Addiction at the workplace
As a supervisor or a team member, you are likely to be one of the first to notice when a colleague shows initial signs of addiction at the workplace.
Most people feel uneasy or unsure of how to address the problem; the signs are often trivialised, covered up or ignored. Which is a shame, for if someone only spoke with the person at an early stage, he or she could help them interrupt their downward spiral into addiction.
To provide some guidance in this matter, the University of Münster updated its “Work agreement on preventing dangerous consumption or addictive patterns of behaviour and dealing with problems of addiction at the workplace” (for short: WA Addiction) in 2022. Our professional training programme was also supplemented with related seminars to increase awareness of the issue and help employees address addiction-related problems.