BWC Drug-Free Safety Program
Overview
DFSP offers a premium discount to eligible employers for implementing a loss-prevention strategy addressing workplace use and misuse of alcohol and other drugs, including prescription, over-the-counter, and illegal drug abuse within the context of a holistic safety program. DFSP is designed to more effectively prevent injuries and illness by integrating drug free into each company’s comprehensive safety management system. The application deadline is the last business day of April for the July 1 program year and the last business day in October for the January 1 program year.

DFSP is a voluntary program that encourages employers to detect and deter substance use and misuse, and take appropriate corrective action within the context of addressing overall workplace safety. The most obvious change from DFWP and DF-EZ to DFSP is the emphasis on tailored approaches to loss prevention and risk management. This includes conducting a safety review, providing accident-analysis training for supervisors, submitting accident reports and designing a safety action plan to improve the company’s safety systems.

For more information, please click on the titles below:

Eligibility/Program Requirements

Safety Processes

While DFSP is a safety program that focuses on alcohol and other drug use that can compromise workplace safety, it's very important that organizations take a broader view of safety management. Employers must develop safety and health processes that are customized to their unique operations. Safety needs to be integrated with all aspects of the business operations, including production, quality and service delivery.

Top management must demonstrate a commitment to safety as a core value. Employees must be actively involved in the safety process and take personal responsibility for their own safety. When an accident occurs, line supervision should identify and analyze the root causes of the accident and make the necessary changes that will systematically eliminate the potential for a recurrence. Regulatory compliance is important, but compliance alone is not sufficient to ensure a safe, healthy and injury-free work environment.

A comprehensive approach to safety management includes but is not limited to: analyzing and minimizing risk factors within the workplace; ensuring the safety of all equipment; training employees to perform their jobs safely; developing and enforcing work rules that support safety; accountability for supervisors to address safety issues; analysis of accidents and incidents to determine what safety processes need improvement; encouraging and rewarding employees for bringing forward safety issues; support for safety from top management; comprehensive safety review to identify gaps in the safety systems and determine appropriate actions to improve safety. All of this should be shared with your employees to help them understand how important safety is in the workplace and that your company considers safety to be everyone’s responsibility.

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Written DFSP Policy

Developing an effective DFSP policy takes some effort. You will be able to review an outline that will help you develop your initial policy. The outline walks you through a series of questions, the answers to which will help you design a policy. Then, you will be able to add the operational specifics for your business and take the policy to legal counsel for review – a cost savings over paying an employment law attorney to design the policy. A carefully written DFSP policy is a key element because it lays out all the ground rules and describes acceptable and unacceptable work behavior along with the consequences for violating the policy. A good policy then must be followed by operational procedures that flesh out the policy and tell employees and supervisors how your program will operate.

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Employee Education

DFSP education incorporates awareness of the dangers of substance use in the workplace. Participating employers must arrange for each employee and supervisor to receive at least one hour initially within the first four months of the initial program year, with a one hour refresher annually thereafter. You can contract with substance professionals to do these sessions or, through sending a manager through a train–the-trainer course for employee education, you can do it yourself. The key is still to provide information on substance problems in the workplace to ALL employees and to not offer the same information year after year.

While a qualified/credentialed substance professional may present the educational material, it's also possible for the employer to obtain these materials from a qualified source and have a manager who is a skilled trainer present the information. However, questions raised by employees that this manager is not able to answer must go to a qualified substance professional for a response so that employees get a timely answer, typically within two business days. Although a credentialed person does not have to present the information to your employees, it's important to use a qualified, credentialed person or anyone else who has experience in the substance education field to prepare the training content and act as a resource for you. A DFSP start-up grant may be available to help offset this expense for the first two years of program operation.

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Supervisor Training

Skill-building training for all supervisors is a minimum of two hours initially and one hour annually as a refresher for supervisors who already have received the initial two hours. New supervisors should receive the initial training within eight weeks of becoming a supervisor, and these supervisors would then get the one hour refresher in subsequent years. You must use a trainer that is credentialed or qualified by experience in substance training for supervisors, so your supervisors can meet their responsibilities for supporting your program while buffering your legal liability. In Ohio, employers are liable for the actions of their supervisors AND the supervisors are individually liable for their actions. Consider additional training as needed in your workplace.

Required supervisor skill-building training content includes:

The above content is IN ADDITION TO accident-analysis training.

