Category Archives: Workplace

Quest Data Shows Rise in Positive Test Rates for Workplace Illicit Drugs

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Organizations in the United States that tested employees for drugs saw a 9.3% jump in the number of positive drug tests for illicit drugs in the general workforce, to 4.7% in 2014 from 4.3% in 2013, according to data from Quest Diagnostics. These results may mark a rising trend, as 2013 was the first year since 2003 in which the overall positivity rate for about 1.1 million tests increased in the general U.S. workforce. The analysis shows a potential reversal of a decades-long decline in the abuse of illicit drugs in the U.S. workforce, Quest said.

“American workers are increasingly testing positive for workforce drug use across almost all workforce categories and drug test specimen types. In the past, we have noted increases in prescription drug positivity rates, but now it seems illicit drug use may be on the rise, according to our data,” Dr. Barry Sample, director of science and technology at Quest Diagnostics Employer Solutions, said in a statement.

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“These findings are especially concerning because they suggest that the recent focus on illicit marijuana use may be too narrow, and that other dangerous drugs are potentially making a comeback.”

While marijuana continues to be the most commonly detected illicit drug, others include cocaine, methamphetamine and heroin, Quest reported, noting that across all specimen types, the positivity rate for amphetamines is now at the highest levels on record and the positivity rate for methamphetamine is at its highest level since 2007. Amphetamines make up the category that includes both prescription amphetamine drugs like Adderall as well as methamphetamine. The positivity rate for 6-acetylmorphine, or 6-AM, a specific marker for heroin, doubled in the general U.S. workforce between 2011 and 2014, According to Quest.

In urine drug test data from two states with recreational marijuana-use laws, Colorado and Washington, the marijuana positivity rate increased 14% and 16%, respectively, in the general U.S. workforce between 2013 and 2014. This roughly paralleled the national average of 14.

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3%. By comparison, between 2012 and 2013, the marijuana positivity rate increased 20% and 23% in Colorado and Washington, respectively, compared to the national average of 5%, Quest said.

“We were surprised that marijuana positivity increased at about the same rate in Colorado and Washington as the rest of the United States in 2014, particularly given the sharp increases in the marijuana positivity rate in both of these states in the prior year,” Dr. Sample said. “It’s unclear if this data suggest a leveling off in marijuana use in these particular states or if some other factor is at work. We also find it notable that the national marijuana positivity rate increased as much as it did in 2014, and question if this means that people are more accepting and therefore more likely to use marijuana recreationally or for therapeutic purposes than in the past even in states where marijuana’s use is not clearly sanctioned by state laws. This will be an important area of continued analysis given the national debate about the legality and health impacts of recreational and medicinal marijuana use.”

How Does Google Face Global Challenges?

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NEW YORK—Staying a step ahead of regulators around the world is challenging for any global business. For Google, it is a “significant challenge, to say the least,” said Andy Hinton, vice president of global ethics and compliance at Google, Inc. After organizing the world’s information and making it universally accessible, the company’s secondary mission is products that help users, he said.

“Google is boundary-less when it comes to what those products might be and what they might look like,” Hinton said during The Wall Street Journal’s Newsmaker’s Forum in April. “So trying to keep up with driverless cars, drones and providing internet service with floating balloons around the world (Project Loon) is a challenge.”

Google’s compliance program includes the company’s trade, bribery, internet security and privacy issues. While any number of issues may surface, he said, “one of them is to help the company respond to some of the criticism leveled against it, mostly in jurisdictions outside the United States, and to make sure responses are consistent with applicable laws.”

With Google Earth, for example, equipment must be moved around the world. Google Earth “enables people to get information access to the earth, where they otherwise might not be able to see those things,” Hinton said, noting that people can now view Mt. Everest and other places they may never get to see otherwise. This involves contact with customs officials and governments and also creates “lots of opportunities to do things wrong and get in trouble,” he said. “So we are always on top of that. Plus, the equipment we use is so unique that we show up in front of a customs official with a camera on top of a tripod on top of a car and they ask, ‘What is that? It’s not in the manual.’ You have to spend time explaining what it is and help them to be comfortable with it.

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While some governments are more difficult to deal with than others, “there are definite challenges in all the continents and countries,” he said. “Obviously privacy is a challenge in Europe, because there is a different perspective around privacy and internet security than there is in the United States. With APAC [Asia Pacific] there is an integration of gift-giving and business that is relatively unique to the APAC region and can present challenges.”

