You will not see skills in spotting substance abuse as a popular and well promoted supervisor training topic, however, every supervisor should be educated in this topic. Essentially, reasonable suspicion training is about spotting two things 1) Signs and symptoms of substance abuse actively being used in the workplace or the withdrawal symptoms thereof; and, 2) performance related signs and symptoms that may have absolutely nothing to do with alcoholism or drug addiction, but serve as the basis for a referral to a professional counselor where a personal problem, if existing--including substance abuse--can be identified and referred for treatment by a professional.
Examples of substance abuse signs and symptoms can be found here:
On this chart. . . .
And
workplace performance related signs and symptoms can be found here:
On this chart.....
Together these two sets of signs and symptoms will give supervisors most of what they need to confront an employee and refer for possible drug/alcohol use on the job or referral to an
employee assistance program. The video on
reasonable suspicion training located here will lead you to a non-dot and dot supervisor training option for pulling this program together.
