What You Need to Know About Pre-Employment Drug Tests
As an employer, you want to ensure that you have the best employees who are ready, willing and able to safely do their job each day. This starts in the pre-employment process, where you conduct interviews, check references and negotiate terms.
One key factor for many employers is pre-employment drug testing once a conditional offer of employment is made. Here’s what you need to know about pre-employment drug screening.
Why Pre-Employment Drug Tests Are Important
In sectors where drug testing federally mandated or in safety-sensitive industries such as hospitals, schools and transportation, potential hires are used to being asked to submit for pre-employment and spot drug testing. However, pre-employment drug tests aren’t required in many industries, but employers are increasingly including them in their hiring processes.
A 2016 paper in the Journal of Toxins found that approximately 80% of corporations in the United States incorporated drug testing in their workplaces.
There are a variety of reasons organizations opt to include drug testing as part of their pre-employment screening process.
Workplace Safety
Impaired workers are more likely to have on-the-job accidents. With 22.5% of workers admitting to using drugs or alcohol during working hours, according to a 2023 survey by the American Addiction Centers, substance use poses a major risk to not only the impaired worker, but those around them.
Substance use impairs a worker’s reaction times and can greatly impact decision-making capabilities, which can lead to on-the-job accidents and injuries. The National Institute on Drug Abuse estimates that up to 50% of all workers’ compensation claims are related to workplace drug and alcohol use, and impairment can lead to 3.5 times more on-the-job accidents. Not screening potential employees for substance use prior to employment could open your workplace up to a whole host of safety risks.
Reduced Absenteeism
An estimated 13.5 million American workers suffer from substance use disorders, missing an average of 22 days annually — more than twice the number of days that employees without substance use disorders miss. Other reports state that alcohol abuse in the workplace costs the economy $250 billion each year, with 62% of that cost (or $155 billion) being directly attributed to lost productivity.
The sooner you can identify if potential hires struggle with substance use in the workplace, the more you can avoid excessive absenteeism and all the costs that come with lost productivity.
Maintain Compliance
Ensuring workplace health and safety is your legal responsibility as an employer. If you know of potential safety hazards — including workers who are under the influence on the job — and don’t take steps to mitigate those hazards, you are legally liable for any accidents or injuries that occur. When it comes to violations of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) standards, that could mean fines up to $161,323 per violation.
Understanding Pre-Employment Drug Testing
When you’re considering pre-employment drug testing, you have a variety of options on how you want tests administered, what types of tests you utilize and what substances you will screen for.
Types of Drug Tests Available
There are four main drug testing specimen types: urine, hair, blood and saliva.
Urine drug tests are the most common, and this specimen type is required for regulated drug tests, such as those conducted by the Department of Transportation (DOT). This method has a shorter window of detection when compared with hair collection, with substances detectable for five to 10 days past last use.
Blood testing is more accurate in detecting substances, but it is much more costly and invasive. It also has a shorter detection period than other collection methods, often just minutes to hours. Hair tests can detect drug or alcohol use for up to 90 days, but it is a more costly and invasive method.
Saliva testing, also known as oral fluid testing, is the least invasive method of sample collection, but it does have a detection window of only two to 48 hours. Many employers utilize oral fluid testing as an alternative to urine testing when an employee doesn’t provide a sufficient urine sample.
Additionally, given the detection window of a saliva test (two to 48 hours after substance use), this method can help employees more accurately test whether a worker used drugs while on the job or was impaired at the time of a workplace accident.
Common Substances Tested For
Most workplace drug tests, including pre-employment drug tests, screen for a variety of substances, including:
- Methamphetamines (meth, speed, crank or ecstasy)
- THC (cannabinoids, marijuana and hash)
- Cocaine (coke or crack)
- Opiates (heroin, opium, codeine or morphine)
- Phencyclidine (PCP or angel dust)
You can test for other substances, but that may require specialized testing services, higher costs and longer turnaround times.
Typical Pre-Employment Drug Testing Steps
Most pre-employment drug screenings will be conducted in three phases:
- Sample collection: The employee provides a sample in the method you’ve selected (hair, blood, urine or saliva), typically at an occupational healthcare clinic, with another physician’s office or at a dedicated drug screening facility. The sample is analyzed onsite or sent away for analysis, depending on the clinic’s capabilities.
- Confirmation screen: If the initial screening returned a non-negative result, a medical review officer (MRO) performs a confirmation screen. The MRO ensures chain of custody and applicant confidentiality to determine if there was sample alteration or substitution and contacts the potential employee when necessary to verify if there is a reason for the non-negative result (such as a prescription).
- Results sent: Once the initial screening (if negative) or MRO review (if non-negative) is complete, the results are passed to the employer and applicant. This usually takes a few days but may take longer.
How to Choose the Right Pre-Employment Drug Testing Partner
Because of the complicated requirements surrounding pre-employment drug testing, many organizations opt to outsource their drug and alcohol screenings to a third party.
If you’re looking for a partner in ensuring a fair, accurate pre-employment drug testing process, here’s what to look for.
Transparency in the Testing Process
When conducting pre-employment drug tests, it’s essential that your process is air-tight to avoid accusations of adulterated results and potential lawsuits. This requires that your drug testing partner is transparent in their testing process, walking you through every step from sample collection through sending you the results.
You want to be sure that your drug testing partner takes every precaution to safeguard the integrity of samples from the moment a potential employee walks through their doors to when the results are returned. They should have a clear process for sample collection, and contingency plans for potential sample swapping or adulteration.
Their chain of command from sample collection to the testing facility must be clear, giving you the confidence that they are returning wholly accurate results you can trust.
Customer Support and Service Quality
Pre-employment drug screening is an important step in your organization’s hiring process. Your partner’s employees will encounter every potential employee at your organization, as well as members of your hiring team. You need to be sure they treat your employees and potential employees with respect, and that they respond appropriately when concerns arise.
Look at your prospective drug testing partners’ online presence, reading reviews if you can find them. Ask for references in industries and organizations like you, then ask them for both the good and the bad of their partnership with prospective drug testing partners.
Don’t expect to get 100% positive reviews, but use any criticism you read in reviews or hear from references to formulate questions you ask the provider and gauge their response.
Industry Experience
There’s a lot riding on the results of your pre-employment drug tests. Because of this, it’s crucial that you find a drug testing partner with experience providing drug screenings like those they will provide you. The more experience they have, the more likely they are to be a good, trustworthy partner.
If you have specialized testing requirements or situations, try to find a partner with experience in managing those conditions to give you the best chances of a smooth relationship and reliable test results.
Turnaround Time for Results
Faster isn’t always better, but with your hiring process at a standstill until you get pre-employment drug testing results, it’s key to find a partner that can get you results in a few days. If you’re waiting a week or more for results, that’s that much longer before you can onboard a new employee, and time that you risk them finding another position — leaving you to start the hiring process all over again.
Ask prospective drug testing partners their average turnaround time for results, and the longest amount of time you can expect to wait. If a provider has a secure online portal where you can view results as soon as they’re in, that’s likely going to be a better choice than a provider that must email or fax results to you.
Your Pre-Employment Drug Testing Partner
At Medcor, we take occupational health and safety seriously. That extends to helping our clients ensure a drug- and alcohol-free work environment from the moment a new hire starts work. With convenient drug testing collection at our onsite clinics, or full-service drug testing program management through our employer screening services, you get affordable, trustworthy drug testing results without the hassle. Speak with an advocate today.