Opinions please All our office staff will be offered a glass of wine later this week (during working hours) to celebrate a business achievement. I'm not a kill joy or anything and its only one glass of wine but; this will only be offered to office workers and not to warehouse operatives - e.g. forklift drivers etc. What are you thoughts on this - my view is a matter of consistency across the organisation. If it is not deemed safe for someone in a safety sensitive position then the same should apply to someone in an office environment. ??????????

Good point - I entirely agree with that -but they have already bought the wine and its not alcohol free. I'm sat at my desk now trying some - (last sentence "not true")

Personally I won't have a drink if Im going to be driving anywhere afterwards, hopefully you've plenty of employees with the same thought process and will simply decline if they have to drive home later that day. I'd suggest to your employees offerign the non-alcolholic option to the others anyway so at least there is a choice for poeple and it can be an all inclusive show of appreciation. I imagine their intended show of appreciation will backfire when the warehouse guys are excluded. Good luck with that :-)

I agree with what others have said - if employees are going to drive home, they should not consume anything alcoholic, period. They may feel pressured into taking a glass at the celebration, not wanting to offend. The only way around this, given that the wine has been purchased, is to offer a non-alcoholic alternative, and make this clear when offering the wine out. It is a strange situation, as consuming alcohol within business hours would normally be considered a disciplinary offence. I do think that it's rather thoughtless of your company to assume that everyone will be ok with drinking wine. It may be only one glass, but even that will have an effect on people, some more than others, and it's irresponsible to do this and then let emplyees drive home (if they're travelling by public transport, that would be better). It will probably make you as popular as the pox for pointing this out to your employers, but such is the lot of safety people, and someone needs to do it.

The answer is, of course, simple. Follow your D&A policy. Either you allow alcohol consumption at work or you don't. If you don't have a D&A policy........................sounds like you need one.