A company carrying out drug testing themselves can cut costs by over 80%, compared to using an outsourced drug testing provider.
Consider a company with 150 staff, carrying out monthly random drug & alcohol testing of 10% of the workforce (15 tests per month).
With an outsourced provider, their cost per test is around $80 for a drug test and $5 for an alcohol test.
In-house, their cost is around $15 for a drug test and $0.50 for an alcohol test.
| Urine Drug Testing Costs | Outsourced | In-House |
| Drug testing | 15 x $80 = $1,200 | 15 x $15 = $225 |
| Alcohol testing | 15 x $5 = $75 | 15 x $0.50 = $7.50 |
| Total Cost | $1,275 | $232.50 |
This company saves $1,042.50 per month, a total of $12,510 per year!
In addition to this, with in-house drug testing there are no call-out fees and no travel charges.
The other advantages of testing in-house are:
- Speed. If your company is located on a remote site, it can take a long time for an outsourced provider to arrive after an incident. This can mean your site is shut down for several hours, which is extremely costly.
- Flexibility. There’s one less party involved in the test-arranging process, so drug testing can be carried out on-demand, across multiple days and on different sites. This is helpful when employees may not be all in the same place at the same time, e.g. technicians that travel onto customer sites to work on equipment.
Getting started
There are three steps to work through when bringing drug testing in-house.
- Sort your drug testing policy
- Get testers qualified to do drug testing
- Implement in-house drug testing.
The place to start is by contacting Sober Check. We will guide you through each step, and provide ongoing support as you begin drug testing.
0800 700 777 – support@sobercheck.co.nz
Step 1 — Sort out your drug testing policy
Your drug testing policy states how drug testing is carried out. This is where you’ll be making decisions about:
- what type of testing you’re carrying out (urine drug testing? saliva drug testing? blood?)
- what situations drug testing will be carried out in, and how often
- disciplinary process for when someone fails a drug test
Step 2 — Get testers qualified to do drug testing
People carrying out drug testing need to have the qualifications to do so. This is especially important if a drug test result is ever challenged in court.
This is a half-day course, held in person, via Zoom, or online.
On the course, testers learn what they need to do to run a compliant drug testing programme.
Step 3 — Implement in-house drug testing
This usually starts by announcing the drug testing changes to your employees, and answering questions. This is usually followed by a period of a month or two before drug testing begins.
To get started with drug testing in-house
Contact Sober Check to get started, on: 0800 700 777, support@sobercheck.co.nz, or by filling in the form below.