By Adrienne Erin
Contributor, Online Career Tips
If you’re a smoker, you probably take a few breaks throughout the day to light up. While more casual smokers may spend around 10 to 15 minutes during their workday on a cigarette break, serious smokers can spend up to an hour a day getting their nicotine fix. Most employees can take breaks while still being paid. That means that smokers can cost their employers thousands of dollars per year for the time they get paid to smoke.
As times are changing, many employers are reevaluating their policies regarding smoking breaks. More and more companies are deciding to cut back or eliminate smoking breaks. Not only do these breaks cut down productivity, they also unfairly favor smokers over non-smokers. Here are a few ways smoking breaks are harmful to both individuals and their employers.
Health Care Costs
We’ve known for years that smoking is detrimental to an individual’s overall health. Smoking not only damages your teeth, makes it more difficult to breathe and aggravates existing conditions like asthma and allergies — it also leads to serious, potentially fatal conditions like heart disease and cancer.
It is true that those who only take a hit occasionally or only smoke ecigs may not damage their health to quite the extent of the two-packs-a-day chain smoker. Nevertheless, the health care costs of most smokers are significantly higher than most non-smokers. Because many companies provide health care benefits to workers, they are paying more for employees who smoke. Does it really make sense for these companies to allow smoking breaks if they damage the health of the employees and cost them more in benefit packages?
Paid Breaks = Recess for Adults?
Some human resources professionals liken smoking breaks to recess for adults. In elementary school, recess meant time away from work to help students relax and reenergize for the rest of the day. Isn’t that much the same of what a smoking break does for adults? Most smokers will take two 15-minute smoking breaks per workday — together that’s about the same time as a grade school recess.
The time employees spend on smoking breaks costs companies millions of dollars per year. As mentioned above, employers not only lose work time for smokers, they also have to pay more in benefits. On average, if an employee smokes a half hour a day, a company will lose over $3,000 a year. Even if an individual only smokes eight minutes a day, which is probably not realistic, his or her employer will lose around $1,600 per year.
Smoking Breaks Aren’t Just Breaks
You might argue that pointing out exactly how much the time is lost on smoking breaks isn’t fair. Non-smokers take breaks too, and even if they don’t, everyone eventually loses productivity for some reason. If you feel this way it may surprise you to learn smokers’ lost productivity extends far beyond the time they spend on cigarette breaks. Smokers in general are less productive than non-smokers throughout the workday. Nicotine is a powerful drug, and cravings for the drug can significantly decrease a person’s ability to concentrate. Smokers begin to go through withdrawal symptoms in as little as 30 minutes after a cigarette break. That means even though nicotine provides a temporary reprieve, smoking at all can be detrimental to your performance.
Policies Regarding Smokers
Some companies aren’t just cutting cigarette breaks — they’re even reluctant to hire smokers for open positions. While this isn’t strictly legal, it does show just how serious some companies are about cutting back on smoking. Businesses can’t punish employees for being smokers, but they can eliminate smoking breaks or ban people from smoking on company property.
Do you feel smoking affects productivity in the workplace? Knowing the facts, would you support an office ban on smoking? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
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