Defining Friends for this Stage of Your Life

At any stage in your life, you need good food, good shelter, and good friends. However, you will find as you grow older that you change your friends, seemingly accidentally, but in fact this happens on purpose. As you grow and change and add onto your previous self, you change your companions to match and support and compliment your new self. At any point in your life, simply changing your friends that you see and visit with on a regular basis will change your attitudes about various things and your regular habits. However, the change in your tends to happen first, because changing your friends first can really be painful and stressful.

Wealth studies indicate that the average income of your five closest friends determines your income pretty closely. Wealth acquisition and maintenance seminars urge you to change your friends to a higher income, because then you will begin to think like them and behave like them, mimicking their wealth creating habits. While this process can be extremely effective and life changing, it also requires identifying and addressing habits within yourself with which you may have become very comfortable.

A middle ground can perhaps be found for those who do not crave turning their life upside down and embarking on all new adventures. In this scenario, perhaps it would be best to instead shoot for friends in a category slightly above yours, gradually making your life, lifestyle and income equal to theirs. After this, you can become comfortable (in other words, well habituated) with this income, before moving on to friends in a slightly higher category. This takes a lot more time, and it slows down the required adjustment time to a level that is perhaps easier to maintain for those who are not adept at taking on whole new changes in a drastic fashion. It also solidifies habits a great deal.

CMM Technology provides drug tests and alcohol breathalyser devices for those of you who require it in your businesses. Employee drug and alcohol testing is a further way to maintain newly settled habits, and to protect your company assets.

Pre Screening and Chain of Custody: The Ramifications

Workplace drug testing is about protection. This protection is meant to guard against both intentional and unintentional injuries on the jobsite. Unfortunately, drug related injuries are often unintentional due to the individual being under the influence of the drug.

In “The Autobiography of an Execution,” David Dow describes his experiences defending death row inmates in the United States. Death row inmates in Texas have very little chance of even delaying the execution date, since Texas executes more than any other state and it covers quite a large area of America. Dow talks about some of his clients, and how they originally put themselves in such a precarious position. Many of the crimes were based upon vengeance for hurt family members or unfaithful spouses, but a significant number of them were drug related crimes, and many of the drug related crimes involved the killer being under the influence of drugs or alcohol, and therefore not being in full control of their faculties or reasoning.

Drugs and alcohol take away your ability to correctly judge a situation and avoid ramifications. Employee drug testing gives you a certain amount of control over potential employee drug abuse, avoiding some of the intentional and unintentional consequences which can arise.

So, how unintentional can accidents be?

Well, as it turns out, everything is pretty intentional. The choice to abuse drugs or alcohol is fully conscious and premeditated. There is no way that you cannot choose to initially abuse either type of substance or Recalibration Service, and then continue to abuse it. It is completely up to the individual to decide and discern.

In Dow’s book, he described how, even though drugs and alcohol were available to most of the inmates, some of them turned around and repented of their previous actions. However, this change of heart obviously didn’t change their sentence, and his role as the attorney for these death row inmates was merely to delay execution for as long as possible. Hope lasted for thirty day increments since delays often only lasted a month.

Whatever your thoughts on preserving and giving up the rights to the sanctity of life, it is obvious that many of these atrocious crimes were committed while the people in question were unable to use their own sane judgment about what to do and how to react. 

Choice Theory and the Workplace

This article is based upon Choice Theory: A New Psychology of Personal Freedom by Dr. William Glasser. It is an excellent read and is highly recommended for both business owners and individuals suffering from emotional blocks in their personal lives.

The basis for Dr. Glasser’s psychology is personal choice and the fact that we choose everything in our lives, with no exception. He discusses each of our varying needs for power, freedom, love and bonding, stability, and fun. He also discusses how our emotions are active choices, not passive occurrences which happen to us. Someone or something does not make us angry, we choose to anger. Circumstances are not frustrating, we choose to frustrate. Dr. Glasser states that defining these terms honestly, in active tense, is instrumental in learning that we choose everything that we feel, believe and act upon and that these personal choices can make or break us, but that they are our choices, not somebody else’s.

Let us practice some of these actively stated emotions with respect to the workplace environment. One of your employees keeps coming in late and you actively choose to frustrate over this. Your quarterly earnings do not meet the projected rates and now you choose to worry. Your marriage is on the rocks and you hate being away from home, so you choose to dissociate and not concentrate on the job at hand. Your life is not how you wanted it to be, and yet you specifically and purposely chose every single thing which led up to your current level of angering.

