Employment Law SOS: alcohol misuse

It is important to note that the zero-tolerance policy relates to alcohol on site and the employer's suspicions relate to off-site drinking. Therefore, the initial step should be to investigate the suspicions further before taking any definite action, whether disciplinary or otherwise. It is likely to be unreasonable for an employer to take disciplinary action against an employee for consuming alcohol off site/outside of work time if this is not in breach of company policy and there's no clear evidence that it has adversely affected his performance at work in any way. However, if following investigation it appears that the employee is in breach of company policy and/or his drinking is affecting his work, or is becoming more conspicuous, then the employer may decide to treat this as a misconduct issue and initiate the formal disciplinary process. Alternatively, and at least initially, you may choose to approach this in a more sensitive manner and speak with the employee on an informal basis about the concerns over his drinking and the subsequent effect on his work and health to determine whether it would be appropriate to offer specialist support in respect of any alcohol dependency issues that he may have. The offer of such support is likely to be more appropriate where there are serious concerns over the extent of an employee's problem with alcohol and its impact rather than for a one-off incident of alcohol misconduct. Larger organisations are likely to be expected to offer a greater degree of specialist support in such circumstances, given their greater resources.