Alcohol and other drugs
Alcohol and other drugs, including prescription medication, can affect a person’s health and ability to work safely.
What are the risks of alcohol and other drugs at work?
Impairment from alcohol and other drugs can be dangerous especially for people who operate or work around plant and machinery, or have a job that requires intense concentration and responsible decision making.
Using alcohol and other drugs during or outside work hours can lead to:
- workplace injuries, or damage to property, plant or equipment
- poor health and increased sick leave
- lost time and reduced productivity
- poor workplace relationships
- damage to a business’s reputation
- An increase in workplace injuries
- An increase in ‘near miss’ incidents
- Slower reaction times, poor coordination and poor concentration
- A drop in performance – work not up to the usual standard
- Regularly arriving late for work or calling in sick
- Hangovers – including headaches, shaking, vomiting and nausea
- Increased interpersonal problems
- Drowsiness and falling asleep at work
- Sudden violent or aggressive behaviour
Read more about the impact of drugs and alcohol at work.
How do I manage the risks?
There are many ways to manage alcohol and other drugs at work. Workers and management should work together to reduce the risks associated with alcohol and other drugs at work. View the Framework for alcohol and drug management in the workplace for more information. There are tools and resources available to help manage work health and chronic disease hazards and create a healthier and safer place of work.
For workers
As a worker, you should:
- talk to your manager, supervisor or health and safety representative if you think you or one of your co-workers are impaired by alcohol or other drugs, including prescription medication, while at work
- not be under the influence of alcohol or other drugs, or use alcohol or other drugs, while at work
- not go to work if you’re still under the influence of alcohol or other drugs
- know and follow your workplace's drug and alcohol or health and safety policy
- report any illegal drug activity to your employer.
If you’re taking prescribed medication, you need to check if it could affect your ability to do your work safely. If so, tell your manager or employer. They may give you other duties while you’re taking the medication.
For businesses
A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) has a duty of care to workers. The best way to provide this is to implement good work design principles to help reduce the risks associated with alcohol and other drugs at work. Good work design considers the work, the physical work environment and the workers.
The work;
- How work is performed, including the physical, mental and emotional demands of the tasks and activities.
- The task duration, frequency, and complexity.
- The context and systems of work.
The physical working environment
- The vehicles, buildings, structures and environment where work is undertaken.
The workers
- Physical, emotional, and psychological capacities as well as needs and experience.
You can introduce work health, safety and wellbeing interventions into your workplace and may also consider including alcohol and other drugs as part of a broader work health, safety and wellbeing policy (DOCX, 0.43 MB). Here’s a link to a generic wellbeing policy template for your business to modify (DOCX, 0.43 MB).
You can also read:
- Framework for alcohol and drug management in the workplace
- Guide for developing a workplace alcohol and other drugs policy
- Work health and wellbeing interventions tool (PDF, 0.25 MB)
Four steps to managing the risk of sedentary work
The four-step risk management process below will help you identify the risks of alcohol and drug use and ways to control the risk. You can also use the practical advice in the How to manage work health and safety risks Code of Practice 2021 (PDF, 0.65 MB).
Look at information from a range of sources.
Assess your workplace
Use a validated assessment tool such as the Healthy workplace audit tool to gain a better understanding of what you already have in your workplace and where they may be some gaps.
Engage with workers to get their ideas about:
- work or lifestyle factors that might contribute to harmful use of alcohol or other drugs
- how being under the influence of alcohol and drugs creates risks in the workplace.
Once you’ve identified the risks, assess how likely they are to happen and what the consequences would be. A risk assessment helps you determine:
- how severe a risk is
- if existing control measures are effective
- what other action you should take to control the risk
- how urgently you need to act.
You can use this risk assessment template (DOCX, 0.02 MB) to guide you and record your assessments.
The Framework for alcohol and drug management and How to manage work health and safety risks Code of Practice 2021 (PDF, 0.65 MB) have more advice on risk assessments.
Controlling the risks of alcohol and other drugs in your workplace can be complex. Using good work design principles outlined in the healthy workplace toolkit is an effective way to plan, implement and evaluate the work health, safety and wellbeing risks associated with alcohol and other drugs.
You should consider if the risk can be eliminated first, if it cannot be eliminated, then consider how the risk can be minimised. See How to manage work health and safety risks Code of Practice 2021 (PDF, 0.65 MB).
You can also read:
- Framework for alcohol and drug management in the workplace
- Guide for developing a workplace alcohol and other drugs policy
- Work health and wellbeing interventions tool (PDF, 0.25 MB)
- Reduce the health risks from alcohol
- Alcohol: guidelines to reduce your risk and find support
- Drug use: support and treatment
- I think I drink too much alcohol – what do I do?
- Addiction recovery
Managing hazards and the associated risks is an ongoing process. You should regularly review your control measures. Work health and safety laws require you to review controls in the following situations:
- if a control measure isn’t working
- before a change at the workplace that’s likely to create a new health and safety risk
- if a new hazard or risk is identified
- if the results of consultation show a review is necessary
- if a health and safety representative requests a review.
Standards and compliance
Codes of practice
- How to manage work health and safety risks Code of Practice 2021 (PDF, 0.65 MB)
- Work health and safety consultation, co-operation and co-ordination Code of Practice 2021 (PDF, 0.54 MB)
Related links
- Work health and wellbeing toolkit — use the work health and wellbeing toolkit to embed health and wellbeing into your business systems.
- Work health and wellbeing online learning course – Interactive course to embed work health and wellbeing into your business.
- Mentally healthy workplaces toolkit — practical tools and resources to create and maintain mentally healthy workplaces
- Injury Prevention and Management (IPaM) program —free safety advice to Queensland employers
- Safety fundamentals toolkit — incorporate alcohol and other drugs-risk management in a broader safety management system
- Alcohol and Drug Foundation — workplace information, resources and support services
- Alcohol, smoking and drugs — Queensland government information on available support
- National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction — resources and strategies to minimise alcohol and other drugs-related risks to workplace safety, productivity and worker wellbeing.