Hi Keith. I believe many organisations struggle with this same issue. And despite robust policies being in place, letters to GP's explaining the physical requirements of the role and alternative duties available, there are often people who want to just take some time to rest and recover at home. We have interrogated this a lot in our organisation and it's a balance between employee wellbeing, lag performance metrics and operational delivery. Difficult tension to hold. I wanted to share an approach with regards to reporting to a tier contractor. This may or may not be appropriate for your working model. When we identify there are conflicting circumstances regarding an injury that results in lost time; namely that a process hasn't been followed, there is evidence to suggest the injury may not be work related, the business feels it did not need to result in lost time, or there are other performance issues at play, we have taken the approach of discussing these factors with our clients (in line with privacy etc.) and seeking collaboration on the classification. We have found that this is a successful way of all parties owning the outcome and being able to tell the full story when queried by executives.

This takes a lot of relationship building, trust and openness and I understand not all contractor relationships look like this. But wanted to share our experience. All the best.

I'd like to offer some information around how my company approach this topic; it is by no means perfect, but I think we are doing a good job and always looking to improve. Drug and alcohol testing has always been a bit of an ethical conundrum for our lead team; we want our people to be able to conduct their work without being negatively influenced by substances (and this is legal or otherwise), but we also don't want to dictate the choices people make in their own time. Being in the construction and utility sector, drug and alcohol testing is a focus for many hiring clients and random testing is expected. With the recent release of an oral fluid testing standard, we have amended our approach to oral fluid to try and better infer impairment at the time of an incident or while at work in general.There are still shortfalls with this approach but we feel this is a better way forward than urine testing in most cases. Our random testing programme includes all staff, including our GM and SDMs. Following on from that, as someone has mentioned already, substance abuse is an issue in itself and whether someones impairment has specifically led to/had potential to lead to an incident or not, once we learn someone may need support, we feel it is our responsibility to offer the resources we have on hand. We have a rehabilitation programme that employees can choose to participate in. As well as this, we provide support and information to our teams so that they have as much as information as we can provide to make informed decisions about their own health. We try and take a holistic approach to this topic and are aware that there isn't a one size fits all. With advances in impairment testing options, we are starting to feel a little more comfortable but for us, it's really about understanding what has led to someone being impaired at work, can we do anything to support, and if not, what are the impacts of this. I hope this sheds a little positive spin on the topic. Cheers.