The voluntary Ohio BWC Drug Free Safety Program encourages employers to detect and deter substance use and misuse, and take appropriate corrective action. As an incentive, participating employers may be eligible for a 10 percent to 20 percent discount on their workers compensation premiums for up to 5 years. In addition, to qualify for the discounts, employers must fulfill program requirements by the end the first quarter of the program year. This could be thousands of dollars in savings.

These are the five basic requirements: Employee education (2 hours); Supervisor training (4 hours); written substance abuse policy, drug and alcohol testing and employee assistance. The employer MUST certify to the BWC that they have implemented the Drug Free Safety (DFSP) program.

The Drug Free EZ Program requires a mandatory (1 hour) employee training and (2 hours) for supervisors, both courses are also available online.

Until now, to fulfill the requirements, employers hired live trainers to conduct a session, which can be costly and time consuming. Supervisors find it difficult to remove their employees from the daily job responsibilities to participate in the training.

SACS Consulting and Ontimetraining have developed two distance learning education courses the Drug Free Safety Program for both supervisors and employees and two for the Drug Free EZ Program, for employers with 25 or fewer employees, on average.

These courses are completely online and self-paced. The courses come complete with online testing and tracking to ensure certified results, even if accessed from home! These courses can replace the traditional method of training; online training is far more cost effective and efficient.

And yes...These courses fulfill the BWC requirements for education!

How does your company get started? Just call (800) 745-7219 x102 for details.

Further information regarding DFWP requirements can be gathered from www.gsd.das.ohio.gov/sao/dfwp.htm