The European Alcohol and Health Forum2 requested in the spring of 2010 the Science Group to provide a summary of the evidence base and advice for possible actions by Forum members to address the Strategy’s goals of preventing alcohol-related harm among adults and reducing the negative impact on the workplace (Annex I). In particular, the Science Group was asked to provide:

1. A quantification of the impact on alcohol on the workplace, and an evaluation of the effects on the productivity of the EU workforce.

2. A concise overview of the current state of play across Europe, highlighting key trends and/or any variations in national or sector experiences as well as between larger or smaller workplace settings.

3. Any pointers towards:
(a) High value options for additional research or collection of additional data and indicators;

(b) Effective approaches to consider for wider deployment in more workplace settings,including any guidance as to the need for prioritisation of action targeting particular sectoral, professional or age specific groups.

The Chair of the Science Group suggested the establishment of a dedicated Working Group to prepare a scientific report on the topic. The Working Group consisted of the following persons: Professor Peter Anderson (chair), Dr. Marjana Martinic, Dr. Anders Romelsjö.

The report in Part I deals with items 1 and 3 of the above task requests. The content of the report includes the impact of alcohol on productivity both in work (absenteeism and presenteeism) as well as out of work (unemployment) as these are all related, particularly in times of economic downturn, when workers need to be re integrated back into the workforce.

The report in Part II, Approaches to reducing alcohol related harm in the workplace, describes a number of workplace interventions in practice implemented by beverage alcohol producer companies. While workplace interventions are applied across many industries and sectors, these companies were selected because they are members of the Alcohol and Health Forum and information about their practices was accessible to the Science group.