Employers and employees often persist at odds over the value of workplace drug testing. From the perspective of employers, drug testing acts as valuable source of screening for employees whose drug use could influence productivity or morale. Employees, on the other hand, often maintain that drug testing violates rights to privacy and creates an antagonistic work environment. Despite differences of opinion, drug testing comes with an assortment of inarguable benefits.

Safer Work Environment

This first advantage affects both employers and employees. Drug abuse can create a definitively unsafe work environment. Whether the drug use leads to mood swings, or the actual presence of illegal substances on the job, no one will argue for the inherent safety of illegal drugs. This becomes especially true for work environments that involve chemicals or heavy machinery.

Less Turnover

Employees with drug problems are much more likely to shuffle between jobs. With turnover rates more than 3x higher for those with drug problems, employers wind up spending more time and money on recruitment. High turnover also creates an unstable work environment that can have a wide-ranging effect on morale and productivity.

Deterrent

Naturally, drug testing will also act as a deterrent to potential drug users. Few people will actively seek to lose their own job, and openness about drug testing can provide all the convincing that many people need to abstain.

At Choice DNA, we can provide for workplace drug testing at any of our 6,100 locations nationwide. If you would like to explore the benefits of this service for your own company, contact us today at (800) 219-4362.

How accurate are home drug tests compared to lab tests

Typically, distinct strips for each drug are used in home drug testing. The strip includes reagents, a technical word for chemicals that react to the drug’s metabolites in your body. You are looking for a chemical reaction between the reagent on your test strips and a specific number of metabolites in the subject’s urine when you conduct a drug test using a cup, such as our 12-panel drug test at home. It is like a miniature science lab in your home. Home drug tests are regarded as qualitative and presumptive, which means they cannot provide precise information about the amount of drugs contained in the sample or what a positive result indicates.

Several methods can be used to test for drugs in a lab. Sometimes, a lab may conduct testing using the same reagents used in at-home drug tests. When someone sends a sample to a lab for testing, it is typically anticipated that they will, at the very least, utilize a presumptive drug testing procedure that is evaluated with the aid of an instrument. This typically indicates that they are using a drug test plugged into a machine that reads the findings, similar to ours. This process eliminates subjectivity and human error. The main goal of sending a sample to a lab is to obtain a confirmation using chromatography, mass spectrometry, or immunoassay. Some of these instrument chemical analyzers can provide information on the sample’s metabolite content in terms of amount.