a great employee. John was no drug abuser, and he went on to do great things in his career…and he did them for the interviewer’s competitor.

Employee Drug Test Pros

There are some valid reasons to drug test employees. One, certainly, is to catch chronic substance abusers who might steal from the company or from clients to support their habits.

Another reason to give a drug test is if the employee is going to use the company car or travel a great deal on behalf of the business. You certainly don’t want anyone you’ve hired to get into a wreck because he was too drunk or high to drive properly.

Finally, your client represents your business to the community and to your clients. Some illicit substances can lead to mood swings and outbursts of temper—definitely not the impression you want to make on a client. Co-workers, too, can be frightened by violence and threats of an employee under the influence.

Employee Drug Test Cons

Drug tests give only one small bit of information. At the moment the employee drug test occurred, the employee had an illicit substance in his or her urine (unless of course the test was a false positive, in which case you don’t have any factual information at all). The test doesn’t tell you if it was the employee’s first use or his four hundredth. In fact, people with serious drug problems often know how to beat drug tests, so you’re much more likely to weed out a “naïve” user than you are a hardcore addict.

Second, there are valid, legal reasons for an employee to have a positive drug screen. A person with chronic, hard-to-control pain who takes prescribed narcotic pain medication may test positive for opiates, for example, and someone who takes a prescription medication for anxiety may test positive for benzodiazepines.

Third, some employees might argue that what they do in their private lives, say, in the evenings or on the weekends, isn’t really the employer’s business as long as they perform their work capably and don’t come to work under the influence.  

Finally, you may hire a person who is clean and sober and passes the employee drug test with flying colors, but who starts (or restarts) using or abusing illicit substances after they have worked for you for awhile. To guard against this possibility, some employers choose to perform random employee drug testing, but this is costly and difficult to manage as well as a blow to employee morale.

Employee Drug Testing: The Bottom Line

If you as an employer choose to perform employee drug tests, those tests should be just one source of information about your employee. The rest should come from your own observation and the observations of co-workers.

If a drug test comes back positive, discuss the results with the employee. Find out whether he or she is taking any medication that could have caused a false positive. If the employee admits to using drugs, talk frankly about his or her patterns of drug use and how those patterns would or would not affect his or her employment. There is a great deal of difference, for instance, between someone who cannot get through the day without several snorts of cocaine and someone who smokes pot a few times a year with college pals.

Use the employee drug test to inform your decision, if you like, but don’t let positive test results automatically stop you from hiring—or keeping—a capable employee. Communicate, observe, and terminate if—and only if—drug use is interfering with your employee’s professional life.

In any company with a production facility, it is clear that the production level will eventually impact the company’s bottom line. Such a company would not want a lazy employee serving on the production line. Neither would that same company want a drugged employee on the production line. That is why many employers think seriously about using employee drug testing.

A drugged employee can not only slow the production of a money-making product, a drugged employee also has a greater chance of experiencing a period of carelessness. Such carelessness could lead to a serious injury. Such an injury could then cause the employee to seek workman’s compensation. That is a second reason why employers are giving careful thought to employee drug testing.

Of course the initiation of employee drug testing can not take place in just a short span of time. An employer must first decide on the structure for that drug testing program. In order to make that decision, an employer could benefit from looking at some sample employee drug testing policies.

Some company’s have declared that drug testing will be mandatory for any employee who is involved in an accident. That would of course assume that the company would be aware of all accidents. That would assume that all accidents, even those that might take place after the established working hours, would be recorded.  Since no employer would feel confident about making that assumption, employers have veered away from reliance on such a restricted testing program.

At the other extreme are policies that call for random drug testing of all workers. The harshest presentation for such a policy then demands the automatic firing of any employee who is found to test positive for drugs. This is called a zero tolerance policy.

A more moderate approach calls for random employee drug testing, but does not demand immediate dismissal of those found to be drug users. According to such moderate policies anyone found to test positive for drug use would get a second chance. In other words, such an employee could remain on the payroll at least until called-up for the next round of drug testing. A second positive test would require that the offending employee be “pushed” out the door.

