The Troubled Employee Approach

Abstract

Because of resistance by some supervisors and problem-drinking employees to utilising programmes identified with the labels of alcoholism or problem drinking, the Occupational Programs Branch of the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism began in 1972 to recommend the trial of a troubled-employee approach under which a few companies had undertaken a less direct procedure for dealing with problem drinkers. Supervisors are trained to identify impaired job performances as manifest in substandard work and excessive or patterned absence — without pinpointing the cause or relating it to possible alcohol use. Their training may include a background review of some features of problem drinking and other problems, but their responsibility is limited to observation and formal documentation of impaired performance — not diagnosis.

Reprinted, with permission, from Alcohol and Health: New Knowledge, U.S. D.H.E.W. 131 (1974)