In the second instalment of guest posts from Dr John McMahon regarding alcoholism in the workplace, John looks at how HR can empower line managers to help further reduce the silence around this taboo subject. (Ed Scrivener)
Its Monday morning again and George from stores and his two mates have not come to work, again! You know that around 10am there will be a phone call, or rather three phone calls, to say that George and his mates have each, completely independently, contracted food poisoning and have been up most of the night being sick. They may not actually remember, or think that you don’t remember, that this is the third time in the past few months that they have all taken time off with the same excuse.
Unsurprisingly, you are not entirely convinced that you are being told the true story. Indeed, you strongly suspect that, if they do in fact have food poisoning, it was contracted by all of them, together, and was caused by drinking far too much alcohol. So do you approach them with this suspicion or do you ignore the incident, rationalising well they don’t do it very often?
Barriers to airing your suspicions
One barrier to talking to drinkers is the issue of truth. It appears that there is a real difficulty in telling the truth about exactly what we consume. Not that we tell lies about it – of course not, we wouldn’t do that, would we. I mean its only alcoholics who lie about their drinking isn’t it, and I’m not one, so I don’t lie about my drinking, but I admit that I don’t always tell the truth – but that’s completely different!
This kind of situation makes it difficult to discuss drinking. People seem to adjust their consumption, in either direction. Depending on the circumstances they will minimise or exaggerate. For example talking to a GP, or boss, they invariably only ever have a couple of pints; a GP once told me that, as a rule, they usually add 50% onto reported consumption to compensate. However if they are talking to mates those ‘couple of pints’ may become a couple of dozen.
There is an almost universal embarrassment about talking to people about how much they drink. Years ago I taught research to post-graduates. Whenever possible we would carry out some fieldwork where we would go out on the streets and collect data for a survey. (Apologies if you were one of our subjects). Afterwards we would return to the classroom and discuss the experience. Almost without fail the students would feedback that the most difficult topics to ask about were money and alcohol consumption, surprisingly they found that asking about sex was less difficult.
So, even provided we can overcome our, and their, embarrassment is it pointless talking to a drinker as they never tell the truth? Not at all, this is where a little bit of training comes in and makes Drink Talk a very powerful way of reducing absenteeism.
Drink Talk
One of the reasons why people are embarrassed to discuss drinking is that they do not feel that they have a legitimate right to discuss the subject. Part of that confidence gap is their perceived lack of knowledge about a subject that, in their mind, is the preserve of the trained professional. Certainly this is a very common viewpoint. Indeed I have the very opposite problem. As soon as I tell people what I do, I have problems getting them to NOT talk to me about their drinking and reassuring me that they do not have a problem, but that is another story.
The most widely researched alcohol intervention was a brief, 10 minute, approach that was developed for non-specialists. It consisted of two parts. The first is to ask people how much they have consumed per day over the last seven days. The second is to inform/remind them of the recommended guidelines for safe drinking and give them a brief piece of advice how to stay safe.
That’s all very well but didn’t you just say that people are not always truthful in what they tell you. Well that does not really matter for this technique. What matters is that they are discussing their drinking at all, and it is more powerful if they are discussing it with someone in authority. Also what they say is less important than what the manager/supervisor says, as highlighting the recommended limits gives them a comparison with their own drinking.
Using Drink Talk encourages individuals to examine their drinking in a way that they would seldom do otherwise. Change in drinking, like most health-related behaviours, usually only occurs when there is a significant and obvious problem. What Drink Talks do is highlight where the individual may be exceeding a/ the average consumption of their peers and b/ the limits over which they may damage their health. Thus having been made aware of their excessive consumption from the screening they are then given advice about how to reduce their consumption and consequent damage.
OK but does it work? There is an increasing body of evidence that suggests that interventions such as Drink Talk are effective tools to reduce consumption, reduce absenteeism and reduce the binge drinking that leads to absenteeism and reduced productivity.
How can Drink Talk help my business?
By ensuring that you train managers and supervisors on Drink Talk you can empower them in the ‘Back to work interview’, so that they will feel much more confident of addressing an issue that, not only is embarrassing, but also is costing your business money. Using Drink Talk you can reduce alcohol consumption in the workforce and that can:-
- Reduce absenteeism
- Increase productivity
- Demonstrate that your business is serious about drinking and health
- Improve the health status of the workforce
- Improve the morale of the workforce
About the author
Dr John McMahon is an alcohol expert who has been involved in the alcohol and drug field for 30 years. He is currently the CEO of Iloumanate Ltd, a company with a mission to change the binge culture of the UK part of which involves helping employers save money by addressing their workforce’s drinking using a free website www.spreade.com
Previously he was senior lecturer in alcohol and drugs at the Centre for Alcohol and Drug Studies at the University of the West of Scotland for 12 years and Research fellow at the University of Glasgow before that. He was responsible for setting up and writing the MSc in Alcohol and Drug Studies as a distance learning course. This is now the largest course of its kind in the UK.
He was Research Director for a major alcohol treatment charity, was the National Chair of the Alcohol Counsellor Training scheme. He has published two books and about fifty papers in scholarly journals, has presented at many national and international conferences and is included in Marquis Who’s Who.
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