Having even one problem drinker on your health plan – including a covered family member with abuse issues – can cost your firm up to $35,000 a year. What’s your company’s risk?

Many wellness programs are geared toward managing employees’ health risks associated with diseases like diabetes or asthma.  But unless the wellness program is integrated with an employee assistance program (EAP), chances are alcohol abuse-related risks go undetected. Here are two strategies that’re getting good results.

1. Include alcohol in health screenings
If you already sponsor confidential employee health-risk assessments, it’s easy to screen for alcohol risks, too. This can be as simple as making sure three questions are added to the current appraisal:

• How often do you have a drink containing alcohol?
• How many alcoholic drinks do you have on a typical day? And
• How often in the last month have you had six or more drinks?

For male employees, more than 14 drinks per week, or one or more episodes of heavy drinking suggests a possible problem. For women, more than seven drinks in a week, or one or more episodes of drinking four or more drinks, is a red flag.

Alternative: If you don’t offer appraisals, you can refer employees to a free, confidential online screening.

Benchmarking tools
Many experts say drug-free workplace policies and employee assistance programs (EAPs) are the two most proven solutions within companies’ grasp for minimizing the risks and costs of alcohol abuse by health plan enrollees.

To see if sponsoring an EAP makes financial sense, you can calculate your own firm’s current cost risk for free here. Plug in your business type, locale and number of employees. You’ll get a customized estimate of yearly direct (absenteeism, disability, ER visits) and indirect (presenteeism, turnover) costs from alcohol misuse by a covered employee or family member.

To design a drug-free workplace policy – or check if your existing one is up to par and compliant with the law - more guidance is available here.