Addiction doesn’t stay at home when an employee comes to work.

Substance use and behavioral addictions can affect performance, attendance, workplace safety, team dynamics, morale, and productivity. Yet the signs aren’t always obvious—especially when an employee continues to perform at a high level.

The Hidden Cost of Addiction in the Workplace is a 3-hour course designed to help workplace leaders recognize potential concerns, understand their impact, and respond more effectively.

Participants gain practical knowledge and strategies to support employees while maintaining appropriate workplace expectations and organizational responsibilities.

Managers and workplace leaders aren’t expected to diagnose addiction or serve as counselors. But they do need to know how to recognize concerning patterns, address workplace issues appropriately, and connect employees with available support.

This course explores how substance use disorders and behavioral addictions may appear in the workplace and how unresolved concerns can affect employees, teams, and the organization as a whole.

You’ll learn how to approach these situations with respectful communication, objective observation, appropriate documentation, and compassionate accountability.

Recognizing Workplace Warning Signs: Identify common indicators associated with substance misuse and behavioral addictions—including concerns that may be overlooked among high-performing or remote employees.

Understanding Addiction: Gain foundational knowledge of substance use disorders, behavioral addictions, reward pathways, and the neurological and behavioral science of addiction.

Understanding the Organizational Impact: Explore how addiction and behavioral health concerns can affect productivity, safety, morale, employee wellbeing, organizational culture, and operational and financial risk.

Today’s Behavioral Addictions: Learn how behavioral addictions, including sports gambling and compulsive digital behaviors, may present in workplace environments.

Responding Effectively: Explore practical leadership strategies for difficult conversations, documentation, employee support, appropriate workplace expectations, and compassionate accountability.

Creating a Recovery-Supportive Workplace: Understand the role of EAPs, psychological safety, stigma reduction, leadership practices, and workplace culture in supporting employee wellbeing and recovery.

• Human Resources professionals
• Managers and supervisors
• Organizational leaders
• Workplace wellness professionals
• Recovery-support professionals
• Professionals working in safety-sensitive environments
• Individuals involved in workplace behavioral health initiatives

This isn’t just addiction theory.

Through workplace scenarios, case studies, manager self-assessments, organizational reflection, and leadership response strategies, participants learn how to apply the information to real-world workplace situations.

By the end of the course, participants will be better prepared to recognize warning signs, understand potential organizational risks, respond appropriately to employee concerns, and help create a workplace where accountability and employee support can coexist.

Ignoring workplace concerns doesn’t make them disappear. But responding without understanding can create problems of its own.

The Hidden Cost of Addiction in the Workplace gives leaders the knowledge and practical strategies to recognize concerns, reduce organizational risk, support employees appropriately, and respond with greater confidence.

Understand the signs. Recognize the impact. Know how to respond.