Types of Drug Testing in the Workplace
By Terry Elvin
The recently published article “Types of Drug Testing in the Workplace” is an interesting read. As a comparatively new entrant in the workplace drug testing market, it was great to see Intelligent Fingerprinting featured in the piece – and our innovative testing approach compared against legacy urine, hair, oral fluid and blood tests.
The author and editor, Lisa Baker, stated in her analysis that fingerprint drug testing was more expensive than all of the other tests. That’s not actually the case, and it’s worth explaining why.
Fingerprint drug testing enables companies to carry out their drug testing much more efficiently than traditional methods. Compared to urine and oral fluid tests, for example, the end-to-end time required to set-up and administer drug testing is minimal. In fact, some of our clients are finding that fingerprint drug testing is actually more cost-effective than other methods that they used previously.
With the Intelligent Fingerprinting test, we’re able to collect samples and consistently provide a result within ten minutes. It’s a highly predictable process, and not subject to the potential delays that other testing approaches can suffer – such as ‘shy bladder’ or ‘dry mouth’, for example. Anyone involved with workplace testing will be all too familiar with these delays, and understand just how quickly they can disrupt carefully planned timetables for random employee testing. This, of course, will also have a knock-on impact on workplace productivity and wider operations across the business.
This simply isn’t the case with Intelligent Fingerprinting, where the time to supply a sample is the same for each test. In addition, we’ve been repeatedly told from experienced workplace testers about the time and effort they save by not having to set-up sample collection facilities – particularly those individuals that were previously using the urine method and were responsible for screening off dedicated toilet blocks, adding blue dye to the bowls and monitoring sample collection. The Intelligent Fingerprinting system doesn’t require any specialist facilities and is completely portable enabling samples to be collected from almost anywhere – such as the transport / warehouse office when an employee starts their shift. All of these factors make Intelligent Fingerprinting an ideal in-house drug testing solution – enabling businesses to bring a previously outsourced business function in-house. This of course removes the potential waiting for third party testers to attend, along with all of the associated call-out costs.
In conclusion, fingerprint-based testing is a non-invasive, hygienic and dignified test that’s focused particularly on ‘fitness for duty’ with its shorter window of detection. This enables organisations to drive the deterrent effect that their policies are designed to deliver. But don’t just take my word for it. Instead find out what some of our customers have been saying about the end-to-end benefits that they gain from adopting the fingerprint testing approach or contact me for a demo to see the system in action for yourself – [email protected]