In addition to changing the realistic description of your emotions so that you recognize how in control you really are, Dr. Glasser also recommends that you think about all of the relationships in your life, romantic, familial and professional. Before you react to someone’s behavior, ask yourself one question, “Will my behavior draw me closer to this person or push me further away from them?” Dr. Glasser describes how attempting to control someone will push them further away and how giving them personal freedom of choice will draw them closer to you. There is a myth that marriage vows and senior executive positions safeguard you from consequences for your actions. Many individuals believe that their marriage gives them room to behave in an inappropriate manner or that their job status gives them security. However, relationships are simply points in space, and both individuals have to show up every day in order to continue having that relationship. There are no invisible bonds keeping either party somehow tied to the other. Even after twenty years of marriage, the decision to show up every day has to be active and mutual.

Threats, cajoling, excuses, downsizing irresponsible behavior, lack of responsibility and abusive attitudes all actively work to threaten your company and your relationship with your company employees. Good management will override the need for less professional behavior. Drug and alcohol testing will strengthen the relationships with your employees and create a positive working environment. 

Debunking Common Drug Testing Myths

It seems that as each day passes, a new myth is born about how a person can pass or fail a drug test. Not only are many of these myths completely untrue, but some of the more popular ones are actually dangerous. Obviously, the most effective way to pass a drug test is not to take drugs and the methods of cheating the system that are to follow are about as ridiculous as they come. From drinking an excessive amount of certain fluids to overdosing on over the counter medications, be wary of the many attempts that people will make to hide the fact that they are doing drugs.

Marijuana is the most common drug that people will try to cover up in a drug test, and due to the fact that THC attaches itself to fat cells, it is virtually impossible to disguise the presence of THC in a urine sample. A common myth is that drinking an excessive amount of water will help flush the THC out of a person’s system. In reality however, all that drinking a lot of water will do is dilute the test and allude to the fact that the person is trying to cheat the system. Vinegar and pickle juice yield the same result as water while dehydrating the person’s body in the process.

An extremely dangerous method of passing pre screening recently is to take an overdose of aspirin. Overdosing on aspirin will not help anyone pass a drug test and it can actually cause kidney and liver failure if the overdose is severe. Other myths have circulated that taking ibuprofen will result in a positive drug test result. The moral of the story is that over the counter pain medications don’t influence urine or saliva drug test in any way.

Finally, be very wary of the cleansing systems that are advertised on the internet. These systems are advertised to flush all of the toxins out of a person’s system and, as a result, clear the urine of all traces of drugs. However, THC metabolite stays in our fat cells and will continue to come out in our urine for anywhere between days to months. Cleansing systems may be very good for cleaning out our digestive tracts, but they are no way to pass a drug test.

Lastly, urine and saliva drug tests will pick up any trace of drug metabolite in a person’s system. However, to test positive for drugs, an individual must exceed a cutoff point that eliminates the possibility of having contact with a drug through a friend or family member. For this reason, common fears that coming in contact with marijuana smoke will cause a positive drug test result are unfounded.

If you have any more questions about the accuracy of drug testing or to find out more about CMM Technology’s drug testing products, please contact us at +618-9204-2500 or email us atinfo@cmm.com.au .

Alcohol Testing Australia, Drug Test, Urine Drug Test

In a case study by Dr. Holland, new drug and alcohol testing procedures in the mining industry were not disputed in the mining workplace, but an incomplete evaluation program certainly was. Since drug and alcohol use (as well as abuse) could be the result of a stressful workplace environment, if regular and randomized testing was to be implemented, the inherent need for stress-free surroundings at work required more than simply submitting samples for drug test.

However, stress at work can easily be caused by under-qualified and under trained individuals, coworkers and members of management. At CMM Technology™, in addition to our drug and alcohol testing training and courses, we offer courses in Life Support, Senior First Aid, Cert IV TAA, Manual Handling, Grader, Haul Truck, Chainsaw, Loader, Excavator, and many more.

Although compliance with alcohol testing helps to make the workplace more efficient, which in turn reduces stress, self education and edification, can contribute greatly to calm, steady, peaceful working environments. Both factors are important to achieve high efficiency and to retain high quality employees.

