Should You Help Employees to Stop Smoking?
Once you start adding up all the variables, it does actually make sense to help your employees to stop smoking – if possible. Consider the following to determine the effect it has on your business:
1. The upfront cost
Every time a smoker leaves his or her job to go out and smoke, you as an employer are paying for the time it takes to reach the designated smoking zone, have a smoke and return to work. Depending on where the smoker’s area is located, reaching it can take anything from a few seconds to a number of minutes to get to it.
Now calculate how regularly your staff smokes, how long it takes them, and how much it costs you – not only in terms of what you pay them, but in terms of what their labour is worth to you in terms of income per hour (calculated individually for each employee).
2. The time lost
If you are working on a hourly rate, you will find that smoking employees are less productive then the non-smoking ones. As such, it diminishes the capacity of your business in terms of available man-hours. If the smoker is a salesperson, it could even cost you money in sales lost due to poor service or unavailability.
3. Unavailability
While the smoker is busy with his or her break, he or she is not able to perform any tasks – some of which might be simple, and would take little time, and some of which might be urgent, and now have to wait until the employee returns.
4. The effect on other employees
While the smoker is busy having a smoke (somewhere in a designated smoking area as required by law), he or she is unavailable to others who need to coordinate, obtain permission, or give instructions. As such, the unavailability of this person affects the productivity of other employees as well, resulting in an added financial burden.
The total impact of this will depend on the type of business you run, the total number of personnel available, and which key functions the said person fulfills. Even a driver that is unavailable when something needs to be delivered immediately, can have an impact on the quality of the service you offer your clients, which could eventually translate into diminishing income.
5. Unfair treatment causes resentment
Employees who smoke are entitled to regular smoking breaks. Do you offer the same time off to non-smoking personnel? Or do you pay them extra because they are more productive? Probably not. As such, the non-smokers are being treated unfairly, since you expect more from them, whilst not rewarding them for it.
The end result is that smokers and non-smokers eventually develop a mutual resentment – since the smokers can invariably sense the animosity towards them. As such, the tension between the two groups is likely to – at some or other stage – have a negative impact on working relationships, which in turn will result in a negative impact on your revenue.
That leaves you – as an employer – with three choices:
a. Cut all smoke breaks – at the risk of having grumpy, irritated staff not capable of performing or working with the team. Hardly if sound choice from a productivity point of view.
b. Make the smokers work extra time for what they take off during working hours. Possible, yes. Practical – not always. Someone has to be there to oversee them, tying that person up for an additional period of time as well, and costing you money.
c. Help as many of your employees as possible to stop smoking. You could offer to subsidise the cost of their treatment or products, with the understanding that those who fall back into smoking will have to pay you back.
You could even combine the offer with a decision to cut all smoke breaks.
Which-ever way you choose to do it, helping them stop smoking will probably be the cheapest option (in the long run).
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