An accident waiting to happen

Late last year Laing O’Rourke published the industry’s first human capital report. Among other things, this report revealed that random tests had shown that 10% of the contractor’s workforce had used cocaine and/or cannabis and had been dismissed. That’s one in every 10 workers taking drugs.

This is a pretty standard figure for the construction industry. Skanska records about the same failure rate for drugs and alcohol tests across its building projects.

Like it or not, there’s a fair proportion of people who use cocaine and cannabis, as others would a drink: to wind down after a hard day’s grafting. But while drink-driving laws and strict no-alcohol on site policies have kept drinking under control, other forms of recreational release are less easy to spot, yet the consequences could be just as serious.

If someone’s a bit dozy after one joint too many the previous night, or jittery after a cocaine binge, it could lead to mistakes or loss of productivity in an office. On site, it could lead to death.

This is an issue which every firm, whatever the size and sector, is going to run up against sooner or later, either through safety considerations, occupational health or both. Some are already wrestling with how they should deal with the moral issues it raises. Others choose to ignore it.

“It is something that is not going away,” says Shepherd’s chief executive, Vaughan Burnand. “It is a moral dilemma that once you start to look, as a responsible business, you can’t turn your back.”

A significant problem is the fact that alcohol and work are culturally linked in Britain. In the 18th and 19th centuries workers were often paid part of their wages in booze and drinking on the job was common. Today, we go to the pub after work to wind down with a drink, or two, or three. So while drugs such as cannabis and cocaine are illegal, it’s not difficult too see that we are hard-wired to use these forms of post-work relaxation. And cannabis, once the preserve of the hippies, is now the norm for rave generation thirtysomethings.

Another problem is the falling prices and wide availability of illegal drugs. You don’t need stacks of cash and a champagne lifestyle to use cocaine, you just need the right telephone number and £20. Drug testing firm Medscreen reports that since it started testing for cocaine in 1996, failure rates have risen 3000%. It says that the overall failure rate now is 5%.

It’s a society-wide problem, although evidence from Scottish drug charity Crew 2000 suggests that among tradesmen cocaine use is burgeoning. It reports that 50% of employed people asking for help are in this category.

The solution appears to be simple: test your workforce and fire any that fail. Drugs are illegal after all. However, for many firms there are tricky moral considerations.

If one of your workers relaxes by drinking alcohol, smoking cannabis, or snorting cocaine, does it follow that they won’t be fit for work the next day? Is it fair to sack someone for what they’re doing in their private time? The answer is yes, if it impacts on their own and others’ safety. But what about a hugely overweight person? Could the same not be said for them?

Under the influence

“It’s generally accepted that if people are under the influence of drugs or alcohol, particularly if they are operating plant, or if they are not concentrating on any operation, then they are a risk to themselves and others,” says Skanska’s head of environment, health and safety Neil Moore. However, a study by Cardiff University commissioned by the HSE in 2004 (www.hse.gov.uk/research/rrhtm/rr193.htm) failed to find a connection between drug use and workplace accidents.

Drug use is something that’s not going away. dealing with it is a moral dilemma

Vaughan Burnand, Shepherd

The problem is that whereas with alcohol there is a threshold limit – set by drink-driving laws – above which we can say someone is intoxicated, with illegal drugs this doesn’t exist.

Unfortunately, there are no hard and fast rules to follow on this, so it’s up to individual companies to work out their own way. There are hopes that Constructing Better Health (see CM, October 2006) will formulate some standards for occupational health which will encompass the issue of drugs and alcohol, although no one from CBH wanted to comment on the issue when CM contacted them.

Laing O’Rourke has gone for the zero tolerance approach – which does seem to work. Moore reports that in Skanska’s rail businesses where drugs testing has been going on for longer, there’s only a 2% failure rate, compared with 10% in building. Skanska aims to roll out random testing of around 5% of the workforce in all its businesses this year. About half of the Major Contractors Group is doing random testing. Bovis is introducing it this year.

Of course, firing people won’t make the problem go away. It will just move to somebody else’s site.

Shepherd is trying a slightly different approach. it will test for safety critical workers (such as plant operators) and post-incident (something which Skanska does too). “You find that the people who are the most instrumental in accidents tend to be the injured and they tend to be very forgetful about what happened. If the injured were found to be under the influence it would change significantly what the outcome resolution would be,” says Burnand. “They wouldn’t be able to sue and get £30,000. Then people might start to think twice about it.”

Mace’s policy on drugs and alcohol is that staff must be in a fit condition to perform their duties at all times. Human resources director Kath Knight says that since it does not directly employ tradespeople, Mace doesn’t have a policy for them. Its own employees are only randomly tested where a client requires it and to date no one has failed. If they did, Knight says each case would be dealt with individually.

Equally thorny as the issue of testing is the problem of what to do for workers who own up to having a drink or drugs problem. If it’s someone you are directly employing, then you have to try to sort them out. But how far do you go? How much support should you give them? And what do you do with them in the mean time? You can’t let an alcoholic tower crane driver carry on with his job while he’s sorting himself out.

When it comes to subcontractors’ employees, support is likely to be even thinner on the ground, even if they own up. “We would prefer that if someone had a problem with drugs and alcohol they told us about it,” says Moore. “We can direct them towards people who can help them. We are quite happy to direct people towards those sorts of resources.” But you would have to direct them off site at the same time, because otherwise you would be putting them and others at risk.

Carla Ellis of Crew 2000 offers this suggestion to employers of workers who have owned up to an addiction and accepted that they need counselling and help: “I am not suggesting they stay on the payroll; no one can afford to pay people not to work. However, if the individuals work was up to a good standard, then having the offer of work when they are sorted may be source of motivation. This kind of supportive approach is very rare in any industry but we have seen it in the financial sector.”

If you don’t have a drugs and alcohol policy in place, you’d be well advised to get one. The HSE says that all businesses, irrespective of whether they think they have a problem, should have guidelines within their overall health and safety policy. But you can’t just rush into drugs or alcohol testing. You have to get agreement from the workforce and the HSE advises that testing is only likely to be acceptable if it is seen to be part of a company’s occupational health policy and is clearly designed to prevent risks to others.

The TUC does not support random testing, although it does admit that there can be a case for testing in safety critical jobs. You could argue that any job on a construction site is safety critical because of the potential for accidents if someone is not 100%.

Drugs and alcohol, and the wider issues of occupational health screening, is undoubtedly a great big can of worms. Many firms choose to ignore it, dealing with cases informally as and when they occur. You can understand why: it is complicated, costly and confusing. But none of these are a defence in a court of law.