By Rob Schiller, CEO, Impairment Science, Inc., developer of the DRUID® fitness-for-duty app
It might seem nonsensical to equate the evaluation of an employee’s fitness for on-the-job duty with the evaluation of a professional baseball player’s ability – but it’s not. The similarity is instructive.
In the 2011 baseball film Moneyball, the general manager of the Oakland Athletics, Billy Beane (played by Brad Pitt), is putting in place a data-driven, statistical approach to player selection. The team’s scouts, their traditional methods disrespected, are upset. The head scout pulls Billy aside to say:
“You don’t put a team together for the computer, Billy. Baseball isn’t just numbers. It’s not science. If it was, then anybody could do what we’re doing. But they can’t because they don’t know what we know. They don’t have our experience and they don’t have our intuition, okay?… There are intangibles that only baseball people understand. You’re discounting what scouts have done for 150 years.”
Billy responds sharply: “Adapt or die.”
The “intangibles” and “intuition” the head scout is referring to – their subjective approach – is captured in this dialogue among several scouts:
Artie: I like Perez. He swings like a man.
Keough: He swings like a man who swings at too much.
Artie: There’s some work needs to be done. I admit it. He needs to be reworked a little. But he’s noticeable.
Grady: He’s notable?
Artie: No, he’s noticeable. You notice him.
Keough: He’s got an ugly girlfriend.
Barry: What’s that mean?
Keough: Ugly girlfriend means no confidence.
Barry: Alright. That’s true.
Pittaro: I agree with Art. I like the way he walks into a room.
George: Passes the eye candy test. He’s got the looks. He’s ready to play the part. He just needs some playing time.
Keough: I’m just saying, his girlfriend’s a six.”
This lampoonish dialogue makes clear the scouts’ judgment is put into question, to say the least, by their subjective approach.
In the workplace, the subjective approach to determining whether an employee is fit for duty has been used from time immemorial. How else to determine, other than by scrutinizing appearance and behavior, whether someone is capable of performing their duties, especially if those duties put them or others at risk for their safety?
One relatively recent advance has been drug testing. Because the bodily presence of alcohol and certain drugs is correlated with cognitive and psychomotor impairment, a workplace drug test can help identify some employees who are not fit for duty. Note, however, that according to many scientific studies, the mere presence of some drugs – most noticeably cannabis – is not a valid indicator of cognitive and psychomotor impairment. Also, keep in mind that drugs and alcohol are only the tip of the impairment iceberg. Most impairment is caused by fatigue; illness; injury; chronic medical conditions; stress; or environmental conditions, such as extreme heat or cold. The bottom line is that drug testing, often thought of as a conclusive method to determine fitness for duty, cannot, in fact, get the job done alone.
Billy Bean’s Oakland Athletics had great success and became one of the most cost-effective teams in professional baseball because he put into place (alongside a tempered scouting team) a data-driven, statistical approach, which is now in general use across professional baseball and most other professional sports. Indeed, businesses of all types have been transformed through the use of data analytics. It promises to do the same for workplace safety.
A data-driven statistical approach using impairment-detection technology (IDT) recently has become available to employers to determine and measure employee impairment, including several neuroscience-based mobile apps that detect impairment from any cause. These tests, in a minute or two, take hundreds of digital measurements of neuropsychological indicators, such as hand-eye coordination, reaction time, decision-making, time estimation, and balance. These data are statistically integrated to calculate an impairment score. The score is data-driven and, most significantly, objective.
With the ever-increasing legalization and use of cannabis, the drug testing industry – offering a test that detects drug use, not necessarily impairment – is well-advised to incorporate an objective, data-driven approach to test for impairment.
As Billy Beane put it, “Adapt or die.”
Rob Schiller
CEO, Impairment Science, Inc.
Developer of the Druid fitness-for-duty app
rob@impairmentscience.com
www.impairmentscience.com
617-955-7862