Hiring Process Improvement Update - Changes to Pre-Employment Substance Abuse Testing for Certain DOE Federal Employees

August 10, 2022 MEMORANDUM FOR HEADS OF DEPARTMENTAL ELEMENTS FROM: ERIN MOORE CHIEF HUMAN CAPITAL OFFICER SUBJECT: Hiring Process Improvement Update – Changes to Pre- Employment Substance Abuse Testing for Certain DOE Federal Employees In accordance with Executive Order 12564 and Public Law 100-71, the Department of Energy (DOE) remains committed to maintaining a Drug-Free workplace. As part of the Office of the Chief Human Capital Officer’s (HC) continuous review to improve hiring processes, an internal assessment of DOE’s existing Substance Abuse Program was conducted. It was determined certain requirements are redundant and unnecessarily delay DOE’s overall internal hiring process. Currently, DOE Order (O) 343.1, Federal Substance Abuse Testing Program, section 4.e, requires DOE employees in Testing Designated Positions (TDP) to resubmit a pre- employment drug testing when transferring to another TDP within DOE. To avoid this duplicative requirement and improve hiring efficiency when filling these critical positions, the pre-employment testing requirements for current DOE Federal employees assigned to a TDP are removed. In such cases, when a current TDP employee is selected for another TDP, they may now be transferred into the new position without submitting a pre-employment drug test. Such employees will remain subject to random, reasonable suspicion, follow-up, post-accident, post-incident, and return-to-duty testing as required in DOE O 343.1. This interim change does not affect any other pre-employment drug testing requirements outlined in DOE O 343.1. All non-DOE applicants tentatively selected for a TDP and all current DOE Federal employees entering a TDP for the first time will remain subject to pre- employment testing before entering the new DOE TDP. This interim change also does not modify the requirements for DOE employees assigned to the Human Reliability Program and DOE employees subject to the Department of Transportation requirements. HC will continue to assess internal needs related to the Federal Substance Abuse Testing Program and will remove the pre-employment drug testing requirement for current DOE TDP employees in a future DOE O 343.1 update. Questions concerning this memorandum should be directed to Kimberly Matthews-Williams, the Department’s Substance Abuse Program Manager, at Kimberly.Matthews-Williams@hq.doe.gov or (202) 586-9844. https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/codification/executive-order/12564.html https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/workplace/public_law_100.pdf https://www.directives.doe.gov/directives-documents/300-series/0343.1-BOrder mailto:Kimberly.Matthews-Williams@hq.doe.gov