Almost every industry requires potential and existing employees to undergo alcohol testing in order to acquire or maintain a position, especially in the transportation industry where the potential for accidents and injuries is high and can involve pedestrians or other motorists. Alcohol has been proven to directly cause nearly 100,000 deaths each year and leads to countless other accidents and injuries. It is in every company’s best interest to carefully regulate the use of alcohol among its applicants and employees in order to protect themselves and everyone else on the road.
Every transportation company must provide extensive alcohol testing to ensure that company rules, Department of Transportation regulations, and national laws are followed. The problem is that there are a huge number of documents, forms, and manuals required in order to properly perform the tests and document their results. Keeping track of the plethora of documents requires a dedicated department for large companies, and at least a couple of data entry and management positions in small companies, dramatically increasing expenses for any sized business. This problem is further exacerbated when storage is taken into consideration. Keeping every document, contract, and form for a company’s alcohol testing records can require several file cabinets for even the smallest companies and entire facilities or warehouses for the largest corporations. These seemingly necessary expenses will only serve to hurt a company’s bottom line. Luckily, here at eFileCabinet we provide solutions for digitally storing, organizing, and transferring alcohol testing documents for businesses of all sizes. But in order to understand why that capability is beneficial, it is necessary to learn what types of forms, files, and manuals a transportation company must deal with.
Courses, Certifications, and Training
You can’t jump into on-site alcohol testing without proper training and certification. In order to legally perform tests for your company you are going to need to be certified. And as you might imagine, there are a number of documents and forms that correspond to your certification. The Department of Transportation provides two different certifications for Breath Alcohol Technicians (BAT) and Screen Testing Technicians (STT). There are training manuals and informational packets published by the Department of Transportation that cover all of the procedures and processes related to alcohol and drug tests (as well as reference charts to understand the results). These manuals are absolutely necessary for every employer to understand and review on a regular basis, which means ease of access is a high priority. When stored physically, searching for an answer to a specific training question will involve rummaging through file after file to find the right manual, then hunting through each page to find what is needed—an incredibly time consuming task.
Record Keeping
It’s not enough to simply test employees for alcohol; employers are required to keep a number of documents that show both the process and results of all alcohol and drug tests for each employee in a company. Here are just a few of the records you will need to have on file:
- Test results
- Testing process administration
- Return-to-duty process administration
- Employee training
- Supervisor training
- Annual reports of testing (in some cases)
All of these documents are required to be kept in a secure location away from employee access. As mentioned earlier, keeping all of the above documents in filing cabinets will require significant real estate, which is one of the primary reasons digital transportation document management services will improve efficiency and reduce overhead costs. Further, it is much easier for someone to break into a filing cabinet than it is to hack into secure transportation document management software.
Product Lists, Product Manuals, and Instructions
Specific equipment is required in order to perform drug and alcohol testing. Depending on the tests being performed, you can expect to use a number of tools including:
- Urine testing kits
- Prescription drug testing kits
- Breathalyzers
- Blood testing kits
- Many more
Each tool or device will come with a variety of training manuals, parts lists, order forms (for replacements), and instructions. Because the devices must be used or stored properly, it’s essential that test administrators are familiar with each device or test. And in order to do that, each company will need to keep all of the related forms and manuals on hand in an easily accessible location for training and review.
Frequent Testing; Immediate Results
The Department of Transportation will require an individual to be tested for drugs and alcohol under the following circumstance:
- When an applicant is being considered for a position with the company
- After an accident (when the accident is defined by the DOT)
- Before an individual returns to work after an extended absence (especially after a workplace alcohol violation)
- At random times throughout the year
In all of these situations it is important to have immediate access to all files relating to an employee’s employment record and past tests. By misplacing an employee’s previous alcohol test records or failing to provide them after an accident is filed can cost your company thousands of dollars in legal fees and lawsuits. By failing to promptly provide test results for a returning employee you also run the risk of delaying their return to work which can cost them money and potentially lead a quality employee to quit.
Everything Where You Need It
Alcohol testing forms are sensitive documents that must be kept safe from the public and employees alike; they must also be available to review at a moment’s notice. From training manuals to employee records, keeping everything in filing cabinets is hardly efficient or safe. Besides being time-consuming to use, physical documents are also susceptible to vandalism, theft, fire (and other natural disasters), and being misplaced.
At eFileCabinet, we know how important it is to have immediate access to your company’s alcohol testing documents, which is why we provide a comprehensive transportation document management service. Our service will keep all of your forms digitally organized and ready to be accessed whenever you need them. Besides that, you won’t need to be at a central workstation in order to access them, as the technology will allow you to use any mobile devices your company is already using. Best of all, our document management service is safe and secure from any threats, both physical and digital. Whether Mother Nature wreaks havoc in the office or viruses sweep through your network, our secure cloud based storage solutions will make it possible to retrieve any drug and alcohol testing documents whenever and wherever you need them.