In this video of the NDS Video Blog series, Joe Reilly, President of NDS, sits down for a chat with Giles Malone of Space Coast Daily TV.
What drug testing locations are available for Brevard-based businesses?
What are the components that make up a great drug free workplace program?
How can drug testing save Brevard County businesses money on their Florida Workers Comp Insurance?
Joe and Giles discuss these and many more questions in today’s video.
A BIG THANKS to Giles and the Space Coast Daily TV team for coming out to National Drug Screening (NDS) headquarters and spending time with us and allowing us to feature their video interview with Joe on our NDS YouTube Channel.
About Tom Fulmer and National Drug Screening, Inc.
Giles Malone: Joe Reilly, a real leader here on the Space Coast, a business leader who’s developed his company into a national leader, doing business all across the country. He wants to help you here on the Space Coast.
Well, it takes a certain type of person to be an entrepreneur and to really build their own business. And we’re sitting now with Joe, the President of National Drug Screening. He’s built this company from the ground up and takes an immense amount of pride in what he’s done. And it’s a real success story.
Joe, many congratulations for an incredible year, 2021. You posted an outstanding blog article on – National Drug Screening 2021 Year In Review
Joe Reilly: Thank you Giles. It’s good to be here with Space Coast Daily. And, yea we just finished up 2021 with a, a great year providing drug and alcohol testing services for both employers and for individuals.
Giles Malone: Yeah, well, in the middle of a pandemic National Drug Screening expands 24, 26%. How’d you do that?
Joe Reilly: Well, unfortunately, one of the things that happens in the middle of a pandemic is more people use illicit drugs. And so more employers are interested in making sure that they’re hiring drug-free employees. And we help them with that.
Giles Malone: Yeah. Yeah. I know you do an incredible amount of business nationwide, helping people and employers all over the country, but you want to help people more and more on the Space Coast for smaller, medium sized businesses.
Can you sort of explain, I’m a former business owner myself, really the cost benefit versus the costs of not putting a drug-free workplace in, in these days?
Drug Free Workplace Programs for Brevard County Businesses
Joe Reilly: Absolutely. So, you know, setting up a drug-free workplace is not really all that expensive. You need to have a drug-free workplace policy and many companies already have that.
So that would be like the initial startup expense. If you don’t have one, we can write a drug-free workplace policy for a business, and we’re talking, you know, $300-400 to get that done. Moving forward, then you’re going to be doing drug testing. You’re going to do drug testing when you hire people, maybe post accident, reasonable suspicion, and maybe random testing.
So the average cost of a drug test right now, locally here on the Space Coast for Brevard county, it’s about $59 for a 5 panel drug test, 10 panel drug test, very reasonable. And you know, one of the, the biggest key factors for businesses to understand is that in Florida, state law provides that if you implement a comprehensive drug free workplace program, the state mandates that workers’ comp insurance give you a 5% discount.
Giles Malone: That’s a big savings. So, you know, the pier we’ve talked about the pier many times, you know, we, we actually were kind of forced into that by a workers’ comp company, said, you know, you need to do this cause you’re, you’re going to save, I think it was 6/7% back then, but it was a big savings. But they were sticklers. Absolute sticklers on making sure that everyone was drug tested. But after we did it, we were so glad we did.
Joe Reilly: Yeah. Well, that’s one of the things about drug-free workplace programs. You can get a benefit, but in many cases you have to do it. So sometimes workers’ comp will look at a business’s loss history and say, well, if you want us to write your insurance, you’ve got to do this, this, this, and implement a drug testing program.
So sometimes they put the pressure on you, like, like you mentioned.
Giles Malone: Yeah. Yeah. Is it possible to pass the cost of a drug test onto the applicant?
Joe Reilly: No. So when you require an applicant to, do some type of testing, and that’s required to be employed, there, the employer has to pay for it.
Giles Malone: Okay. So you can’t say ‘if you get hired, we’re going to take it out of your first paycheck’. That’s also a no, no.
Joe Reilly: No, not for drug testing, no.
Can Drug Testing Save Money?
Giles Malone: But on, on the, on the, actual positive side, a drug-free workplace, in your experience, let’s say it’s a, a, a $5 million a year company in revenue, once they implement the drug free workplace, how much they actually going to save in hiring costs, retention costs.
Joe Reilly: Sure, sure. So, you know, if you do the 5% discount on workers’ comp, that may not be a huge savings, but when you factor in turnover, because people that use drugs turnover, you factor in productivity because people that use drugs are less productive, people being late for work, people using more health insurance because if they’re using illicit drugs, they may have more health problems.
So the savings has been calculated many times to be 2, 3, 4 times more than what the drug testing costs.
If I Drug Test, I Will Lose All My Employees
Giles Malone: Hmm. Well. You know, and for those employers out there who are struggling to find help, they are short cooks, they’re short mechanics, they’re short builders, for them to say, ‘well, geez, if I implement this drug-free policy, I’ve never had that before, it’s going to be even more difficult to find and keep employees’, what’s the answer to that?
Joe Reilly: Yeah. So there’s, there’s two answers to that. You know,their response is, ‘well, if I drug test people, I won’t have any employees’. There’s actually three answers. One you’ll still have employees, not everybody uses drugs. Okay. Two, you may, you may want to bite the bullet because maybe you don’t want people there that are using illicit drugs. They’re going to be less productive. They’re going to cause problems in the workplace. And one incident can cause a catastrophe. Now the third answer is, is kind of new on the horizon, you know, if they really want to, if they want to eliminate marijuana, because that’s kind of their biggest problem, they can take marijuana off the drug test panel. But why not still test for cocaine, and why not still test for heroin? Are you going to give those people a pass?
