Employee Drug Testing
Justin Boykin
Columbia Southern University

Employee Drug Testing When managing a company, one of the primary focuses of the employer should be the safety of their employees and the safety of their customers. By ensuring that the work environment is free of any substance that can potentially cause distraction or impaired judgment, employers will decrease the odds of injuries to employee and the patrons as well. Studies show that when frequently abused substances such as illicit drugs and alcohol are removed from the work environment, employees are four times less likely to be injured on the job (Ivancevich, 2010, p.534).
In the case of Castulon Corporation, I feel that the plan to implement drug testing is a good idea if carried out right. The argument against having the drug test in the case study is that the drug test will undermine the trust level of the company and the employees. However, I feel that if the employees are innocent then it will not affect them at all by having to take a drug test and it will not bother them to do so. On the other hand, for the employees who are partaking in the use of illicit, I feel that they have already undermined the trust of the company and should be disciplined accordingly (Ivancevich, 2010, p.532).
For employees who fail to comply with the company’s substance abuse policy, I believe there should be positive disciplinary actions for each offense. By giving employees the option to enroll in a substance abuse class on the first offense, you still maintain the reputation that you care about your employees while retaining good workers who might have struggled with substance abuse during a period of their life. For second time offenders, if you would like to continue to promote a positive image within the company, you may offer a substance abuse rehabilitation service for employees to partake in to help direct them back on the track that you intended. For third time offenders, I feel that the employer has done all that it can do to try to retain the employee but the employee should be terminated. Being that the employer has contributed so much into getting the employee help at this point, that it would be perfectly fine to limit the loses of the company (Ivancevich, 2010, p.524).
Furthermore, implementing a drug-testing initiative for all current and future employees can often become very costly for employers. One of the biggest challenges to an employer with initiating this is developing a plan that can prove to be effective and cost efficient in the end. With a company the size of Castulon Corp., the funding spent on negative test and false positives could result in losing thousands of dollars a year on unnecessary testing while only eliminating a handful of substance related problems (Ivancevich, 2010, p.533).
Another issue that may cause problems with testing for abused substances in a company this size would be the level of accuracy of the test administered. By trying to keep the testing at an affordable cost, many high-quality testing methods are removed from the equation. By relying on cost efficient testing, employers are running the risk of falsely accusing an innocent employee for drug related issues (Ivancevich, 2010, p.533).
By issuing false positive on drug tests, this could also add room for more issues for employers. By giving employers probable cause to search employees from these inaccurate tests, authorizes wrongful searches of employees possessions based on the false results. Some feel that this could ultimately infringe on the rights of the individual based on the 14th amendment and the privacy of the innocent individuals. By crossing into this arena of property searches, as an employer you place your company in the line of many possible allegations of harassment and profiling (Ivancevich, 2010, p.533).
Although the ultimate goal of the employer is to protect the employees and patrons, some employees may feel that other substances are just as dangerous as illicit drugs. Many employees feel that in fairness, there should be test for employees who partake in excessive drinking before and while at work. Being that alcohol can affect the part of the brain that controls motor and reasoning skills, some feel that this is a more prevalent issue within the work place (Ivancevich, 2010, p.533).
Nevertheless, as a professional I feel that it is important to at least try to eliminate all external factors that could possibly cause harm to an employee or others around them. I think that in order for an employee to perform his or her job at the maximum level, he or she must be healthy and free of impairments. This could be removing alcohol and drugs from their system or even making sure that they are getting enough hours of rest. This plays a major part in the safety of the other employees and the quality of the work produced while on the job. In the same sense as drug testing, for alcohol testing to be effective it would need to be cost efficient and coherent. In order to ensure this, it would be very costly to any organization to maintain these standards for an extended period. I think that it will take employers building well-organized disciplinary plan to ensure that you have employee’s complete buy-in into your drug and alcohol policy.
Overall, I feel that it is a good idea to try to enforce these policies but I do not think it will every benefit the company enough to invest into going above the bare minimum for testing. Currently many employers only administer these tests at the point of accidents or suspicion so it will never be able to prevent the problem.

References Ivancevich, J. (2010). Employee Benefits and Services. Human Resource Managment (pp. 508-565). Boston: Mcgraw-Hill.