Should You Hire People in Recovery?
Empowering second chances for the best hiring decisions
Alcohol creates a landmine of workplace risk, yet when someone comes to the hiring table after recovering, we get very nervous. Our first thought is to turn them away. Why is this? We fear relapse, of course, and turnover. We have a hard time trusting them. Plus, how strange for someone to not join in the drinking culture at Happy Hours, networking events, and beer cart Fridays. We don’t know how to handle sober people, and it makes us very uncomfortable.
I get it. I was in HR, and I understand your fear. Not drinking is a rebellion against the cultural norm. Many companies feed their employees drinks as a reward for good behavior or a week-long all-you-can-drink vacation for really good performance.
We don’t want to hire alcoholics or people with alcohol problems. We do want to hire people who drink, but drink the right way and the right amount. People who will drink the two drink tickets they were given at an event and not get out of hand. We all know the person with a problem. They got wasted and embarrassed themselves at the Christmas party, and we’ve been whispering about them ever since.
We turn our noses up when people drink too much. We turn our noses up even higher when people don’t drink at all. Not…
