An alcohol and drug free workplace is a safer, more productive workplace with lowered risk of chronic disease and mental health difficulties in your workforce.
Apart from the legal duty to protect the health of your employees, there are many benefits to addressing alcohol and drugs in the workplace, including:
- Costs saved retaining healthy employees (recruiting and retraining new employees to replace ones lost to alcohol and drug-related terminations is timely and costly)
- Costs saved due to absenteeism and impaired productivity due to lack of concentration and poor work performance
- Improved workforce cohesiveness as mood changes and irritability are associated with alcohol and drug use
- Improved mental health of workforce as the use of alcohol and drugs can negatively affect mental health
- Improved safety and reduced risk of accidents due to impaired judgement
- Improved reputation as a responsible employer to optimise public perceptions and recruitment
- Contribution to society in tackling an important issue
Here are some quick resources to get you started:
Guidance for Managing Drug and Alcohol Misuse at Work
This CIPD website offers practical guidance for employers and line managers on how to manage and support employees, including advice on policy, training and links to further resources. Download their free resources and view their key recommendations here.
Reducing Harm, Supporting Recovery
The vision of this national drug strategy is to create a “healthier and safer Ireland, where public health and safety is protected and the harms caused to individuals, families and communities by substance misuse are reduced and every person affected …
Policy Templates
Drugs.ie has a comprehensive listing of policy templates to help you create your own. If you scroll down to section 3. Service Provision Policies, you’ll find a few templates relevant to this wellbeing area.
Citywide
CityWide Drugs Crisis Campaign is a national network of community activists and organisations that are involved in responding to Ireland’s drugs crisis. We work to promote and support a community development approach to the drugs problem – this means involving …
While these resources are helpful to get you started, it’s very important to carefully plan your workplace wellbeing activities. Research shows that all activities that target the individual employee, should be coupled with activities at the level of the organisation. In other words, you should always take measures to create a supportive organisational environment alongside lifestyle-focussed supports for your employees. We’ve included detailed advice on how best to plan your activities at both these levels.
Organisation-level Activities
The “bedrock” of the CIPD Well-being Pyramid is culture, leadership and people management. These are the best ways to ensure you’re creating a solid foundation to your workplace well-being efforts:
Individual-level Activities
Your wellbeing initiatives at the individual level will likely focus on raising awareness, promoting healthy behaviours and/or building skills in this wellbeing area.
Other Alcohol and Drugs Resources
In this section you can find additional resources to help you with your alcohol and drugs programmes.
As many as 283,866 workdays were lost to alcohol related workplace absenteeism in 2016 which can cost the economy up to 195 million every year, with even more cost due to accidents in the workplace and loss of productivity.