Alcohol in the Work Place
When companies around the UK were surveyed for how alcohol affected their business these were the main items that came up:
- Loss of productivity and poor performance
- Lateness and absenteeism
- Safety concerns
- Effect on team morale and employee relations
- Bad behaviour or poor discipline
- Adverse effects on company image and customer relations
In order to strengthen your company and help all employees on an individual basis, it is important to take a look at how much alcohol really is being consumed and the effects that this may be having at work.
Facts about Alcohol
Alcohol is absorbed into your bloodstream within a few minutes of being drunk and carried to all parts of the body including the brain. The concentration of alcohol in the body varies depending on many factors including, how much you have drunk, your size and weight, whether you have eaten and so on.
It takes a healthy liver about 1 hour to break down and remove 1 unit of alcohol. A unit is the equivalent of 10 ml of pure alcohol. This would be the equivalent of half a pint of beer, a normal single measure of spirits or a small glass of wine.
Contrary to popular belief things like black coffee, cold showers and fresh air are not going to sober you up. Though you may feel a little better. Sobering up fully, simply relies on the amount of time that your liver has to remove the alcohol from your body.
For this reason, having a few drinks at lunch will mean that you, in fact, will have that alcohol in your system for most of the afternoon, or drinking very heavily at night would mean that you could still be affected while driving in the morning.
Why is this is so important to your business?
Alcohol is estimated to cause 3-5% of all absences from work; about 8 to 14 million lost working days in the UK each year.
There are many different effects that alcohol consumption can cause in an office, some examples of these are: reduced work performance, damaged customer relations, or resentment among employees who have to ‘carry’ colleagues whose work declines because of drinking.
We do not have the precise figures on the number of workplace accidents caused or related to alcohol, but alcohol is known to affect judgement and physical co-ordination. Drinking even small amounts of alcohol before or while carrying out work that is ‘safety sensitive’ such as driving or operating machinery, will increase the risk of an accident.
What can you do about it?
There is a simple process that you can undertake to decide on policies for your staff. Problems may appear from a variety of sources, such as drinking during working hours, drinking in breaks or just before work, regular heavy drinking or getting drunk outside of work hours.
Follow these simple steps as a guide:
1. Find out if there is an existing problem.
2. Make a list of who you need to consult, this can be staff, managers or outside advisers, and consult them as necessary.
3. Decide how your company expects employees to limit their drinking. Are they expected to drink when out with clients, can they drink on lunch breaks, if so how much would be acceptable and so on?
4. Consider how you can make sure that if an employee does have an alcohol problem, this is noticed and help is made available. It is vital that help is tried before any disciplinary action is taken.
5. Decide at what point, and in what circumstances you will treat an employee’s drinking as a matter of discipline rather than a health problem.
6. Think about how you will let your workforce know about company policy regarding alcohol. It is advised at this point, to introduce a formal written alcohol policy.
7. Find out if any of your managers or other staff need more information or training. If so, get it arranged and carried out.
8. Consider providing staff with general information about alcohol and health.
9. Lastly, you can regularly review all of these steps to ensure that they are correct, working for your company and being followed.
Summary
Having a clear and workable alcohol policy in place will benefit not only your company but all the individuals working for you too. Allowing guidelines to be followed, accidents avoided and help taken when needed.
These statistics and guidelines were based on the Health and Safety Executive ‘Don’t mix it, a guide for employers on alcohol at work.’
