Appreciating The Benefits Of Regular Drug Testing For Your Employees
The people you hire to work for your business can become liabilities if they struggle with sobriety. They can increase the risks of on-the-job accidents. They may contribute to work environments that are unsafe for both you and your other employees.
Before you pay out any benefits to injured workers, you may want to find out if they somehow contributed to their own workplace accidents and injuries. You could find out if they are sober and safe enough to work for you by contracting with a local healthcare clinic that performs drug testing services for employers like you.
Timeline
The clinic that performs your company's drug testing may be able to provide you with a timeline for if or when any of your employees used alcohol or illicit substances. If one of them gets hurt at work, for example, you need to find out if the worker was drunk or high. You may not be able to trust this person's word about if or when he or she last used drugs or alcohol.
The drug testing performed at the clinic, however, may offer a definitive timeline of when that person last had a drink or ingested any kind of drugs. Based on the drug testing results, you can know for sure if you are liable for paying out any worker's comp benefits or if the worker broke your drug and alcohol use policies and contributed to his or her own accident and injuries.
Substance Types
Further, drug testing can also tell you what kinds of substances the injured worker took prior to having an accident on the job. Your company might have a strict policy about using street drugs, for example. You can find out if the worker took any of those illicit substances or if he or she was high on a controlled medication prescribed to him or her.
You can use this information to back up any legal action the worker might take against you to persuade you to pay out benefits to him or her. You can argue the worker broke your company's drug use policies and is not eligible to receive benefits from you.
Professional drug testing can be a valuable resource to utilize for your company's own financial and legal well-being. It can reveal if you are liable for paying out worker's comp benefits to workers who may have been high or drunk at work. It can pinpoint what kinds of substances workers used prior to becoming injured.
For more information about drug testing, contact a local company.
