Alcohol Policy at Work – Is it important?

In the final part of his series about alcoholism at work, Dr John McMahon asks if it is important to have an alcohol policy at work.  (Ed Scrivener)

Is having an Alcohol policy at work really that important?  After all, everyone knows that drinking at work, or coming to work under the influence, is not a behaviour that is tolerated.  Indeed, isn’t it obvious that this kind of behaviour would be considered gross misconduct and could, and probably would, lead to dismissal.  After all, it is just common sense so why would we need to put it into an explicit alcohol policy.

Certainly, that appears to be the attitude that many employers take.  A recent survey found that less than 20% of employers had a specific alcohol policy, apparently assuming that there was no need to state the obvious.  Are they correct in this assumption?  No they are not, not if they don’t want to fall foul of an industrial tribunal they are not.

For example it would appear that an employment tribunal would uphold a decision to sack for drunkenness, which is exactly what you would expect, is it not.   Indeed, it appears that they will even uphold a decision to fire if an employee comes to work unfit for work, even though they may not actually be inebriated.  Let’s look at an example.

United Biscuits vs Ian Waters

In a recent case, United Biscuits vs Ian Waters, it appears that Waters was fired for arriving at work smelling of alcohol and looking tired and red eyed.  He had attended the funeral of a friend the day before and had been drinking.  His supervisor accepted that he was not intoxicated, but nevertheless judged him unfit for work and banned him from the factory floor.  Waters was later sacked.  The tribunal agreed and upheld his sacking as a reasonable response in this situation.  As evidence, they cited that United Biscuits had a clear policy stating that inability to work because of alcohol would be treated as gross misconduct and could result in dismissal.

There are two important points to be taken from this case.  The first is that the tribunal cited the company’s alcohol policy as the basis for its findings.  If you trawl through tribunal findings it is clear that the outcomes of the cases are very much based on what the employer’s alcohol policy specifies and whether the employer has adhered to the particulars of its own policy.

Tribunals do not make arbitrary judgments based on some notional concept of ‘universal’ or ‘natural law’.  Instead it is based on the policy that the employer creates.   So it would it is important to, not only have a policy but to, have one that is explicit about the particular consequences that can be expected for any breach of the policy.  The second point is a far reaching one that we will return to after this next case.

Are the employees clear about your alcohol policy?

However having the policy is only one part of a company’s responsibilities.  It is also important that the employees are aware of the policy and its contents.  In another tribunal, an employee who drank alcohol during working hours, but not on the company’s premises was judged to have been unfairly dismissed, as he did not know the company’s alcohol.  He stated that he was aware that drinking alcohol on the company’s premises was subject to disciplinary proceedings up to and including dismissal.  However he argued that he was unaware that consuming alcohol when off the premises during working hours was subject to the same penalties.  You might think that this is a flimsy excuse, as of course the employees know what is expected and the consequences.  However the tribunal upheld his case as did the appeal.

Employees can be held accountable for their off duty behaviour

 One important and far reaching aspect of these judgements is that the actual drinking that led to dismissal took place outside the employers premises in both, and also outwith working hours for the second.  In this current culture of Binge Drinking a sizeable minority of your employees will drink to excess and arrive the next day unfit to work as they may be still intoxicated or hungover.  It would appear then that, provided all the proper procedures are followed, a tribunal will support an employer in firing these employees.

This could have far reaching implications.  Employers could become a positive influence on their employees’ drinking behaviour, by ensuring that all workers are fit for work and ensuring that the policy is enforced.  As part of disseminating their policy they could take this opportunity to educate the workforce about alcohol, for example the relationship between quantity consumed and the time required to metabolise the alcohol and be fit for work.  This education process could be written into the official alcohol policy.

Summary

If employers are going to protect themselves, and their workforce, they need to ensure that they create a clear and comprehensive alcohol policy.  The policy should clearly detail what is and is not allowed and the consequences for any digressions from this policy.  The policy also needs to be disseminated to all employees and to be enforced in a consistent and equitable fashion.  Lastly there is an opportunity to include some alcohol-related education (units of alcohol, how long to clear the system etc) when disseminating the policy.  This way employers could save money, have a healthier workforce and, in the unfortunate eventuality of ending up in a tribunal, employers should ensure a positive outcome.

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.

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comments here.

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Discuss HR is that HR blog brought to you by the people of Human Resources UK, the HR LinkedIn group with 11,000+ members dedicated to the world of HR.

