A distribution center in Lawrenceville called us last October about a forklift operator who'd been on their floor for three weeks. A near-miss on the dock triggered a reasonable suspicion test. The operator tested positive for marijuana. The facility manager assumed we'd handle the termination and documentation, since the worker was technically our employee. Our account manager assumed the client would handle the on-site portion and notify us of the outcome. Nobody had spelled it out in the contract.
We sorted it out. The operator was removed from the site the same day the result came in, which was right. But the documentation gap almost caused a problem for the facility's drug-free workplace certification, because the chain of custody had no clear owner on our side until we went digging.
Under Georgia's Drug-Free Workplace Act (OCGA Title 34, Chapter 9, Article 11), the party required to hold the drug-free workplace certification is the legal employer. In most staffing arrangements, that's the staffing agency, since it carries the workers' comp policy and runs payroll. The client site sets the operational requirements: which panels, what cadence, whether pre-placement testing is mandatory. Who pays depends on who mandates the test — Georgia law at OCGA § 34-9-415 puts the cost on the party that requires it. The cleanest arrangement documents all of this in the staffing agreement before the first worker arrives.
What OCGA § 34-9-415 Actually Requires
Georgia's Drug-Free Workplace Act sits in Title 34, Chapter 9, Article 11 of the Official Code of Georgia — the same chapter as the workers' compensation statute, because the whole program is built around a financial incentive. Certified employers get a 7.5% reduction in their workers' comp premiums. The State Board of Workers' Compensation administers the program. A $35 annual fee and a copy of your certificate to your carrier each year keeps the discount running.
OCGA § 34-9-415 specifically covers how testing must be conducted. Pre-employment testing is required after a conditional offer is extended. Post-accident testing is required whenever an on-the-job injury results in lost worktime. Reasonable suspicion testing is authorized when a supervisor documents the observable basis. Return-to-duty testing is required after an employee completes a substance abuse rehab program. All testing has to use labs certified by SAMHSA or the College of American Pathologists. Any positive initial result must be confirmed by GC/MS (gas chromatography/mass spectrometry) before action is taken. Employers must notify employees in writing of a positive result within five business days, and employees have five days to contest or explain the result.
None of that is unusual for a well-run program. The issue in staffing arrangements is that the word "employer" is doing a lot of work in that statute, and it doesn't mean the same thing in every context.
For purposes of the Drug-Free Workplace Act, "employer" refers to the entity that holds the workers' comp policy. In a temp staffing arrangement, that's almost always the staffing agency. The client site is what OSHA calls the "host employer" for worksite safety purposes. Under OCGA § 34-9-415, the agency is the covered employer, not the client. That setup works fine when everyone understands it — and breaks down when they don't.
Who Runs the Program When a Staffing Agency Is Involved
Here's how the split works in our accounts, and how we'd frame it in any similar arrangement.
The staffing agency is responsible for pre-placement testing. Before any worker steps onto a client site, we run the pre-employment screen — usually a 5-panel or 10-panel urine test, depending on what the client requires. If the worker tests positive, they don't get placed. That's the agency's side of the table, and it's the agency's cost under Georgia law since we're the party requiring the test.
The agency also maintains the SBWC drug-free workplace certification, which covers the workers it places at client sites for workers' comp purposes. The certification applies to the agency, not the client.
The client site runs the ongoing program for workers after placement. Reasonable suspicion testing happens when a supervisor on the client's floor observes behavior that warrants it. Post-accident testing happens after any incident resulting in lost worktime. Any random testing the client requires as an ongoing condition of working at their facility also falls on the client side. The client's supervisors are typically the people who observe and document the reasonable suspicion behavior that triggers a test — so they're the ones who need to know the protocol.
For a while, we assumed pre-placement testing covered the agency's obligations and the client would handle everything that happened afterward. That assumption worked fine until a situation like the Lawrenceville call above, where a reasonable suspicion test on-site produced a positive result and nobody had defined who sent the chain of custody documentation back to us. We fixed it. We also updated our standard contract language.
We staff 27 accounts across Georgia. We've watched this particular gap create confusion in at least a dozen different ways. The ones that resolved cleanly were the accounts where the staffing agreement had a drug testing protocol section that named each party's role at each step of the process.
Post-Accident Testing: The Workers' Comp Denial Nobody Plans For
The financial stakes of post-accident drug testing in Georgia are higher than most operations teams realize when they sign a staffing contract.
