ADA Australia has released its new training guide – A HANDBOOK OF ALCOHOL, DRUGS AND WORKPLACE RISK – to accompany its workplace training presentations now being delivered in workplaces across Australia.
The most thorough, up-to-date and easily-digested publication of its type available, the ADA Australia HANDBOOK is a catalogue of vital information about the effects of drugs and alcohol on the body and brain, on cognitive function and capability, and on the risks these substances pose to workplace health and safety.
Structured around ADA Australia’s workplace training presentations, the HANDBOOK focusses on personal wellbeing and in raising awareness of the way these substances impair judgment and co-ordination, and the hazard risks they pose to affected individuals – and to co-workers – after ‘a big night’ or ‘a big weekend’.
It also provides information on how long alcohol and drugs can remain detectable (through drug and alcohol testing).
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“The training ADA Australia offers, along with the HANDBOOK that is provided to every workshop participant, can protect your valued employees, and can also protect your business under your Worksafe obligations and Drug and Alcohol policy,” ADA Australia director Anthony Pettiona said.
It may surprise many, but drugs and/or alcohol factor in as many as 10 percent of Australian workplace deaths. And, more broadly, overdose deaths in Australia are now at three times numbers of road fatalities.
“Australia now ranks as among the ‘worst in the world’ for misuse of these substances. It is a problem all Australians own as a society, and one we must solve; we are simply losing too many good people to drugs and alcohol.
“Our training activity, and the ADA Australia HANDBOOK, is centred on informing and positively influencing life choices around drugs and alcohol,” Mr Pettiona said.
“Our intent is to ‘get a conversation going’ in Australian workplaces about the misuse of these substances and their impact on safe work practices.
“Behind that message, we take participants through the uncomfortable truths that are dragged behind drug and alcohol misuse – on the long and short term health effects, on cognitive function, on financial risk and family violence, on mental health and wellbeing and on depression and self-harm,” he said.
“These presentations are placed in the context of a consultative workplace Drug and Alcohol policy. In this we lean on the importance of fostering a supportive, non-retributive workplace culture – where it’s ok to ask if a colleague “is ok” – and provide strategies for helping a workmate who may be struggling,” Mr Pettiona said.
With contents covering the economic cost of drug and alcohol use in Australia, drug types and their effects, recognising impairment in co-workers, the nature of addiction, the links to depression and illness, and much more, the ADA Australia HANDBOOK OF ALCOHOL, DRUGS AND WORKPLACE RISK is a valuable reference when introducing your workplace Drug and Alcohol policy to your employees.
To book an ADA Australia Alcohol and Drugs Awareness workshop, contact us through the website CONTACT page, or call 1300 378 429.
We’ll take your people through your workplace Drug and Alcohol Policy, lay out their obligations under that policy and leave them with a copy of the HANDBOOK for their own reference.
ENDS.
Tim O’Brien
ADA Australia