Coping with Drugs

what will you do? One of your employees isn't producing. Or misses a lot of work. Or is accident prone. Maybe you have good reason to suspect drug or alcohol abuse - and maybe you suspect it doesn't stop with just one worker. It might be costing you in ways you don't even know about. Costing you in botched assignments and legal fees, higher insurance premiums and lower morale. You've got decisions to make.

Is your first loyalty going to be to your company, your customers, or your employees? Are you going to take a hard line? If you do, where will you draw it?

What about your employees' rights? Is what they do on their own time their business -- even if it affects yours? How will they react to a drug program, and how will you deal with that? Education? Rehabilitation? Mandatory testing? At what cost?

It's a tough problem. And many companies, especially smaller ones, are reluctant to do anything about it, fearing the expense, adverse reactions, or crippling effect on their work force if they catch too many employees who are drug abusers.

But the work force may be crippling itself. From the corner office to the loading dock, drug and alcohol abuse is epidemic in today's workplace. Even workers themselves are calling for action in overwhelming numbers.

Whether you do nothing -- as some would recommend -- or take action, there will be risks, costs, and ethical dilemmas.

Here are the stories of three companies that have chosen to deal with the problem head-on -- approaching it with different attitudes, creating different policies, and getting different results.

Tom Warner's epiphany struck in February 1985, when a seminar speaker said that some 20% of the nation's population was abusing drugs. "Bingo, that's when the light bulb went off in my head," he says. "That meant 20% of my work force was probably on drugs."

Warner runs The Warner Corp., a $16-million plumbing, heating, and air-conditioning repair company with 220 employees and 15 locations in the Washington, D.C., area. As he pondered what he'd heard, he wondered if drugs weren't behind some of the odd behavior around the company -- why, for instance, several people were especially accident prone or why others just seemed to drift, with no ambition.

What bothered him in particular was the cost-effectiveness of his vocational program, a two-year training course at the Warner Technical Institute. If all 20 students in a typical class graduate, the company's cost is $4,000 each. But over time Warner had seen the dropout rate climb to 75%, raising the cost to $16,000 per student.

"I couldn't figure out what was wrong," he says. "But in 1985, when we started screening the apprentices for drugs, we discovered that most of them -- more than half, in fact -- were doing things like marijuana and PCP. I was astounded."

And he was disturbed. If drugs were that pervasive among apprentices, what about his full-timers? What was the company's exposure to lawsuits and damages, not to mention bad customer relations? His plumbers and technicians often worked in houses when nobody was home. An addict with an expensive cocaine habit could steal customers blind. A stoned plumber operating a blowtorch could burn down a building. A drug abuser driving a company vehicle on the area's busy roads ran a high risk of having an accident.

With all that in mind, Warner quickly initiated a company-wide drug-testing program. All employees, including managers, were required to sign consent forms indicating they understood the new policy and agreed to urinalysis.

Testing was required of all new hires, as well as anyone involved in an accident, an injury, or a property-damage incident. Several years later Warner mandated further tests at the time of a transfer or promotion and when "questionable actions" raised suspicion. Any employees who tested positive for drugs would be discharged immediately. They could be rehired after a year, however, if they were straight and agreed to ongoing random testing.

"We don't go after people helter-skelter," Warner says. "When something questionable happens, that triggers the test to see if drugs were a factor. We don't distinguish between light and heavy use. If you do drugs, you've got to leave."

At the same time, Warner offered a comprehensive drug-abuse treatment option. The $7,000, 28-day residential program -- to be paid for by the company -- was on a par with the best in the field. Employees desiring rehabilitation were free to take advantage of it if they signed up. If, however, a worker was caught first, it was too late. But over the two years Warner offered the program, not a single person accepted it. Looking back, he figures that his drug-using workers harbored concerns about confidentiality, possible job loss, or legal action. Or maybe they just didn't want to stop. "From my experience over five years," he says, "I do not think a drug user will voluntarily quit."

He relates the story of a fellow contractor who hired a plumber. The new man was dispatched on a job with a fully stocked service van. He then went out and sold thousands of dollars' worth of tools and equipment in order to buy crack. "As we discussed this, I told the contractor that a $30 test could have saved thousands," Warner says. "He said he couldn't do that because good plumbers are too scarce -- he didn't want to risk turning them off. I've talked to people who don't test because they're afraid they'll lose half their work force."

Not that Warner didn't face the same problem. When his drug testing began in earnest, half of his new hires failed. At one company location in 1986, 14 new plumbers in a row flunked the drug test. But no matter how shorthanded Warner was, he never lowered his standards or winked at a problem. In 1987, in a tight labor market, he fired several veteran plumbers, even when he lacked replacements. "You can't make exceptions," he says. "Consistency is key."