​Alcohol Awareness Training to Meet DOT: Don't Make It All about Signs and Symptoms

Alcohol awareness training is an important function in every workplace where large numbers of employees exist. Most

alcohol awareness training is inadequate or too superficial. Before purchasing your training program, be sure to get a good look at the product. Any vendor can do this by simply marking the program as "For Preview Purposes Only". A good example of a DOT Supervisor Training course for alcohol and drug awareness, shown in full, can be found here.

DOT Supervisor Training Elements

• Make sure the DOT Supervisor Training provides employees (learners or supervisors) with information necessary to increase awareness about alcohol and other drugs of abuse that help them dispel myths and rid themselves of their deeply ingrained falsehoods about addiction. If you do not provide at least some information in this regard, even a handout, you can bet that no matter how beautiful your presentation, it will fail to motivate supervisors to act on your policy.
  
  
• The alcohol awareness training should focus on employee well-being and workplace productivity and should include information about the disease of alcoholism and drug addiction (addictive disease); common myths and misconceptions; tolerance and cross tolerance, denial; enabling and armchair diagnosing.

The alcohol awareness training should raise awareness about the misinformation most people possess about alcoholism and drug addiction garnered from popular culture, the media, and family history. One of society's greatest misconceptions is that someone has to "want help" before they can be helped. The truth is most employees are motivated or pressured by tools of influence or leverage such as a job, money, prison or divorce.

Alcohol Training Course for DOT Training of Supervisors of DOT Employees

• Treatment of the alcoholic or drug addict is by and large an educational process designed to motivate or help manage the disease--to place it into a hiatus, keep it inactive via abstinence of alcohol and mood altering substances, and help a patient acquire emotional common sense and life skills alcoholism has natural eroded. Note that the alcoholism came first, and the short-circuiting of maturity followed, not the other way around. The alcohol training course should discuss the treatment process and how patients are treated.
  
• No, the U.S. Department of Transportation regulations do not require this information in your DOT supervisor training course, but again, you are seeking to make an impact on supervisors that will help them see the total picture of risk, identification, referral, treat-ability of the disease, and inspire motivation to take action.

If an intervention is to take place at some point by the organization because of performance issues or even by families outside the organization, the alcohol training course section of the DOT will be inspiring individuals to take action. It is simply difficult to ignore reality once you are in possession of it and your ability to enable and deny are diminished because of the sort of drug and alcohol education mentioned above.

(Note: Choose an alcohol training course that clearly defines terms and provides resources for further information. Make sure it discusses what employees should know as well as supervisor. If you do that, you will be able use the program for employee drug and alcohol awareness by simply removing the supervisor slides. We encourage purchasers to do this.)

It might be important to think about what type of presentation you will make and where it will take place. Think about whether the alcohol training course is to be presented to many employees/supervisors or just one person. Consider a web course if you anticipate supervisor skipping out of education, being sick, difficult to locate, gather, and present as one group. A drug and alcohol program online for supervisors will "mop" up all your stragglers. This is an example of DOT Online Training for Supervisors.

Look at availability for the alcohol training course to be purchased in different formats or to be custom designed to your organization/needs. If your alcohol training course must provide a certification of completion be sure that it is included as well with any handouts you may need to pass out.

Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training:What’s Required Media for Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training

Supervisor reasonable suspicion training mandated by the U.S. Department of Transportation is a requirement for those in selected positions who oversee others with safety-sensitive positions.

Mandatory DOT Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training does not have to be strictly audio-visual. Many people responsible for training get this part wrong. The requirements are for two hours of material - one hour of alcohol related and one hour of drug related to the signs and symptoms, effects, and impact of these substances.

Handouts to read, test questions with answer review, and even classroom discussion are all permissible ways of earning these two hours of training to help supervisor understand and retain information.

You'll find all of that capability in this Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training program. There are few things that are important to include in Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training however. These include a complete grounding in education about alcoholism, because this topic is the most pervasive problem supervisor’s face. It is also the most significant problem when it comes to costs, problems, liability, and much more.

The best time to give supervisors training when you can reach people. Sound impossible? It's not. Use a self-operating web course that uploads to your internal website. You can then do Supervisor Reasonable Suspicion Training 24 hours a day.