An important part of its compliance strategy is the company’s diversity, which he added is also part of its mission. “Not just diversity in the traditional perspective, but in bringing on people who can understand the challenges in these regions,” he said.

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“So for gift-giving in the Middle East, sure I can sit in Mountain View trying to figure it out, but we hired an attorney who is in that culture and understands U.S. law and can, in that context, help us navigate the region—balancing expectations of the region with legal expectations in the United States.”

Company Strategy

In fact, Google’s overall hiring policies are part of its strategy to “do things differently, or do them better than other companies,” he said. “That requires us to be incredibly sharp in the way we do hiring.” Now that the company has about 60,000 employees, “it’s important to hire people who share your values and buy into your mission. Because if you are not going to have a lot of rules and you are not going to have an enormous compliance program and checkers following people around, there is a lot of trust and autonomy that you give to your Googlers.”

How does the company accomplish this? “When I interview people and they talk about winning and beating the competition, that’s a huge red flag to me,” he said. “When we started, Larry was very much about the users and we still are. If you build something good that users really like, you can figure out the rest. Revenue and everything else will come. People who have that backwards are tremendously dangerous to the company.”

Google also acquires staff through acquisitions, he said, adding that this talent is “much harder to manage. The larger the acquisition and the more the acquisition has its own culture, the greater the challenge.”

Small Businesses Hit Hardest By Employee Theft

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The typical organization loses 5% of revenue each year to fraud – a potential projected global fraud loss of $3.7 trillion annually, according to the ACFE 2014 Report to the Nations on Occupational Fraud and Abuse.

In its new Embezzlement Watchlist, Hiscox examines employee theft cases that were active in United States federal courts in 2014, with a specific focus on businesses with fewer than 500 employees to get a better sense of the range of employee theft risks these businesses face. While sizes and types of thefts vary across industries, smaller organizations saw higher incidences of embezzlement overall.

According to the report, “When we looked at the totality of federal actions involving employee theft over the calendar year, nearly 72% involved organizations with fewer than 500 employees. Within that data set, we found that four of every five victim organizations had fewer than 100 employees; more than half had fewer than 25 employees.”

Overall, they found:

Hiscox Embezzlement Watchlist

It is particularly interesting to note that women orchestrate the majority of these thefts (61%) – a rarity in many kinds of crime. Yet the wage gap extends even to ill-gotten gains, Hiscox found: While they were responsible for more of these actions, women made nearly 30% less from these schemes than men.

Drilling down into specific industries, Hiscox found that financial services companies were at the greatest risk, with over 21% of employee thefts – the largest industry segment – targeting an organization in this field, including banks, credit unions and insurance companies. Other organizations frequently struck by employee theft include non-profits (11%), municipalities (10%) and labor unions (9%). Groups in the financial services, real estate and construction, and non-profit sectors had the greatest total number of cases in the Hiscox study, while retail entities and the healthcare industry suffered the largest median losses.

For more of the report’s insight on specific industries, check out the infographic below:

Hiscox Embezzlement Watchlist Targeted Industries

The Best and Worst States for Business, According to CEOs

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For CEOs, who naturally favor “pro-growth,” low-tax states, southern states present an undeniable bastion for business, according to Chief Executive magazine’s 2015 “Best and Worst States for Business” survey.

In this year’s survey, Texas remained the best state for business for the 11th year in row, followed by Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Since the recession began in December 2007, 1.2 million net jobs have been created in Texas, while 700,000 net jobs were created in the other 49 states combined, the magazine reported. This job creation contributed toward unemployment rates 1% lower than the national average, an advantage rounded out by extremely favorable taxation and regulation, strong workforce quality, and very good marks for living environment.

Despite notably low unemployment, two of the greatest hubs for business drew particularly unfavorable marks from CEOs: California ranked last in the survey, preceded by New York. Illinois, New Jersey and Massachusetts completed the bottom five. CEOs gave these states the lowest ratings because of their high tax rates and regulatory environments. One CEO told the magazine, “The good states ask what they can do for you; the bad states ask what they can get from you.”

Compared to the 2014 rankings, Idaho has made the largest improvement, rising 10 spots to number 18, primarily due to high growth rates in GDP, while South Dakota dropped eight places, “even though quality-of-life attractions enhance the state’s low-tax bona fides,” the magazine reported.

Check out the full rankings below:

Best States for Business rankings