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Welcome to the July edition of the ‘SRA Screening Insights’ newsletter.
Message from the Editors:
Did you know?
The average worker spends over 90,000 hours working over their lifetime, so it’s no surprise that job satisfaction, or dissatisfaction plays a major role in people’s career choices.
Inside this Edition
- Drug Test Dishonesty – Drug test cheating soared last year, analysis shows.
- The Six-Month Itch – Why new hires are bolting earlier than ever before.
- Fight against Fentanyl – Feds Consider replacing MDMA from workplace drug testing.
Although the positive drug test rate dropped slightly for safety-sensitive roles, workers in these roles also had a marked increase in cheating attempts, Quest Diagnostics found.
The rate of substituted or invalid drug tests rose more than six-fold in 2023 versus the prior year in an analysis of 9.8 million anonymized workforce drug tests. The rate was the highest Quest has seen in 30 years of reporting.
“It isn’t clear why we’re seeing an increase in overall and marijuana drug positivity in office workers, but it isn’t a stretch that a combination of unprecedented stress and isolation during the pandemic with work-from-home policies during and post-pandemic may be contributing to greater drug use in employees in traditionally white-collar fields,” Sam Sphar of Quest Diagnostics’ said in a statement.
A BambooHR survey shed light on a troubling trend that nearly one-third of new hires are quitting within their first six months.
This high turnover rate is largely attributed to a sense of being undervalued & a bad candidate experience. Companies that neglect comprehensive onboarding may set new hires up for failure, resulting in job dissatisfaction and higher turnover.
In a separate study, it was noted that 90% of employees are open to new jobs even when there were not actively looking for one. So, an organization needs to ensure their recruitment and workforce management are top-notch.
To address high turnover rates, businesses are encouraged to adopt robust onboarding practices and foster a culture of appreciation and support early in the employee lifecycle. By taking these steps, companies can improve employee retention and build a more stable workforce.
Federal authorities are contemplating significant changes to workplace drug testing policies, which could lead to MDMA (commonly known as ecstasy) being removed from mandatory drug screenings. This potential shift comes as part of a broader review of drug testing practices and the alarming rise of fentanyl usage across the nation.
Fentanyl was the third most frequently identified drug of all substances reported by forensic laboratories, according to a 2022 National Forensic Laboratory Information System report cited by SAMHSA, accounting for 13.81 percent of all drug positives.
Both MDMA and the related substance MDA, which the government would also remove from inclusion in required drug tests under the proposed changes, were less common in tests than PCP, which was also considered for removal from the testing panel but for now will remain.
If adopted, these adjustments could reshape how businesses handle drug use and substance-related issues among employees.
