Yesterday we looked at the costs and complexities surrounding workplace smoking, including increased healthcare costs and absenteeism, decreased productivity, the relative rights of smokers and nonsmokers, and inconsistencies in the number and length of breaks. Today we look at tips for limiting the impact of smoking on your bottom line, including the most important of these—getting your workers to stop smoking.
Employers should familiarize themselves with the smoking laws of their state, county, and municipality. Whatever those laws, however, employers can limit liability for future exposure by instituting a smoke-free workplace policy. Consider these points:
- Decide whether to ban, or only limit, smoking on grounds, in parking lots, or in company vehicles.
- Explain why the policy is necessary; if the policy is based on a state or local law, identify it.
- Emphasize that employees who lie about their smoking status to gain reduced premiums may be disciplined.
- Distribute a copy of the policy to all employees and post it.
- Instruct supervisors to review the policy with employees.
- Enforce the policy through the disciplinary process. Make no exceptions.
- Do not discipline employees who attempt to see that the smoking policy is enforced.
Think you have no time to train? Think again. BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer helps you fulfill all key OSHA-required training tasks in as little as 7 minutes. Try it at no cost and see!
The Benefits of Cessation
Getting workers to quit smoking is clearly the most beneficial action you can take to curb smoking’s impact on your bottom line—and on your workers’ health and longevity. Take a look at these statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC):
- Ten percent of smokers alive today are living with a smoking-related illness.
- Men who smoke incur $15,800 (in 2002 dollars) more in lifetime medical expenses and are absent from work 4 days more per year than men who do not smoke.
- Women who smoke incur $17,500 (in 2002 dollars) more in lifetime medical expenses and are absent from work 2 days more each year than nonsmoking women.
The National Business Group on Health adds that businesses pay an average of $2,189 in workers’ compensation costs for smokers, compared with $176 for nonsmokers. And the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicines says that smokers cost employers $4,430 per year in lost productivity.
Accentuate the Positive
As a personal note from a former smoker, repeated warnings about the dangers of smoking (lung cancer, heart attack, stroke, emphysema, etc.) can become so much “background noise.” A tack that can prove much more attention-getting is underscoring the benefits of quitting smoking. BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer provides some eye-opening statistics to share with workers who smoke, including how quickly after cessation health benefits are realized:
- 20 minutes: Blood pressure and pulse rate return to normal.
- 8 hours: Blood oxygen and carbon monoxide levels become normal.
- 24 hours: Heart attack risk begins to decline.
- 2 weeks to 3 months: Lung function and blood circulation improve.
- 1 to 9 months: Less coughing and shortness of breath, more energy.
- 1 year: Risk of coronary heart disease is cut in half.
- 5 years: Risk of dying from lung cancer is cut in half.
- 5 to 15 years: Risk of stroke is the same as someone who has never smoked.
- 10 years: Risk of lung cancer death is almost equal to someone who has never smoked.
- 15 years: Risk of coronary heart disease is the same as someone who has never smoked.
The 7-Minute Safety Trainer session titled “Are You Ready to Quit Smoking?” provides you with a detailed trainer’s outline as well as an illustrated handout, quiz, and quiz answers to get your message across quickly—and cost-effectively.
All told, this “trainer’s bible” contains 50 prewritten meetings covering almost every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. The major topics include:
- Confined spaces
- Electrical safety
- Fire safety and emergency response
- HazCom
- Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
- Material handling
- PPE use and care
- Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls
- and dozens more
Just make as many copies as needed of the included handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train.
Can you picture safety training in effective, 7-minute sessions? Get the details.
Equally important is that when new or changed regulations compel new training topics or training needs to be freshened, the program ships new meetings every quarter. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over $1 a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.
If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days, on a no-cost, no-obligation trial basis. Just let us know and we’ll arrange it.