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Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work

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4. Develop a policy

All organisations can benefit from an agreed policy on drug/alcohol misuse. You could include a drug and alcohol policy as part of your overall health and safety policy.

If an employee tells you they have a drug or alcohol problem, an effective policy should aim to help and support them[8] rather than lead to dismissal.

But it should also highlight when you will take disciplinary or other action, for example that you will report drug possession or dealing at work to the police straight away.

There are examples of drug and alcohol policies in Health, work and wellbeing (PDF) [9] – an Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas) booklet and Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work[10] – a Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) booklet.

If you choose to use Screening and testing for drugs and alcohol[11], you could include that in your policy.

Check and review what you have done

You should regularly check if your policy is working and whether you need to make changes.

View a printable version of the whole guide[14]

Link URLs in this page

  1. Overviewhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/index.htm
  2. Consult your employeeshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/consult-your-employees.htm
  3. Look at safety-critical workhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/look-at-safety-critical-work.htm
  4. Screening and testing https://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/screening-testing-drugs-alcohol.htm
  5. Supporting employees https://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/support-employees.htm
  6. The lawhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/the-law.htm
  7. Useful organisationshttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/resources.htm
  8. help and support themhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/support-employees.htm
  9. Health, work and wellbeinghttp://www.acas.org.uk/media/pdf/8/n/Health-work-and-wellbeing-accessible-version.pdf
  10. Managing drug and alcohol misuse at workhttps://www.cipd.co.uk/knowledge/culture/well-being/drug-alcohol-misuse-work-report#gref
  11. Screening and testing for drugs and alcoholhttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/screening-testing-drugs-alcohol.htm
  12. Previous Look at safety-critical work https://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/look-at-safety-critical-work.htm
  13. Next Screening and testing for drugs and alcohol https://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/screening-testing-drugs-alcohol.htm
  14. View a printable version of the whole guidehttps://www.hse.gov.uk/alcoholdrugs/print.htm

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Updated 2024-09-30