Your Tasmanian workplace is safety critical. Perhaps you operate a mine, have a fleet of trucks or other transportation, are in the aviation industry or have a manufacturing plant. You take safety seriously and, as part of this commitment, undertake random drug testing in your Tasmanian workplace regularly. But is your drug testing really random?
Drug testing methodologies for your workplace in Tasmania
Firstly, let’s look at the main drug testing methodologies that safety conscious companies like yours are likely to employ in their Hobart or Tasmanian workplace:
- Pre-employment drug testing, as you would imagine, is the testing of potential employees before you employ them. This type of testing has been very common in the United States, for example. You might also extend this to drug testing of employees who are promoted or moved within your business.
- Incident drug testing in your Tasmanian workplace or, in other words, testing of any employee who has been involved in an accident or incident, make good sense. It’s not about blame or consequences – although these can be an end result – it’s about determining all the causes of an incident so that a similar incident can be prevented from occurring again.
- Cause drug testing is the testing of any employee who is suspected of being under the influence of drugs or alcohol. This is critical to safety, as a person who has recently taken drugs or is over the blood alcohol level limit has no place in a workplace where safety is vital.
- Which brings us to random drug testing for your workplace in Tasmania. Simply put, random testing can be carried out virtually anywhere and anytime, and could involve anyone within your workforce.
A key word here is random. If you only conduct drug testing on a Monday morning, it’s not random. If you operate around the clock but only drug test on week days, it’s not random. If everyone in your workplace doesn’t have an equal probability of being chosen for drug testing, it’s not random.
What happens if you don’t conduct truly random drug testing in your Tasmania workplace? The most obvious issue is that your employees will soon recognise any pattern you employ and will then modify their drug or alcohol habits to beat your testing. The other good reason is the perception of unfairness and, potentially, discrimination, if an employee or group of employees thinks they are being targeted because they’ve been drug tested more than their counterparts. Random, like the toss of a coin or roll of a dice, does mean that some people will be drug tested more than others, so it’s important to be able to clearly demonstrate that your drug testing is truly random.
Random workplace drug testing in Tasmania
If you’d like to organise random drug testing for your Tasmanian workplace, give Integrity Sampling a call on 1300 SALIVA.