Dealing with employee alcohol misuse
June 5, 2008
Employee alcohol misuse can cause a severe drain on organisational productivity and effectiveness, however
many companies are doing enough to tackle this issue, according to the CIPD. In a survey carried out last year on 500 organisations, four out of ten employers felt that alcohol misuse is ‘a significant cause of employee absence and lost productivity’. Despite this, the same amount of respondents had no policy in place to help managers to deal with the problem. Whilst it was found that organisations that provided rehabilitation support or counselling were much more likely to retain the employee after the problem was successfully overcome, the number of companies having these sorts of facilities in place were very low.
It has been reported today that this is a major problem in Wales, where one in 13 people show signs of alcohol misuse, and the problem is costing Welsh businesses more than £2billion in lost productivity and absence. A charity, called Pen y Enfys, is attempting to help employers tackle this difficult issue by providing awareness courses for managers and staff, as well as interventions for sufferers of alcohol misuse such as counselling to assist recovery and encourage a faster return to work. The charity has recently
completed a pilot scheme which has proved to be very successful, with some companies already signed up to the scheme which will officially start in September.
This is a great example of a scheme which will help employers to deal with these difficult issues, using the expertise of trained professionals who are better equipped to help individuals recover and return to their jobs as soon as possible, which is beneficial for both employer and employee. The following is a list of key things that employers can do in relation to this workplace issue:
- Develop a clear policy on alcohol misuse. This should not only be a list of rules and regulations, indicating what employees are not allowed to do and the consequences, but should cover the support and assistance that is available to individuals who find themselves in the position of having an alcohol problem. The hardest part of dealing with a problem for an individual is admitting it to
themselves and to others, so a very negative policy that takes a hard line won’t get you anywhere.
- Managers need to be trained in how to spot potential alcohol misuse and also what to do in this situation. Front line managers are the most likely people to see the behaviours that will identify where there is a problem as they will normally work quite closely with their staff and will also be responsible for managing performance, which is likely to be affected.
- Develop relationships with expert organisations that deal with these issues every day. These organisations should be able to provide training or advise on where this can be found, as well as providing as
sessment and counselling services as and when required.
- Providing an employee assistance programme (EAP) for all employees is a good idea, as many people dealing with alcohol problems (or indeed other issues such as debt or relationship problems) will not wish to go to their manager or even the HR Manager with this, as they may be embarrassed, or may have concerns that they will risk their employment by bringing this to their employer’s attention. An EAP is normally avai
lable for a set fee per employee per month and is totally confidential for the individual, as the employer normally only receives information about how many people have used the service per month or other period. Many EAP’s combine a telephone advice service with the opportunity for face to face counselling and the ability for the employer to refer employees for specialist help.
I’d be interested to hear if anyone has had to deal with this issue in the workplace, and how it was handled.
Use technology to survey staff
June 4, 2008
I’ve just read about an ingenious way of carrying out a staff consultation exercise. Ladbrokes used software programmed into their till system to carry out a benefits survey with all their shop workers. In just 10 days, more than 2,300 employees responded to the survey, enabling the company to assess which benefits employees value.
This is a really good example of how technology can be used to make staff consultation accessible and easy to carry out. Most employees have very busy lives at work and any application that makes it quicker and easier to respond to a staff survey will improve the response rate. This is something I have found when conducting surveys at work – many online surveying software packages are very easy to use and quite inexpensive (survey monkey for example is free up to a certain number of questions so brilliant for short surveys). The best thing about these packages is that they can collate the data for you as well, and you can usually export the information into a spreadsheet, rather than having to collate loads of data by hand.
Surveying staff is a useful technique to find out what’s going on within the organisation and what you can do to improve the experience for employees, and can therefore aid staff retention. However it will be pointless carrying out a survey if it is unlikely that employees have the time or the inclination to complete it, and it is necessary therefore to try to create the most accessible surveying technique possible.
