Testing, testing, 1, 2, 3...

Discussion Topic: Honesty and Drug Testing

Concept and brief description:

Testing: Employers face many difficult decisions and tasks when attempting to select the appropriate candidate for a position and then also to ensure that the candidate is following through with the rules and policies of the hiring authority. Some of the ways they can attempt to most accurately determine the ethical fortitude of an applicant are honesty test, given on paper, these are tests that ask the applicant to respond to how they would handle certain situations and they can be used to evaluate the honesty of an applicant or an employee. These paper tests are given now due to the polygraph test being made unlawful to administer to employees. Besides honesty tests employers can administer drug tests but it may be a tricky situation to navigate through. Some employees feel that this is a violation of their privacy and that the company may be forcing an improper search and seizure through blanket testing. It is also an embarrassing thing to be accused of drug abuse and may cause the individual to be labelled a drug user regardless of the outcome of the test. Here are some important guidelines for a company performing drug tests to follow.

Administer the test systematically to all applicants for the same job.

Use drug testing for jobs that involve safety hazards

Have a report of the results sent to the applicant, along with information about how to appeal the results and be retested if need be.

Respect the applicants’ privacy by conducting tests in an environment that is not intrusive and keep results confidential.

Besides drug testing companies may chose to perform fitness-for-duty testing. Which allows them to test the applicant in certain ways that show if the applicant or employee is unfit for work for a number of reasons, the issue with these is that they are costly to operate.

Emotional Hook:

I often find myself wishing that my work would perform fitness-for-duty testing. I work with people that clearly cannot meet the physical requirements that are clearly outlined in our job descriptions. Many cannot lift the needed amount or run the distance needed, most of these are not related to drug abuse in any way but are more size and fitness related but none the less they put myself and many of my coworkers in a bad position due to their lack of physical ability on the job, and I wish that my work would enforce many of the standards that it has in place for them.

Key points to discuss:

Employers are placed in a precarious situation when it comes to using testing to determine the quality of applicants or employees. Employees can find reasons to object to many of the testing procedures. It is a difficult task to perform these tests and have as little opposition as possible.

Question:

How can organizations most effectively weed out bad applicants and employees?