How to Send an Employee to Drug Rehabilitation

With the completion of treatment, an employee can become more productive at work. According to PsychCentral, someone who has undergone treatment can become more responsive to superiors, and be healthier physically and emotionally.

The individual will be better able to perform at work, manage their workload, and if they are a supervisor, manage others more efficiently. What’s more, if the person undergoing a successful recovery is a manager or supervisor, their employees will likely experience increased job satisfaction.

An employee who gets sent to treatment will likely exhibit greater loyalty toward an employer that was willing to help them with their addiction struggles. That loyalty could translate to increased productivity at work and a boost in performance. An employee that receives drug or alcohol treatment is “less likely to injure the company in an inadvertent way, such as damaging the company’s reputation,” asserts PsychCentral.

Someone who requires medical leave for a lengthy or complicated surgical procedure will need more recovery time than a person in drug or alcohol treatment. An employee who enrolls in residential treatment can remain there between 30 to 90 days and can typically resume work in six to eight weeks.

While firing an employee with a substance abuse problem might seem like an efficient solution, a company can end up paying more money in the long run. When a company fires someone, it may end up incurring the following costs:

• Separation costs: Companies will likely have to pay additional costs for exit interviews, administrative duties, separation/severance pay, and unemployment compensation.
• Vacancy costs: Costs come in the form of overtime pay to employees who have to perform extra duties to compensate for the loss of a worker. A company will have to spend more to hire a temporary employee to cover for that terminated individual.
• Replacement costs: These are expenditures related to marketing the vacated position, attracting applicants, conducting entrance interviews, initiating testing and medical exams, and acquiring and disseminating information.
• Training costs: This can include expenditures on formal or informal training, literature, technology, and the time spent on a new person learning additional tasks.  

There are moral implications to consider. Sending an employee to alcohol or drug rehab is the right thing to do. Why? Because a substance addiction is a brain disease. Thus, that person should be given the same accommodation as someone grappling with a health condition. States PsychCentral: “Legally, companies are not allowed to fire employees due to serious health issues, such as cancer or heart health, but employers are much more willing to let employees go because of substance abuse or alcohol addiction – diseases which should be treated as physical and mental health issues that need to be addressed for the health of the employee.”

For workplace-centered interventions, it is imperative that employers utilize the services of a certified intervention professional (CIP) to orchestrate the gathering.

A CIP ensures that the person with a substance abuse problem enters treatment. They also provide the following benefits:

• The can assist with planning and staging the intervention.
• They can also educate company representatives on what and what not to do once that employee leaves for treatment.
• A CIP arranges treatment options, including where to send an employee to treatment.
• A CIP can also set up treatment before the actual intervention takes place.

What’s more, a CIP can lead an intervention, ensuring that it is effective and meets professional standards.

The Mayo Clinic advises that intervention meetings adhere to the following objectives:

• Provide the party with examples of destructive behaviors and how those behaviors have affected the subject with the addiction and the person’s colleagues
• Offer an employee a prearranged treatment plan that clearly outlines steps, goals, and guidelines
• Clarify what will result if an employee refuses to accept treatment

• Has good timing. The intervention must be conducted when the subject is mentally and physically stable. Intervention should not take place if the person is visibly intoxicated or experiencing withdrawal symptoms. A person in any of the aforementioned states will not be able to effectively engage in the gathering.  
• Carefully planned and executed. An effective intervention is one that is carefully planned, where each participant will know what to say and contribute. Here’s where a CIP can step in: the individual can make sure the participants assisting with the intervention rehearse the letters they plan to read to the subject.
• Sticks to the script. Bad interventions are ones that are unplanned or go off the rails. When this happens, it can thwart the objective of the meeting: to get the individual into treatment.

• Remains civil. This goes hand-in-hand with sticking to the script. When an intervention devolves into personal attacks and arguments, the meeting will have gone off the rails, which (again) defeats the whole purpose. Interventions must remain objective to remain effective.  
• Honest. For a gathering to be effective, no misleading, lying, or equivocating by any parties should be tolerated, especially with regard to the subject. All participants must remain honest in their exchanges with that person to reveal how their addiction has impacted the workplace. This will give the subject an accurate perspective of their addiction.  
• Objection and excuse-proof. Addiction is a sensitive matter, so the intervention subject may very likely throw up objections and get defensive. They may be quick to deny that they have a problem. To combat possible objections, it helps if participants can document past incidents of substance abuse. This can help to nullify the subject’s claims while getting them to understand their pattern of abuse.

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a workplace intervention program that offers support to employees struggling with emotional or behavioral issues. An EAP provides programs to help those who are experiencing hardships in critical life areas such as finances, relationships, life stressors, legal issues, and substance abuse.

EAP hotlines are open 24/7 and staffed with licensed and experienced counselors. EAP provides access to more than 40,000 network counselors, and employees can get legal help, and personal and performance counseling.

Additionally, all calls and inquiries to the EAP are kept confidential.