Professional report about an issue pertaining to business ethics or CSR - Essay Example

Professional report about an issue pertaining to business ethics or CSR Number: Identification of Ethical Issue While the use of alcohol and various drugs might be deemed as not having a profound direct impact on a person’s work socially, in the event that a person happens to go to work while they are still under the debilitating influence of either of these drugs, their overall work performance will be severely impaired a factor that might potentially lead them to take unnecessary risks or even put others at risk.

This can be judged to be especially so in the event that an employee’s job description requires them to exhibit relatively high levels of alertness and concentration. Other effects of alcohol on the workplace include tardiness, lower productivity, absenteeism, diminished job performance and high turn over (Rom and Markowitz 2007). The consumption and use of alcohol is found to be quite rampant in the United Kingdom although most of the people who consume alcohol happen to do so in moderation.

In 2003, a report issued by the Cabinet Office Strategy Unit suggested that approximately 6.4 million people in the UK happened to consume alcohol above the current recommended guidelines while 5.9 million people in the United Kingdom binge drink which means that they consume an average of about six or more units for women and 8 or more units for men (Winyard 2005). Alcohol misuse has been estimated to be costing the UK economy losses of up to £6.4 million every years. Ethical Theory and Application The effects of alcohol on the work place affect several ethical theories and key among them is the Virtue Ethics theory.

Virtue ethics tends to focus on emphasizing on an individual’s moral character or virtues. Alcohol in the work place can have the effect of causing the employers to face the risk of increased medical bills and compensations due to the dangers that alcoholic employees pose to their colleagues. Alcohol use also violates the virtue ethics theory tenet of honesty as reduced work performance by the employee as a result of the effects of alcohol can be deemed as dishonesty on their part (Winter 2012).

Possible Courses of Action that The Company can take to address the Issue It is vital for the service company to put in place various measures that will help it in effectively mitigating or even curbing the effects that alcohol has on its employees and work place. Establish a Workplace Alcohol Policy The organization should look into the establishment of an effective workplace alcohol policy that will serve to set various guidelines for both the company’s staff members and management on a wide range of various alcohol related issues including.

The policy should also be efficiently designed in a manner that it is seen to allow for various aids that will be offered to the organization’s employees to help them manage their alcohol dependence (TUC 2010). The work place policy should have set objectives that will aid the company in ensuring that: All the company’s staff members are adequately aware of what the organization considers to acceptable or not acceptable with regards to the use of alcohol. This might include considerations such as whether the company finds it to be acceptable for one to come to work while nursing the effects of a hangover or if at all it is acceptable for the company’s employees to drink alcoholic drinks at lunch (TUC 2010).

The range of various work related factors such as stress which might inadvertently be playing an increasing role towards the promotion of alcohol misuse are well addressed. This can be done by taking into consideration the cultures and drinking attitudes as well as recognizing the impact that might be caused by stressful periods (TUC 2010). The policy should be seen to encourage the staff members to seek appropriate aid in the event that they happen to be facing alcohol related problems in addition to its having various structures in place that adequately help it in effectively dealing with the various employee alcohol problems in the event that they arise.

Before any disciplinary actions are undertaken, the affected employees should be offered any necessary support that can be able to help them aptly deal with the issue of alcohol (TUC 2010). Testing Employees for Drugs and Alcohol Use in the Workplace Testing of a company’s employees for alcohol misuse is one of the effective deterrents that is currently being used by a minority of various organizations. In the event any of the company’s employees exhibits any suspicious inappropriate behavior or work performance issues, they should immediately be tested to establish whether their actions are as a result of either alcohol or drug use before the employee’s actions can result in further losses for the company (Cipd 2007).

In extreme cases, the company should also be able to perform various random alcohol testing on its employees. This should be done especially in the event that certain specific employees have returned to work after undergoing a drugs and alcohol rehabilitation program (Cipd 2007). Provision of Identification and Brief Advice (IBA) at the Workplace IBA is considered to be one of the most cost-effective alcohol behavior change interventions available. IBA makes use of a questionnaire to accurately identify the current levels of health risk that are as a result of an employee’s drinking behavior.

After completion of the form, a few minutes of brief and structured advice to the employee can cause them to significantly reduce their health risk. It has been seen that when most persons are given clear information on how their drinking is causing them to be at health risk, they immediately and voluntarily reduce their levels of alcohol drinking to levels that are considered be of minimal health risk to them (Bayley 2011). If the service company undertakes to effect these three measure, they will effectively work together to serve the company by ensuring that the company employs only non alcohol dependent employees on the basis of the drug tests results, while the already existing employees will be made aware of the company’s new alcohol policy while help will be provided to the already alcohol dependent employees courtesy of the company’s IBA program (Bayley 2011).

Reflection on the Possible Limitations of the Suggested Courses of Action Although the proposed courses of action can potentially immensely help the organization in effectively dealing with the alcohol problem, there are several limitations that might arise to challenge them. Adoption of the alcohol policy might be resisted by some of the organization’s older members who might not appreciate the importance of the new policy. This might especially be the case in the event that the organization’s current work culture happens to be lenient on the issue of alcohol in the work place.

The organization might have to conducted an employee education program to educate the old company employees on the need of the policy and help it gain importance. Performing drugs and alcohol tests on the employees might in addition to facing resistance (Berryman-Fink and Fink 1996), be easily tampered by the persons taking the tests presenting other people’s urine as their own. This may lead to flawed results, and special care ought to be taken to ensure that collection of test samples is conducted in a fashion that is seen not allow for any tampering of the samples.

The company might face increased costs in hiring a skilled counselor to provide the identification and brief advice services. To counter this increased cost, the company can opt to train one of its employees on how to offer the service and thereby effectively mitigate any added costs on its part. Bibliography cipd. 2007. Managing drug and alcohol misuse at work. Accessed on 14th March 2013 from: http://www.cipd.co.uk/NR/rdonlyres/0731B5C2-3AAA-4A40-B80D -25521BDBA23A/0/mandrgalcmisusesr.

PDF Winyard, R. 2005. Substance misuse in primary care: a multi-disciplinary approach. Oxford ; Seattle : Radcliffe Pub. TUC. 2010. Drugs and Alcohol in the Workplace. Accessed on 15th March 2013 from: http://www.tuc.org.uk/workplace/tuc-17993-f0.pdf. Bayley, M., et al., 2011.North London Alcohol Hub Identification and Brief Advice (IBA) workplace pilot research. Accessed on 14th March 2013 from: http://ranzetta.typepad.com/files/alcohol-iba-within-workplace-settings_middlesex -feasability-study-report-2011.

pdf Rom, N. W., and Markowitz S., 2007. Environmental and occupational medicine. Philadelphia : Wolters Kluwer/Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Winter, M. 2012. Rethinking virtue ethics. Dordrecht; New York : Springer. Berryman-Fink, C., and Fink, B. C., 1996. The managers desk reference. New York : AMACOM, American Management Association.