What you might be experiencing
Suspecting employee substance abuse puts you in an uncomfortable and genuinely difficult position. You may be seeing a pattern — absences, declining work quality, mood shifts, or moments that feel like possible impairment — and wondering whether to say something, how to say it, and whether you might be wrong. That uncertainty is appropriate. Managers are not clinicians, and you cannot and should not attempt to diagnose what is happening.
What makes this harder is that the stakes run in multiple directions at once. There is the employee's wellbeing. There is the safety of your team if the role involves any physical risk. There is the legal landscape, which in many places treats addiction as a disability with specific protections. And there is the human relationship — someone you work with, possibly someone you have managed for years. Acting on stigma or rumor without documentation can damage all of those things at once.
What can help
The most protective thing you can do — for the employee, for your team, and for yourself — is to keep your documentation grounded in observable, work-related facts. Record specific dates, performance concerns, policy violations, and safety incidents. Note what you saw or heard, not what you concluded. This distinction matters legally and ethically.
Before taking any formal disciplinary step, consult your HR department and, if your organization has one, legal counsel. Employment laws on this vary significantly by location and industry, and addiction may trigger disability-related obligations that require careful handling. If your company offers an Employee Assistance Program, you can mention it when addressing performance concerns as a confidential resource available to all employees — without naming substance use as your suspicion. If you observe clear signs of impairment at work, treat it as a safety matter first: remove the person from any hazardous duties and follow your organization's established impairment protocols rather than improvising.
Address performance directly and consistently. Clear expectations, documented conversations, and consequences that follow company policy protect everyone involved — and give the employee a concrete picture of what needs to change, regardless of what is behind the decline.
When to reach out
Getting support from the right people is not a sign that a situation has become unmanageable — it is simply how workplace issues involving health, law, and safety are meant to be handled. HR exists precisely for situations like this, where the personal and the professional intersect in ways that carry real risk if handled informally.
Reach out to HR as soon as you have documented concerns you are considering acting on. Loop in legal counsel if your organization has access to one, particularly before any formal disciplinary process begins. If your company has an Employee Assistance Program, connect with them too — they can often advise managers, not just employees. If at any point you observe behavior that poses an immediate safety risk to the employee or others, follow your emergency and safety procedures without delay.
If the employee discloses that they are struggling — or if the situation escalates in a way that suggests they are in personal crisis — encourage them to seek professional support. If you're in the US and need immediate support for yourself or someone in crisis, you can call or text 988 (Suicide & Crisis Lifeline) at any time.