The workplace: a forgotten area for alcohol studies?

By Jonathan Goodliffe, Solicitor

The workplace is not a primary focus of the government’s alcohol strategy for England and Wales. In one of its policy statements, Vernon Coaker, now Minister of State for schools, said that:

“Promoting a sensible drinking culture that reduces violence and improves health is a job for us all … Business and industry should reinforce responsible drinking messages at every opportunity.”

He was, however, mainly targeting his remarks at the drinks industry rather than at business in general. In a sense this is not surprising since it is the responsibility of business to resolve its problems, including those arising from alcohol misuse. However where businesses are able to deal with these problems within their own resources there may be significant savings to the public purse as well as benefi ts to the families of those concerned and society as a whole.

I took a six month postgraduate course last year at the Institute of Psychiatry. It was focused on alcohol and drug use in the workplace. The course director was Dr Kim Wolff, senior lecturer in the addictions. The course featured seminars led by a range of leading figures in the field and required us to complete several essays involving reviews of the scientific literature.

The focus was firmly on working environments where alcohol or drug misuse creates critical safety implications. These include the medical profession, the National Health Service, the US armed forces and the transport sector. They tend to be the working environments where proactive policies are developed and research is carried out. Problems from alcohol and drug use which arise within these environments are most tangible and are most likely, from a research point of view, to be within the comfort zone of professionals with clinical qualifications.

Yet the UK is primarily a service economy. Take the London financial sector, which is the largest in the world. It employs many highly paid people. In the 1990s there was a London code of conduct for principals and broking firms in the wholesale markets which said:

“Management should take all reasonable steps to educate themselves and their staff about possible signs and effects of the use of drugs and other abused substances. The judgement of any member of staff using such substances is likely to be impaired; dependence upon drugs etc makes them more likely to be vulnerable to outside inducement to conduct business not necessarily in the best interests of the firm or the market generally and could seriously diminish their ability to function satisfactorily.”

This regulatory guidance was abandoned in 2001 when the Financial Services Authority became the sector’s integrated regulator, probably because of the lack of any cost/benefit analysis supporting it. The 2004 Rowntree report on drug testing argued, controversially, that “There is a lack of evidence to suggest that drug and alcohol use is in fact having a serious and widespread effect on the workplace in modern Britain.”

Lack of evidence to support a proposition may suggest that it is unsound, but so little research has been published related to alcohol problems in the fi nancial sector that no firm conclusions can surely be drawn either way.

One subject which clearly merits more consideration, is the extent to which heavy alcohol and drug use leads to inappropriate risk taking. There is research evidence that this may be the outcome in sexual activity and in the driving of motor vehicles. The same may perhaps be the case where, for instance, traders operate on the money markets or underwriters place large insurance risks. A recent enforcement action by the FSA against a trader for short selling involving amounts in excess of US$10 million noted:

“He drank alcohol over lunch and it appears that this affected his behaviour on his return to the off ce, although he was not visibly drunk. Between 17.04 and 19.37 on 6 February 2008, Mr X sold 24,868 lots and bought 19,493 lots of WTI Futures on the ICE web-based trading platform, WebICE. His trading represented over 30% of the total lots of WTI Futures traded on ICE on 6 February 2008. His short position reached 8,900 lots at 18.36. By 19.37, Mr X had a substantial net short position of 5,395 lots.”

Another possible subject for research is the extent to which heavy drinking by senior staff, who may often be role models, influences subordinates. The evidence indicates that senior staff are at least as likely to have drinking problems as their juniors. Yet an occupational health nurse recently told me that when she was interviewed for a job with a leading firm of solicitors it was made clear to her that health initiatives were to be targeted at secretaries and admin staff and that lawyers were above such matters. Workplace alcohol policies assume that line managers will need to take action against subordinates who have problems. The reverse may also be the case. Businesses that do have serious drug or alcohol problems at a senior level (such as those run by the late Robert Maxwell) are perhaps least likely to allow those problems to be investigated.

My own work within the IOP course indicated that some of the largest groups in the financial sector are content to leave the initiative on addressing alcohol problems to employment assistance programmes without developing their own alcohol policy. An EAP will often provide appropriate help for people who seek it, including evidence based solutions for problem drinking such as brief interventions and counselling. It may not, however, address the needs of those who do not seek help and are not encouraged by their colleagues to seek help. Nor will it usually provide for the more intensive treatment that may be required when people become alcohol dependent, which is in principle more likely to happen when their problems are not addressed at an earlier stage. The cost of treatment in the working environment can be met by private medical insurance when NHS provision is inadequate. Yet most PMI policies taken out by employers exclude cover for alcohol problems. This is not because insurance companies are unwilling to provide it to corporate customers, but because those customers are mostly unwilling to pay an extra 3% or so on the premium to secure the wider cover.

In commercial and financial environments researching business risks arising from alcohol and drug misuse requires a combination of professional disciplines. These include the ability to evaluate the benefit of addressing those risks as compared with other risks such as those arising from lack of skills, market forces and fraud. All of these risks may overlap to some extent.

A number of interesting papers on workplace alcohol policies were produced in the 1990s by, for instance, economist Melanie Powell. But interest in the topic seems to have waned since then and such research as has been published more recently usually focuses on safety critical workplaces and is often criticised for poor methodology.

Within the public sector the Boorman review recommends that, with a view to optimising patient care, “the NHS Operating Framework should clearly establish the requirement for staff health and well-being to be included in national and local governance frameworks to ensure proper board accountability for its implementation”. It is unlikely that this will ever be as significant a business priority (for “patient care” read “customer care”) in the private sector but it perhaps deserves to move a little up the list of priorities.