As the drug abuse and alcohol consumption rates continue to increase around the world, the need for employee drug testing is increasing. Employee drug testing involves many types such as pre-employment drug testing, random drug testing, post-accident drug testing, and follow-up drug testing. Now let us know something about random drug testing.
Random drug testing is a type of drug testing that is performed randomly on selected candidates. This is the most effective drug testing formats as the random nature makes it hard to cheat. Many corporations, military departments, prisons, government agencies, police and fire departments and other rehabilitation centers conduct random drug testing.
In random drug testing, the person is can not know when he or she could be tested. Hence they cannot prepare for passing the test. So when compared to scheduled tests, random tests help in increasing the probability of drug detection among employees. Also the other reason for conducting random tests is cost of testing. It is easy, cheap, and quick method of performing drug tests. Hence the random drug tests are helpful in cutting down testing expenses by affecting less people.
Ronald Reagan had signed an executive order about drug-free federal workplace in 1986. From then onwards, random drug testing at workplace became legal. Many factors affect the process of workplace random drug testing. Some of them are the type and nature of workplace; nature of workforce; and the rules and regulations laid down by the company. A urinalysis test is the most common method used by the employers for random drug testing.