Alcohol Abuse Advice

Easy Online DOT Training for Drug and Alcohol Education

Any online DOT training that is provided by your company should assist you in the goal of reaching every supervisor needing drug and alcohol education. You have already guessed that you must do this over the web, but you want it simple. Simple, because your busy. So let’s turn to how easy this can be because it is also less expensive.

The first thing you need to know is that there are two ways to offer online DOT training to supervisors. The first is contracting with a provider who will bill you for a license to access their online training. That’s ouch #1. Then  you may pay user fees. That’s ouch #2. And of course if you get rid of your subscription, you’re disconnected. Ouch #3.

So, online DOT training needs a better method. This choice is “platform independent software” for upload to your website. That’s the secret. You own it. You control it. You keep it. Your supervisors access it, and if needed you purchase an update in the future for a small fee. Done. Everything is in software including text, sounds, images, your drug and alcohol policy, referral forms, test questions, feedback on wrong answers, and Certificate of Completion with score and person’s name. Sound impossible? Not at all. And it is less expensive.

There are many choices for online DOT training. If you go to YouTube.com, and google “online reasonable suspicion training” you will find a dozen choices.

AMPLE PRINTABLE HANDOUTS

Ensure that your online DOT training program has pop-up printable handouts. Your supervisors will be in the field and you can’t hand them or mail them the handouts, so make sure PDFs are embedded in the course. Providers offer this. Also, without charging you an arm and a leg, make sure the online training software will allow you to insert your own handouts like your policy and supervisor referral forms.

DEAL WITH THE MYTHS

Ensure that the online DOT training of your supervisors deals with common myths regarding alcoholism and drug addiction. These myths are so rampant in society that even a hint of their being challenged drives many people to fits rage. This is especially true of family members of alcoholics–now supervisors in your company– who have enabled for years and will do so in your workplace with employees they supervise.

For example. Many people use the term “Functional Alcoholism”. This term is a powerful example of enabling and it only means one thing: “The drinking problem of the alcoholic does not bother me.”

If the online DOT Training in Reasonable Suspicion does not address these myths, it is too superficial. You want supervisors finishing a web course and saying to themselves, “WOW! I never thought about that!” Get that reaction, and you have motivated supervisors who will take the next step and behave differently to protect your company. Other myths that a web course should address include understanding drug tolerance, definition of denial, enabling behavior, how addicts think and survive their disease to continue drinking, cognitive distortions, manipulation, and classic excuses that emerge when employees are confronted.

4. SOUND-BASED.

Ensure that your online DOT training course has sound. Don’t let it be simple text. Your supervisors will fall asleep, out of their desks, and onto the floor. If you have a training program that uses different voices to break things up a bit, so much the better. The web course should be “click through” format from frame to frame so images can be viewed along with the voice that describes what the supervisor is seeing.

5. SCORED TEST QUESTIONS

Ensure that your online DOT training program has enough test questions about alcohol and drug abuse that your compliance effort has a strong retention factor. This is only possible with test questions that supervisors self-score, and then rescore so they get 100%. This also, if your lucky, can get you a discount off of your workers’ compensation premiums. And you should ask for it and kick the insurance company until they give it to you. After all you are now a safer risk.

6. TEST QUESTIONS ON HANDOUTS

Ensure that there is a test question on each of the handouts from the course. This will help ensure that supervisors read the handouts in the online DOT training when they pop-up. Pretty simple, but necessary.

7. EDUCATION ON MANIPULATION AND VERBAL EXCUSE TRAPS

Ensure that the online DOT training includes excuses and communication traps that supervisors will face with their employees. They must be given awareness for how employees avoid tests.

Many courses or handouts exist on what employees will do to thwart a test, but guess what, their first step is to avoid the test in the first place. To do that, they rely upon extraordinary and seductive verbal debate and rationales to get the supervisor to back off.

Some employees will even confess to using drugs or alcohol to avoid test. Why? They do this because they know there is no way out, and their only hope at that point is to confess their alcohol or drug problem, elicit sympathy from the supervisor, and convince the supervisor they are in treatment or just got started in treatment, so in fact, there is no need for a test. Believe it or not it works for some employees because the supervisor does not need to be the bad guy.