This third possible structure for a drug testing program is probably as close as any such program can come to presenting an aura of fairness. If an employer waited for an accident before testing, that would seem to put the lives of the employees in danger. If an employer fired any employee who tested positive for drug use, that could mean that a false positive result would have the ability to deprive an innocent employee of a source of income.

Americans have always felt the need to defend their privacy rights. Within the past 25 years, those rights have come head to head with the effort put forth by some employers, who have wanted to end any drug use by their employees. Those employers have initiated the drive for employee drug testing in the workplace.

The legality of employee drug testing has even been the focus of an ongoing court battle. That battle evolved from issuance by Ronald Reagan of a Presidential directive. President Reagan had felt it proper to test federal employees in key government positions for evidence of drug use.

Federal employees who objected to that directive brought the issue of employee drug testing before a judge of the Federal Court System.  Their lawyers argued that federal drug testing “would permit random testing of virtually any federal employee in the Washington area, since almost any such employee may have access to buildings frequented by members of the Cabinet, members of Congress or justices of this court, whose safety are important government interests.”

Certain members of the Supreme Court have a similar concern for the protection of privacy rights. Certain members of the Supreme Court have opposed all employee drug testing. Their arguments have helped to underline the need for a closer examination of employee rights regarding drug testing.

A number of employees have questioned the right of employers to obtain all of the information that can be disclosed by the performance of employee drug testing. They have pointed-out that the test results reveal a great deal of medical information. Some of that information could include facts that the employee would prefer to keep away from the eyes of an employer.

Suppose, for example that a female employee was pregnant, but had not yet revealed that fact to her employer. A urine drug test might show that such a woman was pregnant.  An employer might then decide to let that woman go, thus saving the company the worry of paying for her time at home with a newborn baby.

An employee who was taking a cocktail of AIDS drugs would not want his or her employer to learn about how one employee’s performance could be linked to the strong drugs used to fight a particular health condition. Such an employee would not want to be subjected to a drug test.

While AIDS patients have probably made one of the loudest objections to workplace drug testing, there are other medical conditions that an employee could no longer hide, if as to be part of a drug test. An employee taking medication for a heart condition would have his or her private problems revealed. An employee taking medication for epilepsy would need to share that fact with his or her employer.

All of the above individuals would need to disclose private medical information, if they were required to contribute a sample to a drug testing service.

Three levels of deterrence can be found within the basic surveillance procedures called employee drug testing. Each level has a certain ability to force the potential drug user to pause before proceeding with his or her ill-timed indulgence. Each has the ability to complicate the enjoyable process an off-work employee has anticipated.

On one level a worker’s simple awareness of an employee drug testing program within his or her workplace should serve to dampen the desire of that employee to engage in drug use. The employee does not want to get caught. The fact that employees fear detection of their drug habit has been demonstrated by the efforts of certain employees to escape possible detection.

Sometimes drug-using employees rely on adulteration to disguise their drug use. Sometimes they depend on substitution to cover-up a test sample that is sure to test positive for a banned substance. Sometimes they resort to use of a last-ditch effort—the flushing of the test sample.

Once a worker has escaped detection by an employee drug testing program then that individual could still have reason to refrain from further use of illicit drugs. The employee would know that the chance for future detection existed. Moreover, the employee would know that detection could lead to a possible punishment.

On that second level, the employee’s possible punishment serves as a deterrent. Because the punishment varies from case to case, an employee can never know for sure what fate awaits his or her refusal to follow company policy. That very uncertainty can offer the employer a mild level of deterrence.

When one employee gets word of the punishment given to a fellow-employee, then that employee appreciates the severity of the punishment. The more severe the punishment is, the greater the chance that any employee drug testing program will manage to prevent expanded drug use by the workers within a company. The successes achieved by the threat of a severe punishment have contributed to the fall in drug use by employees. The reported rate for such use fell from 13.6% to 4.1% between 1998 and 2005.

The nature of the punishment therefore serves as yet a third level of deterrence. The nature of the punishment, in addition to the treat of a possible punishment, works to force every employee to think twice before enjoying an illegal substance while away from the workplace. The nature of the punishment, especially when it is a severe punishment, manages to darken the cloud that has already formed above the head of the intermittent or steady drug user.

That cloud would most certainly darken the skies of a drug user who returned to work within 24 hours after his or her enjoyment of a controlled substance.