Personal internet use increases productivity
June 3, 2008
According to a new study, employees who are able to surf the internet on their work breaks are more productive as a result. Psychometric testing was used to test different types of breaks on productivity and performance levels, and the report suggested that companies that ban the internet for personal use completely could be losing billions of pounds in lost productivity. The study was carried out by PopCap Games, a company which (unsurprisingly) provides downloadable online games (hmm, I sense an ulterior motive!) and found that 57% of respondents would rather spend their break on the internet than having a tea break, and 47% think their bosses would rather they had a cigarette break than an internet break!
I would really like to think that bosses wouldn’t rather see their employees puffing away on a cigarette than doing a bit of surfing. I think what’s more likely is that because of the very significant risk of abuse of internet provision, employers would prefer to ban some sites completely than carry out costly and time consuming monitoring exercises. It depends on how much employers feel able to trust their staff, and how much their internet use affects their work output and performance, or what security risks are posed by the use of certain sites. It may be possible to allow access to banned sites at certain times of the day, e.g. lunch hours, break times and before/after work, but many companies don’t have set break times or operate flexible working, and the company may not be able to afford the software. Some companies are more concerned with performance than actual time spent working, and through carrying out effective performance management activities, managers are able to assess when employees are being distracted by internet use or other things, although I would imagine that these organisations are in the minority.
This seems to be a subject that’s always being debated, and there is no one best way to manage it. Organisations have to balance the potential productivity and satisfaction benefits of allowing employee freedom in accessing sites for personal use in their break times, against the risk of productivity losses for those few (or many) employees who take liberties, in the context of their security and software limitations and people management processes.
What’s your company’s stance on personal internet use?
More laws won’t improve employment
June 2, 2008
The Business Secretary, John Hutton, has made a speech in which he stated that the ‘end of an era’ of new employment legislation has arrived, and that the UK needs employment strategies that protect the rights of employees without decreasing the flexibility of the labour market. This clearly related to the new rights for agency workers that was agreed last week, which many people feel will damage UK businesses due to the decrease in labour flexibility. Hutton talked about the opinion that new laws automatically protect employees, and said this was not necessarily the case.
I have to say that to some extent I do agree with Hutton on this. Perhaps I’m naive, and because I’ve not worked in a large number of organisations, I’ve been lucky enough to avoid the experience of ‘rogue’ employers that these laws are there to prosecute. But I do feel that sometimes the large amount of legislation does have a negative effect on employment opportunities. For example, I wrote ages ago about comments made by Sir Alan Sugar about how employers should be able to ask at an interview what plans female applicants have for children and how they would cope with full time work as well as childcare. His argument was that discrimination law restricted women from getting jobs because the employer isn’t able to ask these questions, so often the woman would be turned down on the assumption that she would cause issues later on when she had children. Whilst I think this is a ludicrous thing to say, it does show how employers think about these issues when recruiting. I have had conversations with managers who have been reluctant to recruit some people due to the fear that, should they turn out to be a bad decision, it wouldn’t be straightforward to get rid of them. Now I know as well as the next HR person that these attitudes are bad for business and are in complete opposition to the purpose the legislation was created for, but there’s no denying that these feelings are common in management teams, and re-education will only go so far to resolving the issue.
There’s also the problem that there have been many cases that appear to be completely unfair on the employer simply because of the restrictive legislation. For example, a dismissal case where the employee is able to successfully claim unfair dismissal due to a procedural error on the employer’s part, when the employee had been proven to be stealing from the company. Yes, in that situation compensation would be reduced, but it still looks pretty bad to a manager outside of the legal or human resources professions. Sometimes I think employment claims are getting a bit like personal injury claims – more ‘dodgy’ claims like this one means that the genuinely victimised or unfairly dismissed employees lose credibility in their claim and this means the law is not doing what it is meant to do.
Whilst I know there are definitely unscrupulous employers out there for whom the law is intended, it does sometimes restrict the activities of others due to the perceived risks in recruitment, or the need to spend months going through a process with a poor employee when both parties know they’re just in it for the sake of legislation. We know the statutory dispute resolution procedures are due to be repealed as they haven’t been as successful as planned, so why introduce loads more legislation now when we haven’t even managed to get that right?