How Much Can (or Should) You Encourage Off-Duty Health and Safety?

There are many reasons that companies institute policies to promote employee safety, including legal or regulatory reasons, strengthening their culture of safety, optimizing employee productivity, or for purely altruistic reasons. But outside of the workplace, can and should your company encourage off-duty safety?

Factors Influencing an Off-Duty Focus

There are some key factors that will have an impact on the extent to which you may decide to take steps to influence employee safety when off duty. They include:

• Company Culture. Many companies may feel that encouraging certain safe behaviors after hours can help promote a culture of safety in the workplace. For example, providing informational settings about the benefits of general safe driving practices for a transportation company.
• Productivity. Injured and sick employees are often unable to make it to work or will not perform to their full potential if they are at work. Encouraging healthy eating and offering tips on safety when engaged in off-duty recreation or work around the house can help ensure a healthier workforce.
• Legal Implications. WorkplaceFairness.org has a page discussing the ability of employers to regulate employee behavior when employees are off duty or away from the workplace. For example, they write, “[a] new trend is increasingly taking hold, where companies looking to reduce their healthcare costs have established not just a “no smoking” policy, but a “no smokers” policy. These companies not only refuse to hire smokers, but some are even taking the drastic step of terminating current employees who smoke.” The site points out that the legality of such matters likely depends on where you live, as different states have different laws related to smokers, specifically, and right-to-work more generally.

While there are some very good reasons to want your employees to be safe both on and off the job, employers must be cautious in how they communicate these concerns and to what extent they attempt to exert control over employee behaviors when off the clock.

Walking a Fine Line

It’s important to keep in mind the difference between encouraging/discouraging behavior and requiring/prohibiting behavior. For example, attempting to educate employees on the health risks of smoking has different legal implications than refusing to hire smokers.

While most employer-driven safety initiatives focus on activities and behaviors at the workplace and during work hours, some employers consider and implement policies attempting to promote healthy and safe behavior off duty and off-site. Whether such practices make sense for your company requires consideration of both the benefits and potential consequences such actions may represent.