During any type of economic instability, it may seem that training employees “just enough” to get by will at least keep your business afloat. This, however, was not true in more famous examples such as the Exxon Valdez oil tanker, where an under-trained officer ran the ship aground on well-charted Bligh Reef and the St. Francis dam collapse, where self-taught and under-qualified civil engineer, William Mulholland, built a dam above the St. Francis Quito Canyon, in order to provide water for Los Angeles residents. Mulholland was the only one in charge and both the dam and the rock upon which the dam was built were insufficient for the task. In these circumstances, companies and businesses can prevent disaster by providing adequate training, not only in work duties, but also in company and legal protocol. Protocol is set in place to avoid “what if” situations, where chain of custody or reactions to unique environments is not clearly defined.

In the above examples, a great amount of damage can be caused in a short amount of time and through improper supervising procedures. Receiving adequate training and courses such as the ones listed above can greatly reduce accidents, injury, death and loss of revenue in high-hazard work environments. Drug and alcohol testing, especially around major holidays, can reduce additional damage due to slowed reaction time, poor judgment and carelessness. Incomplete knowledge can, in some circumstances, be more dangerous than having no knowledge at all. Keep yourself and your employee’s safe by receiving the proper training and testing.

Lion AlcoBlow® – a fully portable, handheld professional breathalyser

Lion AlcoBlow

An effective method for monitoring your workforce’s alcohol intake is by utilising alcohol detection technology. At CMM Technology, we offer a wide variety of alcohol testing products which can accurately determine the level of alcohol in the human breath.
One of most advanced and simple to use, state-of-the-art, digital handheld breathalysers, is the Lion AlcoBlow. This fully portable, handheld professional breathalsyer is recommended for use by authorised collectors and security personnel in the workplace. Other industry applications suitable for this unit include: mining; correction facilities; and education establishments.

What makes this device a sensible and practical choice for your workplace drug and alcohol testing program is its simple operation features and lightweight design. Consequently, training requirements are minimal and the Lion AlcoBlow can be operated at multiple sites as necessary. The Lion AlcoBlow can also be used as an alternative or in addition to fixed breathalyzer wall units that are held at one site.

Another good reason why the Lion AlcoBlow is a popular choice for most businesses and organisations is that each test is performed at a low cost. For example, unlike conventional alcohol breath testing instruments, the Lion AlcoBlow makes no physical contact with the subject. This means there are no disposable mouthpieces (which are an additional cost consideration for comparable units).

Listed below are additional key product features which make the Lion AlcoBlow breathalyser unit an excellent choice for your workplace drug and alcohol testing program, including:

• Easy functions: two button control to enable easy operation and readings.

• Fast readings: to enable the collector/supervisor to determine whether a driver or employee has ingested any alcohol in his or her body – literally, within seconds.

• Accurate analysis: the Lion fuel cell sensor ensures high specificity to alcohol.

• Durability: the unit has a long, stable working life.

• Easy to read display: the subject’s alcohol level is shown on a single LED.

• Meets AS3547 Australian Standard.

Alternatively, you can contact the expert CMM Technology Team to further discuss your needs and our other breathlayser ranges on (+618) 9204 2500.

What types of testing methods are best for your workplace?

Breathalyser

The types of testing methodologies currently available in the Australian and international markets varies greatly. To determine the best testing technology option(s) for your workplace, it is highly recommended that you speak to our expert CMM Technology team for guidance on (+618) 9204 2500. For example, variables used to determine the best testing technology options for your workplace testing program are contingent on the following assessment areas:

National and state legislation guidelines

OHS risk assessment

Risk culture indentification

Geographic location

Industry type

Size of business

Industrial relations rulings

Budget.

Overall, present testing methodologies available include: saliva drug test, urine tests and other testing applications that assess impairment levels. Our extensive range of breathalysers, simple saliva mouth swabs, state-of -the-art testing technologies and urine testers (which facilitate these testing methodologies), are just some of the instruments which can be introduced to your testing program.

With the ongoing advances in drug and alcohol testing technology as well as policy and legislation developments, it is highly recommended that you visit our CMM Technology website regularly to ensure you’re up-to-date with the latest testing technologies, legislation changes, best practices and support services. Speak to our helpful team of experts today on (+618) 9204 2500 for more information about our comprehensive, market leading products and services.