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Alcohol and Other Drug Testing

Employers will need to:

You do not have to conduct a post -accident test if all of the following circumstances exist:

Testing focuses on who may have caused or contributed to a work-related accident where there is an injury requiring off-site medical attention, a fatality or damage to company property or vehicles in apparent excess of amounts the employer specifies in its written DFSP policy. An accident investigation is the key to determine whom to test and when alcohol testing is appropriate along with a possible drug test. The testing system used for DFSP is called systems presence testing. This form of testing for specified drugs and alcohol has the support of organized labor and is considered the fairest and most reliable testing system in existence. It has withstood court challenges nationally and retained its basic structure based on reliability and accuracy in determining the presence of metabolites in an employee’s system that reflect use of drugs or in breath/blood that reflect use of alcohol. BWC’s approach to alcohol and other drug testing follows the federal testing model that is considered the gold standard in testing with substantial built-in protections for employees through acknowledged accuracy and reliability, and the involvement of a certified medical review officer who reviews all testing results.

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Employee Assistance

We recommend the highest degree of assistance available for employees and, at the Basic level, a commitment to the health and well-being of employees, including compiling and sharing a list of local assistance resources for employees with substance problems and their families. In addition, we require employers participating in the Advanced level to also pre-establish a working relationship with an employee assistance professional to which they can refer an employee with a substance problem for an assessment and pay for the cost of the assessment.

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State Construction Contractors

Ohio law requires all companies that bid or provide labor services or supervise work on state construction jobs to have a drug-free program that is comparable to the general elements of BWC’s DFSP — no matter how few or how many employees they have. This applies to all contractors and all levels of subcontractors who want to work a State of Ohio public improvement/construction project or who want to bid on and eventually provide labor services and/or supervise workers on state construction sites.

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DFSP Discounts

What are the key components of DFSP?

DFSP is designed to help employers deter, detect and take corrective action related to substance use that affects workplace safety. Participants must develop a substance policy that describes their drug-free program, and the starting point is a focus on identifying the effectiveness of the employer’s current safety efforts. Employers accomplish this by completing a safety review that walks them through a series of questions designed to demonstrate where the gaps are within the overall approach to workplace safety.

Accident reporting, accident-analysis training for supervisors and the design of an employer-specific safety action plan are ways in which we assist employers in addressing their industry and operational safety needs. The differences in safety-related requirements between employers participating in DFSP Basic and Advanced levels is the addition of the Safety Action Plan, which moves employers from identifying gaps in safety to taking the appropriate steps to address these issues and better protect the workforce. Our safety consultants are available to offer professional guidance in how to identify and implement these improvements.

The written DFSP policy describes every program element. As such, it provides the operational rules of the program; a full and fair disclosure of prohibited conduct and consequences for violating the policy; and describes the various pieces that make up the entire DFSP.

As such, the written policy should describe safety requirements; annual employee education and supervisor training; alcohol and other drug testing; and employee assistance, which along with the written DFSP policy, comprise the key integrated elements of any effective DFSP program.

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Basic Level (4 percent discount)

DFSP Basic requires completion of a safety review within a time frame identified in BWC written program publications; timely accident reporting; accident-analysis training for supervisors; and development of a written DFSP policy with certain types of testing, such as pre-employment and/or new hire, reasonable suspicion, post-accident, return-to-duty and follow-up. In addition, employers must do annual employee education and supervisor training, and develop a list of local community resources that employees with problems can turn to for assistance as well as commit to employee health and well-being in the DFSP policy.

Advanced Level (7 percent discount)

DFSP Advanced requires employers to commit to putting together a safety action plan based on the results of the completed safety review and to meet all safety requirements of the Basic level. It also requires the same alcohol and other drug testing requirements as the Basic level along with random drug testing of 15 percent of the average annual total work force. For public employers, random testing applies only to safety-sensitive positions or functions, as defined by the employer. Advanced-level employers must offer annual employee education and supervisor training, and must expand available employee assistance to, at minimum, facilitating and paying for a substance assessment for employees testing positive for alcohol or other drugs who are offered a second chance and who retain employment. Advanced-level employers are not free to terminate an employee for a first positive alcohol or other drug test although there are some exceptions described in BWC policy.

Program Benefits

DFSP offers discounts of 4 percent for implementing a DFSP Basic level program, 7 percent for an Advanced level program and the incremental discount of 3 percent off their already credited rate for group-experience-rated employers participating in DFSP Advanced up to the group cap. In addition, DFSP employers may apply for reimbursement for specified start-up costs for the first two years of DFSP program operation. However, DFSP discounts are not intended to incent employers into doing the right thing but rather, to reward those employers that see the value in doing the right thing.

What about employers participating concurrently in DFSP and another BWC discount program?
Compatibility refers to being able to receive a discount or other benefit concurrently from more than one BWC program. DFSP employers may receive a DFSP discount on top of another program/plan benefit only under the following circumstances: