2 minute read
Pre-employment Drug Testing Can Mitigate The Risks Of Businesses At The Melbourne Market
BY MICHAEL PIVAC, GENERAL MANAGER FOR TDDA TULLAMARINE & THOMASTOWN
The Melbourne Market is a base for over 5000 businesses, and with 1100 forklift drivers onsite, health and safety regulations weigh heavy on each and every owner trying to protect their employees.
Understand the Risks
It’s crucial that Melbourne Market workers, especially those operating machinery and vehicles, are fit to carry out their jobs. For many, this means showing up to work in boots, high-vis vests, and occasionally hardhats. It also means showing up fresh and not fatigued, and not suffering a hangover from drugs or alcohol. In particular, drug users are a serious risk to themselves and their colleagues. Every worker has a right to safety and every business needs to take protecting them seriously. Business owners, managers and supervisors all bear a responsibility under the Occupational Health and Safety Act to take all reasonable steps to ensure no one is injured or killed on site. Failing to do so can lead to legal grievances and charges against owners and management.
Get Your Policy and Testing Right
Businesses can create a drug-free workplace by implementing a robust drug and alcohol policy, get team “buy-in” through education and training, as well as apply pre-employment, reasonable cause, and random drug testing. In fact, pre-employment drug testing is basic due diligence when hiring. It provides a risk assessment of potential candidates and helps ensure the right people are operating your machines and vehicles. When combined with a policy discussion, it sets the tone for employment and details what are acceptable behaviours before the first day of work starts. It’s better to stop risks before they enter your business.
All Testing Leads to Safety, and Each Type has a Use
Testing situations differ, but for your average workplace test it's important to recognise that urine testing provides a high degree of accuracy. Urine testing can deliver fast and highly accurate results across a wide array of drugs, and it’s likely to detect recent and historical drug use. Oral fluid testing is also a great option, but it only delivers results based on recent use of drugs that have contacted the oral cavity. It’s considered less invasive, easy to administer; but the trade-off for those benefits is a reduced drug detection timeframe. Hair is also an option, it won’t show very recent usage but excels at revealing habitual patterns of use, making it ideal for pre-employment tests. Good testing programmes require a combination of the right tools at the right time.
Businesses can get on the front foot with preemployment testing to mitigate the risks with the Melbourne Market Authority. With The Drug Detection Agency office onsite, it is also easy for business to incorporate this as part of their hiring process. Drug and alcohol policies and testing protect your employees and your company. Implementing a fair and effective policy gives you the peace of mind to manage your business and know you’re meeting your legal requirements to mitigate risks in the workplace.