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Are you an Alcohol Smart Employer (ASE)

In the 3rd instalment from Dr John McMahon he discusses whether as an employer you know how to recognise the signs of alcoholism and if you are capable to deal with this appropriately. (Ed Scrivener)

The latest estimate for how much alcohol costs industry is around £7.3bn a year (which is a rise of more than 14% in 3 years).  The majority of those costs are due to lost productivity through absenteeism and presenteeism.  However Alcohol Smart Employers can reduce the costs of drinking in their business.  Despite this, only about 50% of employers have an alcohol policy and less than 10% of those who do have a policy run alcohol awareness programmes.  Therefore sadly, less than 5% of UK employers would qualify as Alcohol Smart Employers.  What about you, are you an Alcohol Smart Employer?  To help you decide there is a list of criteria for Alcohol Smart Employers below.

What Alcohol Smart Employers (ASEs) KNOW

• ASEs know that alcohol abuse costs their business money
• ASEs know that productivity is lost through absenteeism and presenteeism
• ASEs know that having a clear and consistent alcohol policy saves money
• ASEs know that investing in educating the workforce about alcohol saves money
• ASEs know that a drinking ‘check-up’ reduces alcohol consumption in the workforce and saves money
• ASEs know that addressing alcohol issues leads to a happier workforce
• ASEs know that a happy workforce is a more productive workforce
• ASEs know that investing in the health of their workforce is taking care of their best asset

What Alcohol Smart Employers DO

• ASEs educate their managers about alcohol, its effects and how to address the issue
• ASEs investigate the drinking habits of their workforce to determine the culture
• ASEs ensure that they have an effective, current and relevant alcohol policy
• ASEs run an annual alcohol awareness campaign for their workforce
• ASEs encourage their workforce to take an annual drinking check-up
• ASEs provide help for workers who are alcohol dependent or have a family member who is
• ASEs ensure that they have Alcohol Smart Employees

Why you should be an Alcohol Smart Employer

• You will reduce absenteeism
• You will reduce presenteeism
• You will have a happier, more productive workforce
• You will reduce staff turn-over and reduce recruitment costs
• You will save money
• You will contribute to changing the binge culture of the UK and creating a better environment for the employees of the future

What about you?

Are you an Alcohol Smart Employer?  If not why not?  Are you someone who thinks that if they ignore the issue it will go away?  Well, unfortunately there is no evidence that that is going to happen soon.  Indeed, if we look at the pattern of drinking across the UK, and even wider across Europe, we see that it has changed in the last decade, and not for the better. 

It is difficult to escape the images of what is being called the ‘Binge Culture’, that is so prevalent.  Unfortunately, there is an increase in the number of TV programs that rely on CCTV for its content and, naturally, they show the most sensational clips.  These usually show someone who is the worse of drinking falling around, fighting, challenging the police or having to be taken away to hospital in an ambulance for treatment.  One consequence of these images is that they give an impression that this is the normal way to drink and enjoy yourself, so it becomes a self-perpetuating cycle.

With the widespread rise in binge drinking there has been a corresponding rise in the negative consequences of drinking.  More people were admitted to hospital for an alcohol-related problem last year.  There has also been a rise in the alcohol-related deaths, either directly through alcohol or as a contributing factor.  Most experts attribute the consequences to the current style of drinking, which seems to consist of getting loaded as fast as possible and remain that way for the majority of the evening.  However, raising the blood alcohol level so quickly is dangerous and, for some, can have fatal consequences.

There are also consequences the next day.  For some, being so intoxicated would mean that they may be unfit for work the next day and so they phone in sick.  Others may make it to the workplace, but are still intoxicated or hungover.  But these are not your hard core of dependent drinkers, no these are the so-called moderate drinkers who have a blow-out from time to time, but with increasing regularity.

As a business person you will almost certainly be aware of the fluctuations in your market, and/or the changes in availability of raw materials if you are in manufacturing.  As a business person you need to be aware, otherwise you may not stay in business for very long.  By the same argument then it would seem prudent to know about another essential element of your business operation, the workforce.

Therefore as social mores change, it would seem sensible that you need to be aware of how these changes could affect your business and what steps that you can take to keep up to date and to reduce any negative impact.  Do you know that?  Are you an Alcohol Smart Employer?

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.

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comments here.

*****

Discuss HR is that HR blog brought to you by the people of Human Resources UK, the HR LinkedIn group with 11,000+ members dedicated to the world of HR.

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Drink Talk for Managers

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.

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comments here.

*****

Discuss HR is that HR blog brought to you by the people of Human Resources UK, the HR LinkedIn group with 11,000+ members dedicated to the world of HR.

Any source

Are you in denial? Who me? Absolutely not!

