You don't need to be a counselor. You need to know what to do in the next five minutes. Pick the situation you're in.
Before HR. Before EAP.
Small and early beats big and late. Most supervisors wait until the problem is undeniable, which is usually months too late.
Late twice this week. Quality slipping. A near miss Tuesday. Write down what you actually observed, with dates. You are noticing, not diagnosing. You don't need to know why, and it's not your job to figure it out.
Somewhere quiet, no audience, no clipboard.
Ask, then be quiet. Silence is uncomfortable and it works. You are not there to fix anything, relate everything back to your own story, or fill the air.
Know your options before the conversation: a peer supporter, the EAP, the union MAP if there is one, a doctor.
The second conversation is what tells them the first one was real. Put it on your own calendar so it actually happens.
It probably took them weeks to work up to this. How you respond in the first five minutes decides whether anyone else on your crew ever tells you anything.
Stop what you're doing. Put the phone down. Your face is doing most of the talking right now.
Don't promise total secrecy you can't keep. Promise what you can actually deliver.
A name and a personal introduction beats a brochure every time. If you have a trained peer, offer to connect them directly. If it's the EAP, offer to sit with them while they make the first call.
Disclosure is not a performance problem. Watch for the quiet stuff: getting pulled off good work, left off the overtime list, talked about. If honesty costs people opportunity, honesty stops.
This is a safety call before it's anything else. You'd pull anyone unfit for duty off the tools, whatever the reason. Same call here.
Off the tools, out of the seat, off the deck. Calmly and without an audience. You do not need to be certain about the cause to act on what you're seeing.
If your company has a reasonable suspicion process, this is exactly what it's for. Get a second trained observer if policy calls for one. Document facts with times: what you observed, not what you concluded. Loop in HR per your policy, and the union rep if there is one.
They do not drive. Not to the testing site, not home, not around the corner. Arrange the ride and confirm it happened. If they insist on driving, tell them you'll have to call it in, and mean it.
The parking lot on the worst day of someone's work life is not where change starts. When they're back and fit for duty, sit down. This is where the door to help opens. Use the disclosure playbook from this guide, because there's a good chance you're about to hear one.
They did the hard part. The return is where companies quietly undo it, usually with silence and awkwardness rather than anything on paper.
A phone call the week before beats a hallway surprise. Ask two questions: what do you want people to know, and what do you want kept quiet. Their story is theirs to tell, or not.
Normal work, normal tone, normal expectations. No welcome-back banner, no meaningful looks, no kid-glove assignments. The best welcome back is a regular Tuesday.
If there's a return-to-work agreement, make sure they understand every line of it, including what happens if they stumble. Ambiguity breeds anxiety, and anxiety is a lousy foundation for early recovery.
The first crew barbecue. The first "let's grab a beer" after a big pour. Have real non-alcoholic options ready without making a production of it. Nobody in early recovery wants to be the reason the party changed.
Week one. Week four. End of the first quarter. Brief and private. Then back off. The goal is a coworker, not a project.
These four playbooks are the free version of a training we deliver in person, where supervisors rehearse the actual conversations with someone who has been on both sides of them. Reading a guide helps. Practicing out loud, in a room made safe enough to be honest, is what holds up at 6am on a Tuesday. Here's how the training works.
Maybe you opened this to help someone on your crew, and somewhere in these steps a quieter question showed up about you. That wondering is worth paying attention to, and it doesn't have to mean anything about anything. Curiosity is not a confession. And if you want a place to start that doesn’t involve telling anyone anything, try the quietest experiment I know: take 30 days off and just notice what happens. No labels, no announcements, no decisions. The noticing is the whole assignment.