Training your staff (and the boss) to deal with drugs Available to Purchase

Drugs are hitting at the roots of our productivity and competitiveness, as their usage escalates amongst current employees and those entering full‐time work for the first time. Main symptoms are rising absenteeism, injuries, damage and stealing. But employers are having difficulty in recognising their cause, mainly through ignorance, lack of trained knowledge and fear of what is still a relatively new phenomenon. The realistic answer is the development and implementation of effective substance misuse policies in full consultation with staff representatives. But this is a precise and skilled activity requiring proper training of personnel management and staff supervisors. The article exposes the breadth of the problem, discusses how to train British staff and examines how our training industry can gear up to learn this newest and most vital of training subjects.