DOT Required Drug Testing
Giles Malone: Drivers of, heavy vehicles, all sorts of vehicles on the roads today, what are their requirements? You know, your CDL or something like that?
Joe Reilly: That’s a great question. So those folks that are driving commercial motor vehicles with a CDL license, and they’re driving vehicles over 26,000 pounds, your large tractor trailers, they are required by the United States Department Of Transportation to have drug testing, and they have to test for marijuana. Those are strict requirements. And that includes the owner operator, the one single guy was one truck it’s just him, or that includes, you know, JB Hunt with, 90,000 truck drivers. We have a great section on our website for drug testing for trucking companies – 8 Steps To DOT Drug Testing Compliance For Trucking Companies
Giles Malone: Yeah. we cover an incredible amount of traffic accidents on Space Coast Daily. There was one, a couple of days ago up there on 95 where he flipped over his semi and then refused medical help, going to the hospital in an ambulance, for obviously reasons relating to his condition. What’s he looking at? Should he be charged? And he has that, and he’s caused this incredible damage and catastrophe, what are the penalties in today’s world for that?
Joe Reilly: There’s a lot to that, and I’m not law enforcement, I’m not the, the DA, but on, on the drug testing side, there’s a major accident, his employer is going to require him to go for a drug test and an alcohol test, after that accident. And if he refused medical treatment, I bet he also refused the drug test. That takes him out of the driving position. He’s prohibited. He goes into a prohibited status and he has to go through a rehabilitation program to get out of the prohibited status.
What’s Ahead for the Drug Testing Industry?
Giles Malone: What’s the future of National Drug Screening and other testing companies? Where do you see, where do you see it going 5, 10 years from now? Where are we going to be with this?
Joe Reilly: Yeah. So, you know, depending on how the laws evolve in this country, and more particularly Federal law with regard to marijuana, we could potentially see marijuana drug testing go away. But we’re still going to see cocaine, heroin, other illicit drugs. We’re still going to see, I mean, hopefully substance abuse declines. In the last couple of years, it’s increased. And with the pandemic, COVID-19, people are isolated, people are depressed, people are at home. We’ve seen more alcohol abuse, and we’ve seen more drug abuse. Now, the evolution of drug testing is, one of the things that’s coming on the horizon more and more, is oral fluid drug testing.
And that’s a, a test that the employer can actually do themselves. They collect some saliva, on what I call a sponge on a stick, and they ship it out overnight mail to the lab, and then they get a result. It’s a perfect solution for a business, let’s say, that operates 24 7 and they have somebody that’s reasonably suspected of using or someone who has an accident, cause you’re not going to find a facility at two o’clock in the morning to do a drug test. Oral fluid drug testing is accurate and easy to implement.
Giles Malone: You know, you see it on the Jerry Springer show, you know, the paternity suits. Right? Do you offer the paternity testing, and how does that work?
Joe Reilly: Yeah, we have it available. We don’t really market it heavily. Occasionally we get a call for that. But typically how it works is, you got the mother, the father, the child, you get a sample, a saliva sample from all of them, it all goes to a lab and then it gets matched up and it comes back with, 99% that you’re the father or 99% that you’re not the father.
Giles Malone: Okay, as far as small businesses and medium sized businesses in the county, can you give me sort of a general idea on a timeframe to set up a drug-free workplace? And the initial consult with you or one of your team members here, how does that work, if I want to just find out more information and get a sort of proposal from you?
Joe Reilly: Yeah. Yeah, you can, you can call our office or you can go on our website, www.nationaldrugscreening.com. You can fill out a contact form. You can call our office. I’m sure you can show the number on the screen. We do a quick consult, we ask some questions, we send out a proposal, the company can review it, you know, very low cost. Once we get it back, we set it up in five to seven days, but we can do testing immediately. So if someone says, yeah, I want to do this, I want to put this program together, but I’m hiring somebody today. Well, we can get them tested today. And we can provide facilities here in Brevard county on the Space Coast. We’re looking for new small business, medium-sized business customers. We have facilities from Titusville to Palm bay, where we can get somebody in, in a local area for a drug test.
More on Drug Free Workplace Programs and the Five Components
Giles Malone: Joe Reilly, a real leader here on the Space Coast, a business leader who’s developed his company into a national leader, doing business all across the country, and he wants to help you here on the Space Coast. If you’re a small business owner, a medium sized business owner, give Joe a call, or Tom here, and they’ll be happy to sit down with you and give you some advice. Joe, closing words from you, congratulations again, on a great year. That’s a real accomplishment, in this economy and, going forward. What message do you have for the Space Coast?
Joe Reilly: Yeah, so the concept of a drug-free workplace is not just drug testing, first of all. Real quick, there’s five components.
There’s a drug-free workplace policy. That’s educating employees on the harmful effects of drugs.
There’s supervisor training to help supervisors recognize signs of impairment.
And there’s, employee assistance programs.
And then there’s also drug testing.
At National Drug Screening we offer a full schedule of training programs for drug free workplace programs.
But the key thing to remember is that a drug testing program for an employer is a safety program. Less accidents, save money, less worker’s comp claims, better productivity.
Giles Malone: Yea, and good for morale. For Joe Reilly, I’m Giles Malone for Space Coast Daily. If you need a drug test, any sort of testing, call the folks at National Drug Screening. They’ll be happy to sit down and chat with you over the telephone. Joe, thank you so much once again, and, many congratulations on this expansion. Call 866-843-4545 for assistance. Check out the National Drug Screening Blog Page for hundreds of articles on all things drug testing.
Joe Reilly: Thank you. And it’s great to be here with Space Coast Daily.
Giles Malone: Thank you, sir.
Learn More About Drug Testing for Brevard County Businesses
Immediate Drug Testing Available