Drug Test Kits

Alcohol Test

At CMM Technology, we offer one of Australia’s largest ranges of workplace drug and alcohol testing equipment. Our comprehensive services and products cater for all industry sectors, including: mining, transport, aviation, engineering, maritime, construction and many others. We also provide quality products, training and policy consulting and advice engineered for the Australian market and to Australian Standards. This helps our clients achieve a far safer workplace, exercise their duty of care and meet their OHS legal compliance obligations. The importance of these objectives is reaffirmed by the following statistics:

According to Work Safe Australia, the latest published estimate for compensated workplace injuries (i.e. serious claims category) totaled 134,105 during 2006-07. In the same financial period, a tragically high figure of 232 compensated workplace fatalities were recorded in Australia.

The ABS published an even greater workplace incidents total of 457, 603 recorded for 2005-2006.

Aside from the primary focus of creating Drug Free Workplace, a secondary benefit realised when instituting CMM Technology’s risk management systems are cost savings. Essentially, by minimising workplace injures, your business can save on their insurance premiums and other related costs. In fact, workers compensation (in addition to employee salaries) is one of the biggest workplace-related costs for Australian employers. For example:

Approximately $6.3 billion was paid to workers compensation schemes during 2007-08.

The Federal Government estimated the cost of work-related injury and disease to workers, their employer, the community and the Australian economy amounted to $57.5 billion during 2005-2006 (equivalent to 5.9 per cent gross domestic product).

With these sobering statistics in mind, it is vital that managers, OHS professionals and business owners approach health and safety issues proactively and consistently. Our helpful and knowledgeable staff can assist you with deciding what instruments and Alcohol Test services are conducive to making your workplace safer, more efficient and more profitable.

With our team of experts and professional assistance, your business can greatly improve its risk management processes, cultivate a culture of compliance and elevate individual performance all vital elements to forging a strong competitive advantage for your business.

OHS Training And Drug Free Workplace

Breathalyser Recalibration Service

It has become a truism almost to state that workplace safety is an important issue for the employee, employer and the community. And yet, despite the best of intentions, many workplaces still fall far short of implementing quality risk management systems. Even in workplaces that have a dedicated OHS department and head, the commitment required to sustain quality OHS programs within a changing and demanding business environment can prove ineffective without proper protocols and external checking mechanisms that ensure an OHS system’s maintained integrity, cohesion and currency. In addition to these concerns, the complexity of OHS law and evolving legislation ensure that OHS managers and business owners (across a spectrum of  industries), have laid before them a daunting task of deciphering OHS law and Standards as well as a great legal responsibility with regard to implementing them in the most practical, economical and streamlined way.

It is for these reasons that OHS related training and professional development should be viewed as the cornerstone to ensuring quality deployment of OHS systems. Properly managed with adequate and ongoing professional support, workplace OHS policy and protocols can certainly make a great difference with regard to: minimising tragic and costly safety risks and accidents, improving employee wellbeing, safeguarding the community, elevating individual workplace performance and boosting profits. In this way, as an OHS professional, HR Manager and business owner, regular training and guidance on industry best practices and OHS legislation is your key to exercising ethical and sound business acumen.

Along with VETAB accredited training, there are many complementary organisations and peak bodies that convene regularly with members and offer professional advice to help guide and design practical ways of implementing OHS legislation, including: Workplace Safety Australia, The National Workplace Safety Summit and CMM technology. Through active participation in OHS training and professional organisations (such as those offered by the aforementioned), businesses can more effectively integrate comprehensive OHS planning into their core business strategy, business systems and processes. Overall, the benefits associated with continuing professional development in OHS include:

• Understanding what currently constitutes quality and ongoing risk assessment management and response in your industry (to safeguard employee health and safety in the drug free workplace).

• Being informed of and actioning your legal responsibilities and duty of care.

• Proactively promoting a culture of compliance.

• Proactively promoting a positive organisational culture and fostering EAP programs that support employee wellbeing.

• Gaining understanding into how effective OHS strategies can enable improved productivity and the reduction of claims.

• Designing strategies that offer real solutions to minimise areas of high occupational safety risks, including: falls and hits by moving objects, fatigue and stress management, workplace drug and alcohol breaches, manual handling, working at heights and occupational diseases.

With the right OHS training and professional guidance, Australian businesses can be far better equipped to face the modern challenges of the new global and competitive business environment. Talk to our team of experts today to see how CMM Technology can help you navigate your business.