22 August 2011
The Eastland Wood Council has introduced the nation's first shared workplace drug screening database and the benefits seem to have been immediate.
The number of positive test results from workers has dropped — from a worrying 20-plus percent to about 12 percent since the start of this year, according to wood council chief executive Trevor Helson."This is still too high but it is a step in the right direction," he says in the Gisborne Herald.
Random drug tests are standard in the industry but are "still possible to work around" by workers determined to break the rules, says Mr Helson.
Under the old approach, for example, an employee could leave a company after a positive drug test and simply go to work somewhere else without the new employer knowing.
Now the Eastland Wood Council has gone a step further. It maintains a centralised database of positive test results from employees that all its 11 member companies can access.
Source: Gisborne Herald. To read the fill story click here.