Business

   

Benefits of a Smoke-free Workplace

For the employees

  • A smoke-free environment helps create a safe, healthy workplace.
  • A well planned and carefully implemented effort by the employer to address the effects of smoking on employees’ health and the health of their families shows the company cares.
  • Workers who are bothered by smoke will not be exposed to it at the worksite.
  • Smokers appreciate a clear company policy about smoking at work.
  • Managers are relieved when a process for dealing with smoking in the workplace is clearly defined.

For the employer

  • A smoke-free environment helps create a safe, healthy workplace.
  • Direct healthcare costs to the company are reduced.
  • Maintenance costs go down when smoke, matches, and cigarette butts are eliminated in facilities.
  • Office equipment, carpets, and furniture last longer.
  • It may be possible to negotiate lower health, life, and disability coverage as employee smoking is reduced.
  • The risk of fires is lower.

Taken from Making Your Workplace Smoke-free: A Decision Maker’s Guide.

Did you know?

Businesses:

  • Pay more in medical costs for smoking employees.  Each year, excess medical expenditures attributed to smoking for an adult smoker are over $1,600.

  • Pay for an average of 3 more sick days per year for smokers than nonsmokers.

  • Experience two times as much lost production time (LPT) per week for smokers as for workers who never smoked.  The average productivity losses attributed to smoking for each adult smoker are $1,760, per year.

  • Pay more in workers' compensation costs for smokers than for nonsmokers.

  • Receive a positive return on investment when they take steps to reduce employee smoking.

  • The single most cost-effective clinical prevention service that employers can offer employees is tobacco cessation assistance, which is considerably less than other disease prevention interventions such as treatment of blood cholesterol and high blood pressure.

Smoke-free worksite policies:

  • Result in smokers consuming fewer cigarettes each day and more success in quitting altogether than smokers employed in places that allow smoking.  And, support for smoke-free policy increases following implementation.

  • Reduce smokers and nonsmokers' risk of heart attack, lung cancer and other serious and costly illnesses.

  • Do not harm restaurants and bars - the impact of smoke-free restaurant and bar laws on sales or employment is neutral or positive, according to a comprehensive review of all studies using objective measures.

  • Smokers employed in a smoke-free workplace quit at a rate 84% higher than smokers working in places that are not smoke-free, according to an internal tobacco industry study.

  • The American Society of Heating and Ventilating Engineers (ASHRAE) is a nationally recognized source of technical information and standards for indoor ventilation.

  • In June 2005 they (ASHRAE) issued a position document stating ventilation does not eliminate the health hazards caused by second hand smoke, and the only effective means to do so is to ban smoking.

Taken from http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/index.htm.

 

Smoking Policies: 100% Smoke-free and Separately Ventilated Areas

Policy

Pros

Cons

Smoke-free
Smoking is not allowed inside any building or company vehicle. Smoking occurs only at designated outdoor smoking locations. Policy can be extended to prohibit smoking on company grounds. Then, employees who smoke will need to refrain from smoking throughout the workday or leave company grounds to smoke.

  • Complies with all laws and ordinances

  • Greatly reduces environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) exposure for all employees

  • Provides best health and safety benefits for employees

  • May reduce the number of cigarettes smoked by employees; may encourage employees to quit smoking

  • Decreases maintenance costs

  • Sends a clear message to employees

  • Easier to administer and enforce

  • Low cost to implement

  • Requires smokers to modify their behavior

  • Some costs may be incurred if outside smoking shelters are constructed

  • Employee smoking directly outside building impacts image

  • Inconvenience to employees who smoke

  • If not properly managed, smokers may be disproportionately absent from their work stations

Separately Ventilated Areas
Smoking is allowed only in designated smoking rooms. The rooms have separate ventilation systems designed to prevent ETS from leaking into other areas of the building.

  • Complies with most laws and ordinances

  • Reduces nonsmokers’ exposure to ETS

  • Allows smokers to stay indoors

  • May have adverse effects on smokers’ health

  • Building and maintaining separately ventilated lounges is expensive

  • Requires space

  • Ventilation systems may not adequately protect nonsmokers from ETS exposure

Taken from Making Your Workplace Smokefree: A Decision Maker’s Guide.

For educational materials on insurance coverage for tobacco use cessation treatments for businesses
http://www.cdc.gov/tobacco/educational_materials/cessation/

  • Smoke-free laws do not harm business at restaurants and bars
  • There is overwhelming scientific evidence that secondhand tobacco smoke is a direct cause of lung cancer (causing an estimated 3,000 non-smokers to die each year), heart disease (35,000 deaths each year), and lung and bronchial infections (affecting a quarter million children every year).
  • Smoke-free laws help protect restaurant and bar employees and patrons from the harms of secondhand smoke.
  • Smoke-free laws help the seven out of every ten smokers who want to quit smoking by providing them with public environments free from any pressure or temptation to smoke.

Taken from http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/

Employee Awareness

  • Restaurant and bar workers have much longer exposure than patrons.
  • Restaurant, bar, and casino workers are exposed to the highest levels of secondhand smoke of any occupational or demographic group.
  • Hospitality workers have less protection from secondhand smoke than any other group of workers.
  • Cotinine (which your body manufactures from the nicotine in secondhand smoke) is the most common biologic marker of secondhand smoke exposure.
  • Casino workers in a well-ventilated Atlantic City casino were found, at the end of their shifts, to have an average cotinine level attributable to secondhand smoke exposure 300-600% higher than other workers exposed to secondhand smoke on the job.

For more information go to www.tobaccoscam.ucsf.edu/Secondhand/Secondhand_yew.cfm

Business Kits

Business kits are available to businesses that are thinking about going tobacco free. The kits contain:

  • Did you know? (fact sheet)
  • It’s Good Clean Business. A Tool Kit for a Tobacco-Free Workplace. (booklet)
  • QuitLine notepad
  • QuitLine mouse pad
  • QuitLine poster with tear-off cards
  • QuitLine tote
  • QuitLine factsheet
  • QuitLine magnet
  • QuitLine coaster
  • The Hidden Dangers of Secondhand Smoke brochure
  • Branded? Brochure (spit tobacco)
  • QuitLine brochure
  • Post card to receive free materials (tobacco-free signs, mats, etc.) from the SD Department of Health Tobacco Control Program
  • Two (2) “This is a Tobacco-Free Building” window clings
  • Two (2) “ This is Tobacco-Free Building” laminated posters

To receive your free kit please contact:
Aberdeen Tobacco Prevention Coalition
NSU Counseling Center
1200 S. Jay Street
Aberdeen, SD 57401
(605) 626-2371

or

Janelle Wishard
NE Tobacco Prevention Coordinator
Human Service Agency
PO Box 1030
Watertown, SD  57201
(605) 884-3523
 

Follow this link to calculate how much money your business would get in return for investing in tobacco cessation assistance for your employees:
http://www.businesscaseroi.org/roi/apps/calculator/calcentry.aspx

For more information from the South Dakota Department of Health about going tobacco-free:
http://www.healthysd.gov/tobaccofree.html

 

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