If a worker tests positive for drugs within eight hours of an on-the-job injury — or positive for alcohol within three hours — Georgia law creates a presumption that the intoxication was the proximate cause of the injury. That presumption gives the workers' comp insurer grounds to deny the claim. An unjustified refusal to test carries the same legal weight as a positive result.
The 7.5% premium discount is the thing employers mention when they set up a DFWP program. The claim denial provision is what actually matters in a bad year.
For a staffing agency managing workers' comp across multiple industrial accounts, a consistent post-accident testing program isn't just a compliance requirement. It's a real factor in the premium cost over time. If a DART case produces a positive post-accident test within the statutory window, the claim can be denied. If there's no test — because nobody remembered to order one in the first eight hours — the claim pays out and the premium takes the hit.
Quest Diagnostics' 2024 Drug Testing Index found positivity rates of 7.4% in manufacturing and 5.9% in transportation and warehousing, both above the 4.4% rate for the general U.S. workforce. Fentanyl is a growing concern specifically because it showed up in random workplace tests at seven times the rate of pre-employment tests — which tells you something about the limits of a program that only screens at the door.
The client site is almost always the party physically close enough to execute the post-accident test within the eight-hour window. The agency is almost always the party whose workers' comp policy depends on it. That's the most consequential split in a staffing drug testing arrangement, and it needs to be spelled out.
Who Pays, and What Happens When the Contract Is Silent
Georgia law is direct here. OCGA § 34-9-415 puts the cost of a required test on the party that requires it. Pre-placement tests required by the agency are the agency's cost. Site-specific random or post-accident tests required by the client are the client's cost. An employee who wants an additional test beyond what the employer requires pays for it themselves.
A standard 5-panel urine screen at an occupational health clinic runs $30 to $60. A 10-panel test is in the $50 to $60 range. Hair follicle tests, which some clients require for safety-sensitive roles, run $100 to $150. For an agency placing 20 workers a month at the 5-panel rate, pre-placement testing adds up to $600 to $1,200 per month in direct cost. Some agencies include a testing markup in the bill rate structure and pass part of it through; others absorb it as a cost of program quality. Either approach can work as long as the contract says which one.
What creates arguments is silence. We've had clients assume the bill rate covers all testing for the life of the placement, including a random program they add later. We've had the opposite — clients who figured the agency handles everything and never thought to check. Neither assumption holds up once someone actually needs to document who authorized a test.
The cleanest setup we've seen is a single section in the staffing agreement that names the pre-placement panel type, identifies who runs post-accident testing and how results flow back to the agency, and specifies who bears any random testing costs the client adds after placement begins. One page. It takes about 30 minutes to agree on. It saves a lot of back-and-forth later.
What to Settle Before the First Worker Walks In
Before a first placement begins, there are five questions worth putting in the contract explicitly:
Which testing panel does this client require? A 5-panel is standard for most light industrial work. Clients with DOT-regulated drivers often need a 10-panel or specific confirmation requirements. If the site has federal contracts, there may be additional requirements. State the panel type so there's no renegotiation mid-contract when a client decides to add a specific substance.
Who conducts post-accident testing, and within what timeframe? The eight-hour window is short. The client site needs to own the execution. The agency needs to receive the documentation. Both parties should know what occupational health clinic handles the testing so nobody is hunting for a phone number while someone is already hurt.
How does chain of custody documentation flow back to the agency? The positive result often reaches the client site first. Define who sends it to the agency and within what timeframe. The agency holds the workers' comp policy — it needs the documentation to act.
What happens if a worker refuses to test? Under Georgia law, an unjustified refusal carries the same consequences as a positive result for workers' comp purposes. The agency needs to know immediately, not two days later.
Who bears the cost of any random testing beyond pre-placement? If the client adds a random testing requirement after placement begins, is that cost passed through in the bill rate, invoiced separately, or absorbed by the agency? Agreeing on this upfront avoids a billing dispute at the end of the quarter.
For a broader view of what belongs in a staffing contract before work begins, our staffing agency SLA guide covers the agreement terms that matter most for light industrial accounts. And for the compliance documentation that often runs alongside drug screening — work authorization, E-Verify, I-9 recordkeeping — the I-9 and E-Verify compliance guide for Georgia employers walks through how those obligations split between agency and client as well.
We run drug-free workplace programs across our accounts in Gainesville, Lawrenceville, Conyers, Smyrna, and the Atlanta MSA. Pre-placement screening and SBWC certification are part of our standard program. If you want to talk through how drug testing fits into a new staffing arrangement, or if you're reviewing an existing agreement that doesn't cover this clearly, Get Started and let us know what you're working with.
