3 Reasons to Start a Drug Testing Program in 2016

If you’re hiring based on a person’s appearance, well, there’s a whole host of reasons that’s not a good idea. If you’re doing it because you think you can spot the drug abuser, you’d definitely be wrong more than you’d be right. Drugs have infiltrated the suburbs as alarming rates and everyone from soccer moms to Sunday school  teachers can find themselves addicted to substances like painkillers or yes, even marijuana. The “employee from hell” is right around the corner for businesses that don’t test and test properly.

That last part? It’s really important. You have to know what you want tests to show, but also what to do with the information, how to make the process fair (and legal) and how to make this a process that employees embrace as much as accept. Choosing the right service provider—and a mobile one at that—is a great place to start.

Your employees want it

There are books and seminars and podcasts and advice galore on how to improve employee morale. You can spend a lot of money trying to research it, but here’s a hint, there’s only so much you can do, because every single workplace has a different set of factors. Since you can only control so much, you can only count on things that improve “quality of life” while that employee is at work. You can throw money at a new coffee machine (and we’re not saying not to get that new single serve machine, understand) or you can let them know they are safe around their co-workers.

Guess who are the only people that really have a problem with this one? No, not just people who use currently, but employees who would be willing to use and think keeping that option open would be nice. Forget that it’s your right as a business owner to test for a moment and think of it as an imperative. It makes your company safer—less accidents, less injuries…less of a chance of coming to work and dying. I’m not suggesting that this one action will take a work environment suffering from major drama and turn it around, but drug testing is just a smart move in that direction. Less employees out sick because of drugs (for any reason: injuries, not feeling well, mysterious absences) means less people covering that work. Less drug abuse means less likelihood that people will steal from the business or each other. There’s less likely someone will do harm to someone else, either accidentally or intentionally while impaired.

The Department of Transportation mandates drug testing, as do government services. Sure, it makes sense for those jobs, right? Well, then why not yours? The cost?

It lowers costs

How many times have you heard someone say they’re trying to save money on something by cutting corners only to have that come back and cost them much, much more than if they’d have done things right? It’s probably something similar to what your employees hear while training at your company. Let’s not suggest that you have to go out and opt for the biggest drug testing package you can find to be safe. There’s a smart way to do it. It’s finding the right mobile drug testing company.

When an accident occurs, you might have to have the employee drug tested. A mobile service comes right to you. If you’re testing your workforce, you’d have to send each employee out at a scheduled time, hope there are no delays or rescheduling, and pay them for that time. A mobile drug testing company comes right to your door, calls employees out on your schedule, tests, sends them back to work, and provides results and everything else right there. Some are available 24/7. Some help you set up a plan from the beginning, including making sure it’s a legally sound plan, providing the training and resources and helping you find ways to make the process as easy and quick as possible.

The act of testing itself has a cost-cutting aspect to it. You will see fewer accidents over time and lower insurance and workers’ compensation costs. You’ll have less absences, increased productivity, and you’ll keep your good and reliable employees more often which means less training and recruiting costs. It really does make good business sense. This isn’t something to wait on until next December, or even February. Start the planning process and start the right way—with help from the right mobile drug testing company.