Alcohol or substance dependency in employees is difficult to identify.  Nearly all alcoholics become expert at hiding the symptoms of the condition, and it can go undetected for years. In many cases, it will be found that alcoholics, as a result of their condition, also become astute liars, and will go to almost any lengths to hide the condition. These are not unfair criticisms of alcoholics in general – these are facts which arise from the condition of the addiction. These are conditions that are inflicted on the alcoholic as a result of his/her dependency problem – things that the alcoholic would never indulge in were it not for the dependency problem.

The alcoholic is in fact a person who is sick – and cannot help himself or herself. They need to be helped – they cannot help themselves. And this, in part, is what makes the problem so difficult.

Remember that an employee arriving at work with alcohol smelling on the breath is not necessarily  indicative that the employee has a substance dependence problem. It merely indicates that the night before, he had a good party – may even have been drinking into the early hours.

To detect the condition, probably the best barometer the employer has is firstly the attendance record. A definite pattern will be detected if the record if properly analyzed.

For example, a pattern showing that absenteeism (or late-coming) occurs regularly on a Monday, or on the day after pay-day, or the day after a public holiday. Supervisors must be encouraged to report those employees who come to work, particularly on a Monday or that day after a public holiday, with what is commonly known as “bubbleaas.”

The classic hangover.   That obvious “morning after the night before” condition. During the course of the morning, the Supervisor should closely monitor the employee – frequent trips to the toilet, drinking large quantities of water, sucking peppermints or other sweets, turning his face away from you when you speak to him, etc – or holding his hand in front of his mouth when he speaks to you. These indicators will taper off as the day progresses – as the employee slowly recovers from the night before.

After lunch, in fact, the employee will be quite “perky” and a lot more bright-eyed and bushy-tailed than he was at 7 am. All of this is evidence for future use.

A second barometer is the employee’s work performance – a previously good worker starts to display symptoms of poor work performance. Quality of the work deteriorates, quantity of output suffers adversely, work gets “behind” , reports are late, all that sort of thing. When confronted, the employee will offer to work overtime “to catch up.” An agreement is reached that the employee will work on Saturday for the whole day, and on Sunday for a half-day to get things up to date. On Monday, it is found that the employee came to work on Saturday, stayed for only 2 hours, and then left. On Sunday he did not pitch at all.

He offers some lame excuse that :my wife was sick and I had to take her to the doctor,” or something equally unacceptable.

Normally, the person who is simply a “social drinker” will not drink to excess at a function – or at home, for that matter. He will control his intake, knowing when he has “reached his limit.”

The person who has or who is heading for a “drinking problem” is the person who, having taken the first drink, won’t stop until the bottle is empty.

He is the person who makes a point of “I drink my 5 double whiskeys every night and I am as sober as a judge.” 

Or “ I finish my 6-pack and 3 doubles every night and it does nothing to me – I can drive anything – I am stone cold sober.”

And this is the person who will, without fail, vehemently deny that he has been drinking, when he actually smells like a walking brewery, or when asked the question “How much did you drink last night ?”  he gives the classic reply that “ I only had 2 beers, and I had the second beer at 9 pm – I had nothing after that.”

This is the class of drinker that we are concerned with. We are concerned because he has a problem and because he is an employee, his problem unfortunately also becomes the employer’s problem – up to a point.

The problem is compounded by the fact that the problem-drinkers behaviour outside of working hours and off the company premises can also become the employer’s problem. 

Following on this  , emerges the necessity for firstly having in place an effective Alcohol Policy which is lawful, fair and attainable, and also a fair and lawful means of testing suspects at work to ascertain the levels of alcohol in the blood, by qualified staff with approved and reliable testing equipment.

It would be disastrous if an employee, having been dismissed for breach of the Alcohol Policy, was able to show at Arbitration that your testing equipment has a 50% or even 30% margin of error, or that the last calibration date was 2 years ago.  More on those issues next week.

The South African Labour Guide is a private company and has no association with the Commission for Conciliation, Mediation and Arbitration (CCMA), you may find the CCMA on www.ccma.org.za