Do I Need an Alcohol and Drugs Policy for My Business?

Short answer: no Australian WHS law says every business must have one.

Longer answer: you have a legal duty to protect your workers from risks to their health and safety, so far as is reasonably practicable, and impairment is one of those risks. Without something written down, you have no practical way to meet that duty, and no way to show you tried.

So the honest answer is that a policy isn't mandatory, but you should have one anyway. Here's why, and what it needs to say.

It's a hazard, not a character assessment

Alcohol and other drugs get treated as a moral issue, which is exactly why so many small businesses never deal with them. Nobody wants to be the boss who accuses someone of something.

So reframe it. Impairment is a workplace hazard. It belongs in your risk management process alongside noise, plant and working at height, and the job is to control a risk, not to judge a person.

Regulators frame it the same way. The duty is to protect workers from the risks associated with alcohol and drugs, which is a safety obligation, not a licence to take an interest in anyone's private life. What people do on a Saturday night isn't your business. Whether someone can safely operate a nail gun on Monday morning is.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. Owners who see this as a discipline issue tend to avoid it until there's a crisis. Owners who see it as a hazard put a control in place, the same way they would for anything else, and then get on with the job.

It isn't only alcohol and illicit drugs

This is the part that catches people out.

The duty covers prescribed and over-the-counter medicines that affect someone's ability to work safely. Not just the substances you'd expect.

The impairment that actually turns up on Australian worksites is often perfectly legal:

• A landscaper on strong painkillers three weeks after a back injury, back at work because the bills don't stop, operating a stump grinder.
  

• A cleaner taking antihistamines through spring, driving between five commercial sites in a day.
  

• A workshop hand who started a new medication last week and got told it might make them drowsy, but didn't think to mention it because it wasn't a work thing.
  

None of those people are doing anything wrong. Not one of them is trying to hide anything. They just haven't connected a prescription from their GP with the task they're about to do, and nobody has ever asked them to.

That gap is what a policy closes, and it closes it without anyone being accused of anything.

Your workers have duties too

Good news is that this isn't all sitting on you.

Under WHS law, every worker has to take reasonable care that what they do doesn't adversely affect the health and safety of other people. They also have to co-operate with reasonable health and safety policies you've put in place, provided they've actually been told about them.

That last part is doing a lot of work. The co-operation duty only bites once a policy exists and workers know about it. Which means the business that has nothing written down has also given up the ability to hold anyone to a standard, because no standard was ever set.

Victoria sits under its own OHS framework, with equivalent duties on employers and employees. Different wording, same shape.

"We're a small team, I'd know"

This is the most common objection, and it deserves a straight answer.

You might notice. Plenty of owners would. But noticing isn't a control, it's a hope, and it fails in exactly the situations where it matters most.

You'd probably notice someone who'd been drinking. You almost certainly wouldn't notice someone two days into a new medication that affects reaction time. You wouldn't notice at all if they're working at a client site while you're across town quoting a job. And you can't notice anything on a day you're not there.

The size argument also cuts the other way. In a large business there are supervisors, an HR function, and someone whose job includes this. In a small business the whole thing rests on one person who is also doing the work, chasing invoices and answering the phone. That's less coverage, not more.

What happens when nothing is written down

There's no fine for not having a policy. The cost shows up in three other places.

You have no defensible basis to act. Something happens, and you have two options. Do nothing and carry the risk. Or act on instinct and then try to explain the decision to the worker, to your insurer, or to a regulator. Both are poor. The second one is worse, because a decision made without a documented standard is very hard to justify after the fact.

Site access. Plenty of principal contractors and commercial clients require a documented AOD policy before you're allowed on site. This one costs work, not just sleep.

The aftermath of an incident. If impairment ever contributes to an incident, the question moves off the worker and onto the business fairly quickly. What system was in place? What were workers told? What evidence is there that anyone was told anything?

What your AOD policy should cover

Keep it short enough that people read it.

1. What fit for work means here. Cover alcohol, illicit drugs, and medication that affects capacity. Be specific about the tasks that matter in your business: driving, operating plant, working at height, handling chemicals.

2. A way to raise it early. A worker starting new medication needs somewhere to say so without believing it will cost them work. This is the part most policies leave out, and it's the part that prevents incidents rather than responding to them. Say plainly who they tell and what happens next, which is usually a conversation about duties for a few days, not a problem.

3. What happens on the day. Decide this in advance, not in the moment. Who makes the call. What happens to the shift and to the person's pay. How they get home safely, because sending an impaired worker off in their own car creates a new problem. What gets written down.

4. Support, not just consequences. A policy that only lists punishments gets used once, badly. One that names a path to help gets used early, which is the entire point.

Work it out with your workers rather than at them. Consulting workers on health and safety matters is a legal duty in its own right, and a policy the crew has never seen won't survive its first real test.

A word on testing

If you're considering drug and alcohol testing, set it up properly in the policy first, and get advice before you start. Testing brings in obligations well beyond WHS, including privacy and employment law, and running it without a proper basis creates a new problem instead of solving the one you have. We're WHS specialists, not employment lawyers, and this is a point where the difference matters.

Some industries don't get a choice. Rail operators must run a drug and alcohol management program under the Rail Safety National Law. Aviation has mandatory drug and alcohol management plans. Heavy vehicle drivers are subject to roadside testing under road transport laws, and there are prescribed limits for certain occupations. If that's your world, general WHS guidance isn't enough on its own.

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