In the first in a series of weekly posts we welcome Dr John McMahon to Discuss HR.  John is an alcohol expert and will be looking at our relationship with alcohol and why employers are in denial about this perceived taboo subject. (Ed Scrivener)

Recently I was presenting at a conference run by the CIPD on the topic of the costs of alcohol to business.  I looked out on this sea of polite but somewhat disinterested faces who were wondering what all of this had to do with them.  So I broke off from my talk to take a straw poll.  “Hands up” I said “if you think that society has a problem with alcohol.”  A forest of hands shot up, this was more like it, they were thinking, we are definitely concerned citizens who are up to date on what is happening in society and yes, the government definitely needs to do more about binge drinking.  “OK, hands up those who think that your organisation has a problem with alcohol.”  None, not one, zero, zilch.

“That’s interesting, you believe that society has a problem, but your organisation has no problem.  Could you tell me where you get your workers from?”  There were one or two embarrassed giggles as the penny dropped.  However, a few weeks later I was presenting to another group of senior HR people and tried the same questions, with the same result.  Traditionally denial is cited as one of the symptoms of alcoholism, however it usually refers to individuals.  Judging by my straw poll (granted unscientific) and my experience of dealing with employers, there seems to be a corporate denial preventing examination of need for change.

What about you, how would you answer these questions?  (Be honest now).

The Statistics

So why do employers, managers, HR professionals apparently fail to make the connection until they are forced to acknowledge it.  Perhaps it is the way that it is presented.  For example, the latest government statistic for the cost of drinking to industry is £7.3billion.  That is a big number; in fact it is the kind of number that makes it very easy to say that, it does not have any significance for me or my organisation.  It is a number that overwhelms and hides the very real problem in a mind numbing statistic.  Maybe we need to break this number down and look at what it means in a more meaningful level.

These estimated costs are made up of absenteeism, which we all know is very difficult to estimate.  Generally workers don’t phone in and say I had a real bender last night and am not fit to come to work; no it is more likely to be, vomiting and diarrhoea, bad cold or migraine.  However even if they do drag themselves to work they may be unfit, due to still being intoxicated or hungover – what is called presenteeism.

In one survey, over a third of workers interviewed admitted having been at work with a hangover, 1 in 10 reported being at work with a hangover once a month and 1 in 20 said this happened once a week.  Of the workers who admitted being hungover at work, many of them admitted lacking concentration, being unproductive and making mistakes.  In this same survey 15% of the workers admitted to having been drunk at work.  Indeed the estimated costs for presenteeism are now recognised to be higher than those for absenteeism.  Other costs are correcting mistakes, replacement, short and long term, disciplinary proceedings, accidents etc.

Drinking Culture

In recent years there has been increased recognition that we need to look at drinking in the workplace in a different way than we have traditionally regarded it.  First, there is an increasing recognition that workplaces have a ‘drinking culture’.  For some workplaces the culture may be one of heavy drinking during and after work, where drinking is seen as part of the bonding ritual and may even define the identity of the working group.  Heavy drinking tends to be associated with occupations that are male dominated and are regarded as ‘macho’ type jobs, such as police, emergency services and military.  In these types of work environments drinking, and often heavy drinking, is the expected norm and non-drinkers and moderate drinkers may have difficulty bonding with the group.

Binge Drinking

The recent rise of binge drinking in the UK has brought about the second difference.  Previous approaches have understandably tended to highlight and target the dependent drinkers (alcoholics), as they were seen as the main sources of costs.  However with the rise of binge drinking it is now recognised that, although dependent drinkers may incur greater costs individually, the widespread culture of binge drinking means that this group, due to its greater size, contributes more to the costs than the dependent drinkers.

Finally to contextualise these costs even more, let us look at them on an average cost per worker basis.  Current estimates break the costs down to between £250-350 per worker, (this is a conservative estimate, as it only accounts for loss of productivity due to absenteeism and presenteeism).  Taking the mid-point this works out at £300 per worker per annum.  In a workplace with 100 workers this would represent a cost of £30,000; roughly the cost of one to one and a half extra employees.  Remember this is an average cost, depending on the nature of the workplace, the cost could be more or less.

As an employer can you afford to ignore these sorts of costs in your workplace?  In the current climate where money is so tight, addressing your workforces drinking could give you a competitive edge by saving you money.  You are probably thinking, yes but that costs money.  True, but the good news is that for every £1 you spend on addressing the issue you could save at least £3.  So it is a win win situation.

Can you help?

We are trying to gain a better understanding of the cost of drinking to employers and the measures they are taking to address it.  If you would like to help us please complete the brief survey (it takes less than 5 minutes.  You can find it at  http://drjohnmcmahon.com/survey/  Thank you!

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.

Has this inspired you to discuss HR?  Leave your comments here.

*****

Discuss HR is that HR blog brought to you by the people of Human Resources UK, the HR LinkedIn group with 11,000+ members dedicated to the world of HR.

Any source