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responses to fitness-for-duty testing, like those of employees, seem to
be affected by the nature of program implementation. At four of the 
organizations, supervisors had wholly positive views of testing. As one
respondent offered, "Everyone's accepted it, probably because top 
management fully supports it....We started the program by getting
support from the top and working down."
 
Likewise, another commented, "Everything's worked out smoothly because 
we spent five months planning it and introducing it." In contrast, 
supervisors at a fifth organization, according to the representative's 
report, initially viewed testing negatively. They complained that daily
testing consumed too much of their time, worried about their
subordinates' stress, and disliked having to deal with subordinates who
failed.  However, after the organization provided follow-up training,
installed more computer stations, and established training coordinators
and interviewers to administer the daily testing and handle test
failures, supervisors developed more positive attitudes. At the sixth
organization, although some supervisors have belatedly come to
appreciate the benefits of fitness-for-duty testing for ensuring a safe
workplace, they continue to view the program as a "put-on" -- something
the president put on supervisors without first asking if they thought it
would be useful.  Furthermore, the representative told me that one
employee had always been able to pass her fitness-for-duty test -- even
though she seemed impaired -- because she was an expert at video games.
However, this employee was unable to perform her job satisfactorily and
was terminated .
 
Questionnaire Responses of Employees Currently Taking 
Fitness-for-duty Tests
 
The questionnaire sent to employees in the fitness-for-duty testing 
organizations began by asking respondents to provide general information
about themselves: number of years worked at the organization, job title,
gender, age, and education. Employee s then answered 16 five-point
Likert-type questions assessing their views of performance testing (see
Appendix B). These items, pretested with employees who had taken Factor
1000 until their organization discontinued performance testing, assessed
employees' views of a) the ability of fitness-for-duty tests to measure
impairment, b) their fairness, c) their ability to create a safe
workplace, and d) their cost-effectiveness; as well as e) the impact of
these tests on employees' job satisfaction and f) employees' experience
of taking tests. Respondents were also provided with blank space, which
they were invited to use to explain their responses and/or record any
other comments about their experiences with performance testing.
 
Of the six organizations in the sample, one had been conducting 
behavior-based testing and drug testing for nearly five years at the
time of my telephone interview. The remaining five had been testing
their employees for a mean of only five months. At the company where
testing had been going on a while, it would have been appropriate to
administer a questionnaire to employees without any delay. The company
president took a long while to read the brief questionnaire I had sent
for his perusal.  (The original version of the questionnaire for this
organization, which must conduct random urine drug testing, included
several items asking respondents to compare performance testing with
drug testing.) Each of the several times I called him, he professed he
had not yet had an opportunity to read it. When finally, I politely
assured him that it would take him less time to read the questionnaire
than to tell me he hadn't yet read it, he promised to read it and decide
by the end of the week. While I awaited his response, I received a call
from a marketing representative of Performance Factors, Inc., who chided
me for intruding on his client with sensitive questions (and
presumptuously advised me on the fine points of conducting
organizational research).  At that point, I concluded that I might have
inadvertently pressured the company president to the extent that he
could not confront me directly with his decision not to participate in
my study. When I called him to explain that it was, of course, his
prerogative not to administer my questionnaire to his employees, and to
apologize for any discomfort I might have caused him, he assured me that
he did not feel uncomfortable and that his reason for contacting the
test manufacturer was to seek advice as to whether he should administer
the questionnaire. It would appear that the test manufacturer advised
the client to deny me access to his employees, for fear that the
questionnaire would stir up negative feelings about fitness-for-duty
testing.
 
A half year later, I called each of the representatives of the five 
other organizations to ascertain how fitness-for-duty testing was 
progressing and to seek permission to distribute my questionnaire to 
assess employees' views toward testing. I learned that one organization
had postponed its fitness-for-duty program.
 
Moreover, according to the new safe workplace coordinator (my initial 
contact, the deputy director of personnel, had since accepted a position
elsewhere in the organization), before the postponement, employees at
the organization's primary site had bee n taking daily fitness-for-duty
tests on a "dry-run" basis only. That is, employees who did not meet
their baselines could not perform safety-sensitive work that day, but
faced no disciplinary repercussions.
 
The program was suspended in response to DOT drug-and-alcohol testing 
regulations, which the organization must address for its employees in 
transportation-related positions by January of 1996. (Apparently, both
the fitness-for-duty and drug-and-alcohol policies described to me
during the interview phase of the research had been planned but were not
formally in place.) The organization decided to defer fitness-for-duty
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