First, I’d like to know how much taxpayers’ money was spent on a research report that concludes many Australian workers enjoy a drink with their colleagues and occasionally push the boat out too far.
But the report, commissioned by the federal Department of Health and Ageing, also suggests bosses could start pushing Australians to cut back on their drinking. Let’s translate one of the key parts:
“Workplace interventions (bosses, workmates or HR pulling up staff on drinking habits) are likely to be cost effective (cheap) and efficacious (fancy word for effective). Occupational health and safety and industrial relations frameworks exist (there are existing laws and regulations) that can incorporate alcohol-related issues (under which you could just slip in a new anti-booze regime).”
It identifies the workplace as an “alcohol harm-intervention setting”. Translation: an environment in which you could exert a powerful influence over people’s drinking decisions. As the report said, in another I-can’t-believe-they-pay-someone-to-come-up-with-this-stuff passage, employers “have substantial influence over employees’ work-related behaviours”.
Indeed. Threatening to sack someone would make them think twice about anything a boss wanted to target, including eating cornflakes for breakfast.
The research, from the National Centre for Education and Training on Addiction, does provides a compelling list of the problems caused by alcohol in the workplace. The cost of alcohol related sickies, hangover-powered go-slows, staff turnover and early retirement comes out at $5.6 billion a year. In a stunning finding, it says one in six workers reported physical abuse at work by a drunk or stoned colleague, according to The Australian’s account of the report this morning.
Now traipsing into the office after downing a bottle of red at lunch and threatening or – as appears to be extraordinarily common – physically abusing someone is appalling behaviour that most people would agree deserves some sharp discipline. And it’s common sense that controlling alcohol intake is essential for some jobs – bus and train drivers, pilots, or anyone operating machinery, including dental drills or heart monitors.
But the report also highlights “regular ‘end of the day’ drinking rituals” – beer o’clock – as a problem, saying even people who never drank could be pressured into drinking in order to fit in with their work culture and get along with their colleagues.
It adds that “improvements to an individual worker’s consumption patterns would positively impact on their immediate family and the wider community”.
As shown by the litany of alcohol-related problems identified by this report, there’s no doubt that drinking causes all sorts of problems in workplaces. If you can’t do your job or are bullying people on account of your lifestyle choices then your boss has a problem as much as you do.
But at the heart of aspects of this report are laughable implications that workers who go for a beer with their mates are not only potentially bad employees but also victims of some sort of insidious social conspiracy.
If you ask me, if there is any conspiracy it’s not on the part of workers nipping into the bar after work, but in the seemingly growing interest of government and researchers in demonising people who enjoy a beer.
It raises a serious question though. More flexible working conditions, teleworking, and an emphasis on “work-life balance” have been a boon for employees in recent years, reducing the burden people’s jobs and freeing them up to have more personal time.
Looking at using the workplace to actively reduce alcohol consumption is the start of a wider conversation. What happens when the boss seeks “life-work balance” in return, and wants to influence how personal time is used? How much can employers reasonably expect from their people when it comes to personal decisions?
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@ToryShepherd I hope that's in your piece tomorrow. Also - are you coming over this week or laaaaaater?
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