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The purpose of the study was to determine the relationship of an employee drug testing program to employee turnover, absenteeism, reported accidents, and workers' compensation claims.
A two-group, before and after experimental design was used to study the relationship of a drug testing program to the four previously mentioned variables. A sample of food processing plants was divided into a control group and an experimental group. The control group consisted of nineteen plants which did no drug use testing. The experimental group consisted of seven plants which did drug testing on preemployment candidates as well as current employees. Two twelve month periods, one before the implementation of a formal drug testing program and one after the implementation of the drug testing program, served as the basis of the mean monthly measures of each dependent variable for each of the twenty-six plants. T-test analyses were used to evaluate the difference between the drug testing group and the non-testing group.
The evidence presented in this study indicates that the presence of a drug testing program had a significantly positive influence on turnover rates (p =.011). Turnover rates were lower in plants that tested for drug usage than in plants that did not test for drug usage.
There were definite trends toward the drug testing program having a positive influence on workers' compensation claims paid out (p =.056) and absenteeism rates (p =.073). Thus, the presence of a drug testing program lowered both workers' compensation claims paid out and absenteeism rates.
There was some evidence that plant type was a confounding factor affecting the relationship of the drug testing program to the dependent variables focused on by this case study. The differences between mean turnover rates for both basic processing and further processing plants were significant with p-values of.042 and.015, respectively, but only the difference between the mean amount of workers' compensation claims paid out at further processing plants was significant with a p-value of.024. Thus, the type of job situation to which an employee is exposed may have an impact on the success of drug testing programs.