Leadership Briefing

The year-long, Working Partners^® Drug-Free Workforce Community Initiative (DFWCI) operating in 17 Ohio counties is coming to an end with a Press Conference and Leadership Briefing to be held at the Ohio Statehouse Atrium on September 28 from 9:00-11:00 a.m.

This Initiative is a public-private partnership between the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS) and Working Partners^®. The goal of the Initiative, which will outlive its year, is to increase Ohio’s employable, drug-free workforce. Declarations that employers could not find applicants to pass drug tests were behind many of the Initiative’s activities.

To realize outcomes (toward what turns out to be a very complex goal), the Initiative engineered engagement on three levels – communities/systems, the workplace, and job seekers/employees. The activities on these three levels were to

• Assess needs to clarify the realities from myth
• Facilitate and arm local, interdisciplinary stakeholders and workplaces in the 17 state locales with best practice, evidence-based tools to strengthen the environment against the drug epidemic and low employability, and
• Facilitate recommendations for sustaining efforts to support healthy individuals and workplace environments to increase drug-free employment.

At the September 28th DFWCI event, Working Partners^® will review and celebrate many of the Initiative’s outcomes including

• 279 community leaders from 200 organizations and government departments who collaborated to execute the activities of the year.
• Reflections from the Initiative’s business survey about the impact of drug abuse on Ohio’s workforce and what employers are doing about it. The magnitude of this survey’s size (3,200 businesses and 1,400 community leaders’ business perspectives) and representative data is unique nationwide.
• The 14-hour technical assistance course for 116 owners/upper management from 70 businesses to learn evidence-based best practices so they can implement or enhance their drug-free workplace policies and programs affecting 10,000 employees and their families.
• A short video, Job Seeker Challenge, for dissemination to Ohio’s 68,5000 (roughly) applicants and designed to help them understand the necessity and prevalence of employer drug testing, as well as provide the opportunity to explore – based on knowledge – their relationship with drugs.
• A recap of the communities’ plans for sustaining the objectives of the Initiative.

Please join us for this event. Make arrangements by contacting our office (614-337-8200) or RSVP online.