ESR undertakes drug testing programmes for more than 400 companies from more than 700 sites nationwide. The most common industries are forestry, fishing, dairy, transport, power, roading, mining and the poultry and meat industries. However, as a demand and awareness grows, testing has become more diverse and includes personnel organisations and legal firms.

ESR's programmes are proven to be robust

ESR’s workplace drug testing programmes have proved to be robust and have held up to legal challenge as seen in the landmark Employment Court decision in the case of the Unions vs Air New Zealand 2004. In this decision, the Employment Court upheld Air New Zealand’s right to implement a drug testing programme for staff in safety sensitive positions. The Court upheld ESR as a “Gold Standard” service provider and endorsed ESR’s methodology and analysis.

The Air New Zealand decision allows random testing of workers in ‘safety-sensitive areas”, pre-employment testing, tests on workers suspected of taking drugs whose behaviour is, or could be harmful and testing of workers involved in an accident or near miss.

More recently, the Employment Court upheld another challenge to workplace drug testing in the case of MUNZ vs TLNZ in December 2007. In this case the court further endorsed the findings of the Air New Zealand case and ruled that it was legal for TLNZ to implement a drug testing policy.

Statistics from ESR’s current drug testing indicate that 30% of post accident/reasonable tests prove to be positive and that 8% of pre-employment and 13% of random tests proved to be positive.

ESR is specifically accredited

Collection procedures are prescribed and organised by ESR for its clients as part of its drug and alcohol free workplace programme service. ESR is one of only a few New Zealand organisations that has specific accreditation for workplace drug testing under the New Zealand and Australian standards.(AS/NZS 4308:2008)