A pioneering business in the employee assistance field is marking 40 years in business.

Benedict Associates was formed in the wake of landmark Archibald reports in the 1980s that followed The Royal Commission on the Use and Misuse of Illicit Drugs and Alcohol.

The organisation has helped thousands of employees over the years and remains a leading provider of comprehensive workplace assistance solutions in Bermuda.

Founder and managing director Vaughn Mosher, who has been there all along, recalls how the first clients came to be in a programme that was imported into the island from the United States.

Mr Mosher has played a key role globally in the development of the employee assistance programme model.

He said that local services have widened and are felt across the community throughout local and international companies.

Mr Mosher recalled the work done during 15 to 20 years in collaboration with trade unions, eager to ensure their members were beneficiaries of the programmes. It was like a triangle he said, including labour, management and with Benedict as the third leg.

He conceded that the collaboration lessened over the years, when the market changed and the Bermuda Industrial Union sought another solution.

He said: “We were independent agents working on behalf of the company and the employee, represented by the union.”

Mr Mosher said: “We used to do a lot with the union, and the drug-free workplace was really solid in 16 or 17 hotels by the late 1990s.

“We just don’t work much with labour any more. There just does not seem to be a need. We are always happy to do that. I think the BIU in particular, has had their own in-house member association. So, maybe that’s it.

“But certainly there are companies where there is still labour, from time to time where we have a shop steward that we might talk to, but we’re not right in there full force with labour like we used to be.”

Canadian addictions pioneer David Archibald was brought to Bermuda in the 1980s specifically to head the Royal Commission on Drugs, where he authored two reports detailing how the island should tackle its burgeoning substance abuse crisis.

These studies of Bermuda’s drug policies, and subsequently on policing on the island, warned that Bermuda treated drug offenders with a racial bias.

The first Archibald report led to the formation of the National Alcohol and Drug Agency to establish a more humane and rehabilitative social approach to substance abuse, as opposed to strict criminal incarceration.

A second Archibald report in 1985 was critical of the criminal justice system’s approach.

It was after this that Benedict Associates Ltd was conceived, a pioneering coping service for employees that also enabled business towards enhanced performance and organisational health.