I wrote an article last week for the GRS blog, entitled ‘Alcohol-Related Injuries at Work‘. Fascinating subject really, as we were talking about it at a meeting and wondering what to do if someone turned up to work intoxicated.
The thrust of this article was that we had discussed introducing breathalyzer tests, random of course, for the employees. Unsure of whether or not this was legal, we had kept it in the discussion phase only, but decided to write an article on the blog about it, hoping to draw some comments from other small-medium businesses to see what they thought.
It’s not really an easy subject mind you, as there is precious little documentation in the form of legislation or otherwise, to indicate if it was permissible or not. We do have an obligation to the other employees of course, to maintain a safe working environment so in a way a simple test wouldn’t be harmful. The question is though, would such a test be impinging upon some civil rights or not?
Performing such test would however, need to be enshrined in some sort of an alcohol policy at work. A simple document saying that we don’t accept or condone any sort of drinking at work, also including that breathalyzer tests would be possible. Is this dissimilar to say, a modern corporation performing random drug tests? Those are quite common now, so I don’t see a problem with testing for alcohol.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
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