“I believe a couple of my employees might be involved with drugs. We don’t use a pre-employment drug test but I’d like to have everyone tested now. How do I set that up?”
Your HR Survival Tip
Testing your employees often involves advance notice of some kind. When creating a policy, you also want to decide on what you’ll do with the results. There are a few steps to take between the idea and actually being ready to conduct drug and/or alcohol testing.
If this is a new policy and you intend to have current employees tested, you’ll need to provide sufficient notice. The notice should outline your new policy, the requirement to have everyone tested, and provide at least 60-90 days’ notice before the policy and testing will take effect. Basically, you’re giving your employees the time to get any drugs out of their system before being tested.
Your notice and policy should also inform employees about your stance on medical marijuana. Regardless of state law making it legal, marijuana is still on the federal list of illegal drugs. Therefore, you are able to prohibit use (or the effects of) medical marijuana during working hours. Since using marijuana over the weekend would still result in a failed drug test on Monday, it’s very important employees understand the policy.
You’ll need to contract with an agency who handles the whole testing process for you. Also add “Drug and/or alcohol screening is conducted” on the first page of your job application. This is one of the first notices candidates get that your company does testing. You’ll need a Drug and Alcohol Policy providing employees with your guidelines and expectations. Once you’re ready, here are the usual types of testing:
- Pre-employment testing: If your plan is to have everyone tested when they are hired, timing is important. You must (1) make an offer (contingent upon the test results), (2) send them for testing, and (3) get the results before they start working. While you must make an offer before the candidate goes for testing, it’s not absolutely required you get the results before they start working. However, if the candidate doesn’t pass the testing, it can be awkward to terminate them after they’ve been working for 2-3 days because then you have other employees asking questions you can’t answer due to confidentiality. Avoid discrimination by ensuring every candidate offered any position goes through the same testing. Yes, even executives.
- Random drug testing: This is intended to allow you to test employees on an irregular schedule. However, this isn’t an option for most of you because random testing in CA is not allowed except in very specific cases, such as when operating D.O.T.-regulated (Dept. of Transportation) vehicles.
- Reasonable suspicion testing: Your policy should state you may require an employee to be tested if management has noticed behaviors attributed to drug or alcohol use. Again, be careful here and get another manager’s or HR’s opinion about the behavior. I also prefer a conversation with the employee about the behaviors so you can determine if there is another reason.
- New policy testing: You have implemented a new drug/alcohol testing policy and have given employees a lot of advance notice so they’re prepared. Everyone can be required to be tested and you then take appropriate action with anyone who fails testing or refuses to be tested.
When a candidate or employee fails a drug/alcohol test, the usual action is termination of employment. This is why you want to have everything clearly spelled out.
When deciding whether or not to implement a drug and alcohol policy, keep in mind your reasons for it. Safety, job performance, company liability in case of an accident, and attendance or punctuality are all strong reasons. I’m an advocate of testing because, just like background checks, it shows you did your due diligence when hiring.
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